was the occasion of a frolic and a dance for the young people, whiskey and rum being plentiful, and the host exerting his utmost power to spread the table with backwoods delicacies, bear meat and venison, vegetables from the truck patch, where squashes, melons, beans and the like were grown, wild fruits, bowls of milk and apple pies. which were the acknowledged standard of luxury. At the better houses there was metheglin or small beer, cider, cheese and biscuits. Tea was so little known that many of the backwoods people were not aware it was a beverage, and at first attempted to eat the leaves with salt and butter.

"The young men prided themselves on their bodily strength, and were always eager to contend against one another in athletic games, such as wrestling, racing, jumping and lifting flour barrels; and they also sought distinction in vieing with one another at their work. Sometimes they strove against one another singly, sometimes they divided into parties, each bending all its energies to be first in shucking a given heap of corn, or cutting with sickles an allotted patch of wheat. Among the men the bravos or bullies often were dandies also in the backwoods fashion, wearing their hair long and delighting in the rude finery of hunting shirts embroidered with porcupine quills; they were loud, boastful and profane, given to coarsely bantering one another. Brutally savage fights were frequent; the combatants, who were surrounded by rings of interested spectators, striking, kicking, biting, and gouging. The fall of one of them did not stop the fight, for the man who was down was maltreated without mercy until he called enough. The victor always bragged savagely of his prowess, often leaping on a stump, crowing and flapping his arms. Defeat was not necessarily considered disgrace, a man often fighting when he was certain to be beaten, while the onlookers neither hooted nor pelted the conquered. Fights were specially frequent when the backwoodsmen went into the little frontier town to see horse races or fairs.

"A wedding was always a time of festival. The groom and his friends, all armed, rode to the house of the bride's father, plenty of whisky being drunk, and the men racing recklessly along the narrow bridle paths, for there were few roads or wheeled vehicles in the backwoods. At the bride's house the ceremony was performed, and then a huge dinner was eaten, after which the fiddling and dancing began, and were continued all the afternoon,

and most of the night as well. A party of girls stole off the bride and put her to bed in the loft above, and a party of young men performed the like service for the groom. The fun was hearty and coarse, and the toasts always included one to the young couple, with the wish that they might have many big children, for as long as they could remember, the backwoodsman had lived at war, while looking ahead they saw no chance of its ever stopping, and so each son was regarded as a future warrior, a help to the whole community. The neighbors all joined again in chopping and rolling the logs for the young couple's future house, then in raising the house itself, and finally in feasting and dancing at the house warming.

"Funerals were simple, the dead body being carried to the grave in a coffin slung on poles and carried by four men.

"Each family did everything that could be done for itself. The father and sons worked with axe, hoe and sickle. Almost every house contained a loom, and almost every woman was a weaver. Linsey woolsey made from flax grown near the cabin and from wool from the backs of the few sheep was the warmest and most substantial cloth; and when the flax crop failed and the flocks were destroyed by wolves the children had but scanty covering to hide their nakedness. The man tanned the buckskin, the woman was tailor and shoemaker, and made the deer skin sifters to be used instead of bolting cloths. There were a few pewter spoons in use; but the table furniture consisted mainly of hand-made trenchers, platters, noggins and bowls. The cradle was of peeled hickory bark. Ploughshares had to be imported, but harrows and sleds were made without difficulty, and the cooper work was well done. work was well done. Chaff beds were thrown on the floor of the loft, if the house owner was well off. Each cabin had a hand mill and a hominy block; the last was borrowed from the Indians and was only a large block of wood with a hole burned in the top as a mortar where the pestle was worked. If there were any sugar maples accessible they were tapped every year.

"In order to get salt and iron each family collected during the year all the furs possible, these being valuable, and carried. on pack horses, the sole means of transport. Then, after seeding time in the Fall, the people of a neighborhood ordinarily joined in sending down a train of peltry-laden pack horses to some

large sea coast or tidal river trading town, where their burdens. were bartered for the needed iron and salt. The unshod horses. all had bells hung round their necks; the clappers were stopped during the day, but when the train was halted for the night and the horses were hobbled and turned loose, the bells were once more unstopped. Several men accompanied each little caravan, and sometimes they drove with them steers and hogs to sell on the sea coast. A bushel of alum salt was worth a good cow and a calf, and as each of the poorly fed undersized pack animals could carry but two bushels, the mountaineers prized it greatly, and instead of salting or pickling their venison they jerked it by drying it in the sun or smoking it over a fire.

"The life of the backwoodsman was one long struggle. The forest had to be felled, droughts, deep snows, freshets, cloud bursts, forest fires, and all the other dangers of a wilderness life faced. Swarms of deer-flies, mosquitoes and midges rendered life a torment in the weeks of hot weather. Rattlesnakes and copperheads were very plentiful and, the former especially, constant sources of danger and death. Wolves and bears were incessant and the inveterate foes of the live stock, and the cougar, or panther, occasionally attacked man as well. More terrible still, the wolves sometimes went mad, and the men who then encountered them were almost certain to be bitten and to die of the hydrophobia.

"Every true backwoodsman was a hunter. Wild turkeys were plentiful. The pigeons at times filled the woods with clouds that hid the sun, and broke down the branches on their roosting grounds as if a whirlwind had passed. The black and grey squirrels swarmed, devastating the corn fields and at times gathering in immense companies and migrating across mountain and river. The hunter's ordinary game was the deer, and after that the bear; the elk was already growing uncommon. No form of labor is harder than the chase, and none is so fascinating nor so excellent as a training school for war. The successful still hunter of necessity possessed skill in hiding and in creeping noiselessly upon the wary quarry, as well as in imitating the notes and calls of the different beasts and birds; skill in the use of the rifle and in throwing the tomahawk he already had; and he perforce acquired keenness of eye, thorough acquaintance with wood craft, and the power of standing the severest strains of fatigue, hard