The Story of Garfield | Page 2

vessels enter and leave the port in one year. It is the greatest grain and provision market in the world.
It may with truth be said that in America cities rise up almost in a night-time. The forest and the prairie are one day out of the reach of civilisation, and the next they are one with the throbbing centres of life and progress. The railway, the means of communication, changes all as by a wizard's touch.
One day the news spread through a certain district, that two lines of railway were to cross at a certain point in the wilderness. Settlers at once crowded to the place, and next day the land was staked out in town lots, with all the details of streets, squares, and market-place. Soon afterwards, shanties were seen on the prairies, moving with all speed, on rollers, towards the new town. On the second day a number of houses were under construction, while the owners camped near by in tents. In a few months hundreds of dwellings had been erected, and a newspaper established to chronicle the doings of the inhabitants.
"The old nations of the earth creep on at snail's pace: the Republic thunders past with the rush of an express," says a recent American writer. "Think of it!" he continues; "a Great Britain and Ireland called forth from the wilderness, as if by magic, in less than the span of a man's few days upon earth."
This marvellous growth and rapid change from wilderness to cultivation must be known and understood by readers on this side of the Atlantic, they can appreciate the story of a Lincoln or a Garfield who began life in a log hut in a backwoods settlement in the Far West, and made their way to the White House, the residence of the ruler of an empire as large as the whole of Europe.
CHAPTER II.
THE PIONEERS.
A New England Village--Hardships of Emigrants--The Widow Ballou and her Daughter Eliza--The Humble Dwelling of Abram Garfield--The Garfields and the Boyntons--The Removal to a New Home--The Wonderful Baby-Boy.
The early settlers from the Old World first peopled the eastern shores of the Atlantic, and founded the New England States, New York State, and the whole seaboard from Maine to Florida.
A New England village was a collection of log houses on the edge of a deep forest. Snow drifted into the room through the cracks in the walls, and the howling of wolves made night hideous around them. The children were taught in log schoolhouses, and the people worshipped in log churches.
Savage Indians kept the settlers in a state of continual fear. Sometimes they would suddenly surround a solitary house, kill all the inmates, and set fire to the dwelling. Again and again have the children been aroused from their sleep by the fearful Indian war-whoop, which was more dreaded than the howling of the wolves. Even women learned to use guns and other weapons, that they might be able to defend their homes from these savage assaults.
The log house villages grew into populous places, and the descendants of the "Pilgrims" were not always satisfied to remain in the cities founded by their forefathers. Wonderful stories were told in the towns of the amazing fruitfulness of the forest and prairie land out West, which induced large numbers to sell their property and set out on the tedious and adventurous journey.
Before the great lines of railway were constructed, which now stretch across the North American continent from the Atlantic to the Pacific, there was a constant stream of emigration from the East to the West. Large waggons carried the women and children, and the stores of necessary articles, which must be conveyed at all cost, for they could not be obtained in the localities to which the pioneers bent their steps.
Slowly the emigrant trains made their way through roadless regions. They had to ford rivers, wade through swamps, and cut paths through thick forests. Weeks, and even months, were spent on journeys which are now accomplished in less than twenty-four hours.
Numerous difficulties and manifold dangers beset the wanderers' path; yet, regardless of both, they pushed on with infinite courage and patience. Nor was the journey through the wilds without a tinge of romance to the younger and more adventurous spirits, who enjoyed the freedom they could not have in the towns and cities.
About eighty years ago, a widow and her family--a son and a daughter--packed up all their worldly possessions in an emigrant waggon, and started for the West. Widow Ballou made her home in the State of Ohio, which at that time was only peopled by a few scattered settlers. Five years afterwards, a young man named Abram Garfield started on the same journey. It is said that he was more anxious to renew his acquaintance with the Ballou family