Death Valley in 49 | Page 7

houses went up very
fast--all rough oak logs, with oak puncheons, or hewed planks for a
floor, and oak shakes for a roof, all of our own make. The shakes were
held down upon the roof by heavy poles, for we had no nails, the door
of split stuff hung with wooden hinges, and the fire place of stone laid
up with the logs, and from the loft floor upward the chimney was built
of split stuff plastered heavily with mud. We have a small four-paned
window in the house. We then built a log barn for our oxen, cow and
horse and got pigs, sheep and chickens as fast as a chance offered.
As fast as possible we fenced in the cultivated land, father and uncle
splitting out the rails, while a younger brother and myself, by each
getting hold of an end of one of them managed to lay up a fence four
rails high, all we small men could do. Thus working on, we had a pretty
well cultivated farm in the course of two or three years, on which we
produced wheat, corn and potatoes, and had an excellent garden. We
found plenty of wild cranberries and whortleberries, which we dried for
winter use. The lakes were full of good fish, black bass and pickerel,
and the woods had deer, turkeys, pheasants, pigeons, and other things,
and I became quite an expert in the capture of small game for the table
with my new gun. Father and uncle would occasionally kill a deer, and
the Indians came along and sold venison at times.
One fall after work was done and preparations were made for the
winter, father said to me:--"Now Lewis, I want you to hunt every
day--come home nights--but keep on till you kill a deer." So with his
permission I started with my gun on my shoulder, and with feelings of
considerable pride. Before night I started two deer in a brushy place,
and they leaped high over the oak bushes in the most affrighted way. I
brought my gun to my shoulder and fired at the bounding animal when
in most plain sight. Loading then quickly, I hurried up the trail as fast
as I could and soon came to my deer, dead, with a bullet hole in its
head. I was really surprised myself, for I had fired so hastily at the
almost flying animal that it was little more than a random shot. As the
deer was not very heavy I dressed it and packed it home myself, about
as proud a boy as the State of Michigan contained. I really began to
think I was a capital hunter, though I afterward knew it was a bit of

good luck and not a bit of skill about it.
It was some time after this before I made another lucky shot. Father
would once in a while ask me:--"Well can't you kill us another deer?" I
told him that when I had crawled a long time toward a sleeping deer,
that I got so trembly that I could not hit an ox in short range. "O," said
he, "You get the buck fever--don't be so timid--they won't attack you."
But after awhile this fever wore off, and I got so steady that I could hit
anything I could get in reach of.
We were now quite contented and happy. Father could plainly show us
the difference between this country and Vermont and the advantages
we had here. There the land was poor and stony and the winters terribly
severe. Here there were no stones to plow over, and the land was
otherwise easy to till. We could raise almost anything, and have nice
wheat bread to eat, far superior to the "Rye-and-Indian" we used to
have. The nice white bread was good enough to eat without butter, and
in comparison this country seemed a real paradise.
The supply of clothing we brought with us had lasted until now--more
than two years--and we had sowed some flax and raised sheep so that
we began to get material of our own raising, from which to
manufacture some more. Mother and sister spun some nice yarn, both
woolen and linen, and father had a loom made on which mother wove it
up into cloth, and we were soon dressed up in bran new clothes again.
Domestic economy of this kind was as necessary here as it was in
Vermont, and we knew well how to practice it. About this time the
emigrants began to come in very fast, and every piece of Government
land any where about was taken. So much land was ploughed, and so
much vegetable matter turned under and decaying that there came a
regular epidemic of fever and ague and bilious fever,