University of Virginia Library

9. CHAPTER IX.

“Who could have dreamed, my dear,” said Mrs. C. to
her husband, “these forests so picturesque when seen
from the Ohio, concealed such roads?”

Mr. C. made no reply; although the phenomenon was
certainly very remarkable;—in fact, his idea about the
Muses was passing in review—and he thought, maybe after
all, it was something else that had echoed the flute notes.
The lady's query, however, and the gentleman's silence occurred
about thirty miles due north of the Ohio River, in a

very new State of the far west. They were seated in a
two-horse Yankee cart,—a kind of mongrel dearborne—
amid what was now called their “plunder”—with a hired
driver on the front seat, and intending to find, if possible, a
certain spot in a very uncertain part of the New Purchase
—about one hundred and twenty honest miles in the interior,
and beyond Shining River. This was the second day
of practice in the elementary lessons of forest travelling; in
which, however, they had been sufficiently fortunate as to
get a taste of “buttermilk land,”—“spouty land,”—and
to learn the nature of “mash land”—“rooty and snaggy
land”—of mud holes, ordinary and extraordinary—of quick
sands—and “corduroys” woven single and double twill
—and even fords with and without bottom.

The autumn is decidedly preferable for travelling on the
virgin soil of native forests. One may go then mostly by
land and find the roads fewer and shorter; but in the
early spring, branches—(small creeks)—are brim full, and
they hold a great deal; concealed fountains bubble up in a
thousand places where none were supposed to lurk; creeks
turn to rivers, and rivers to lakes, and lakes to bigger ones;
and as if this was too little water, out come the mole
rivers that have burrowed all this time under the earth, and
which, when so unexpectedly found are styled out there—
“lost rivers!” And every district of a dozen miles square
has a lost river. Travelling by land becomes of course
travelling by water, or by both: viz., mud and water. Nor
is it possible if one would avoid drowning or suffocation to
keep the law and follow the blazed road; but he taks first
to the right and then to the left, often making both losing
tacks; and all this, not to find a road but a place where
there is no road,—untouched mud thick enough to bear, or
that has at least some bottom.

Genuine Hoosiers, Corn-crackers, et id omne genus—
(viz.all that sort of geniuses)—lose comparatively little time

in this species of navigation; for such know instinctively
where it is proper to quit the submerged road of the legislature,
and where they are likely to fulfil the proverb “out of
the frying pan into the fire.” And so we, at last, in utter
despair of finding a royal road to the New Purchase, did
enter souse into the most-ill-looking, dark-coloured morasses,
enlivened by steams of purer mud crossing at right angles,
and usually much deeper than we cared to discover.

The first night we had stayed at a “public;” yet while
the tavern was of brick, candour forces me to record that
affairs so much resembled the hardware and crockery in
their streaked and greasy state after Messrs. Brown & Co.
had cleaned them, that we were rejoiced—prematurely
however—when morning allowed us half-refreshed to
resume our land tacking. But more than once afterwards
did we sigh even for the comforts of the Brick
Tavern, with its splendid sign of the sun rising and setting
between two partitions of paint intended for hills; and
which sun looked so much like spreading rays, that a friend
soberly asked us afterwards—“If we didn't put up the first
night at the sign of the Fan?”

It was now after sunset on our second day, that we inquired
with much anxiety at a miserable cabin, how far it
was to the next tavern, and were answered—“A smart bit
yet—maybe more nor three miles by the blaze—but the
most powerfullest road!” Since early morning we had,
with incessant driving, done nearly twenty miles; if then we
had, in a bad road, done by daylight about one and a half
miles per hour, how were we likely to do three miles in
the dark, and over what a native styled—the “most powerfullest
road?” Hence, as the lady of the cabin seemed
kind, and more than once expressed compassion for “my
womin body”—(so she called Mrs. C.) and as she “allowed”
we had better stop where we were, with a sudden and
very respectful remembrance of the Rising or Setting Fan

Tavern, we agreed to halt. And so!—at long last—we
were going really and actually to pass a night in a veritable,
rite-dite, cabin!—in a vast forest too!—and far enough
from all the incumbrances of eastern civilization!

“And did you not thrill Mr. Carlton?”

“I rather think, dear reader,—I did;—at least I felt
some sort of a shiver; especially as the gloom of the
frightful shades increased; and the deafening clangour of
innumerable rude frogs in the mires and on the trees arose;
and the whirl and hum and buzz of strange, savage insects
and reptiles, and of winged and unwinged bugs, began and
increased and grew still louder; and vapours damp, chilly
and fœtid ascended and came down; and the only field in
sight was a few yards of “clearing,” stuck with trunks of
“deadened” trees and great stumps blackened with the
fires! And I think the thrill, or whatever it was, grew more
and more intense on turning towards the onward road, and
finding a suspicion in my mind that it only led to the endless
repetition of the agreeable night scene around us—ah! ha!
—maybe to—and then came retrospective visions of
friends in the far East now—till—“what?”—I hardly know
what—till something, however, like a wish came, that it
were as easy to float up the Ohio as down. Heyho!

Nor was the cabin a fac simile of those built in dreams
and novels and magazines. Mine were of bark, and as
neat as a little girl's baby house! This had, indeed, bark
enough about, but still not put up right. It was in truth a
barbarous rectangle of unhewed and unbarked logs, and
bound together by a gigantic dove-tailing called notching.
The roof was thick ricketty shingles, called clapboards;
which when clapped on were held down by longitudinal
poles kept apart by shorter pieces placed between them
perpendicularly. The interstices of the log-wall were
“chinked”—the “chinking” being large chips and small
slabs dipping like strata of rocks in geology; and then on

the chinking was the “daubing”—viz. a quant. suff. of
yellow clay ferociously splashed in soft by the hand of the
architect, and then left to harden at its leisure. Rain and
frost had here, however, caused mud daubing to disappear;
so that from without could be clearly discerned through the
wall, the light of fire and candle, and from within, the light
of sun, moon and stars—a very fair and harmless tit for tat.

The chimney was outside the cabin and a short distance
from it. This article was built, as chaps, in raining weather,
make on the kitchen hearth stick houses of light wood,—
it consisted of layers of little logs reposing on one another
at their corners and topped off when high enough with flag
stones:—it was, moreover, daubed, and so admirably as to
look like a mud stack! That, however, was, as I afterwards
found inartistical—the daubing of chimneys correctly
being a very nice task, although just as dirty as even political
daubing.

The inside cabin was one room below and one loft above
—to which, however, was no visible ascent.—I think the
folks climbed up at the corner. The room contained principally
beds, the other furniture being a table, “stick
chairs,” and some stools with from two to three legs apiece.
Crockery and calabashes shared the mantel with two dangerous
looking rifles and their powder horns. The iron ware
shifted for itself about the fire place, where awkward feet
feeling for the fire or to escape it, pushed kettle against pot
and skillet against dutch oven.

What French cook committed suicide because something
was not done “to a turn?” Ample poetic justice may be
done to his wicked ghost by some smart writer, in chaining
him with an imabie or two to the jamb of that cabin
hearth—there for ever to be a witness of its cookery.
Here came first the pettish outcries of two matron hens
dangled along to a hasty execution; then notes of preparation
sung out by the tea-kettle; then was jerked into position

the dutch oven straddling with three short legs over the burning
coals; and lastly the skillet began sputtering forth its
boiling lard, or grease of some description. The instruments
ready, the hostess aided by a little barefooted daughter, and
whose white hair was whisped at the top of the head with a
string and horn comb, the hostess put into the oven, balls of
wet corn meal, and then slapped on the lid red hot and covered
with coals, with a look and motion equal to this sentence—“Get
out of that, till you're done.” Then the two
fowls, but a moment since kicking and screeching at being
killed, were doused into the skillet into hot oil, where they
moved around dismembered, as if indignant now at being
fried.

We travellers shifted quarters repeatedly during these
solemn operations, sometimes to get less heat, sometimes
more, and sometimes to escape the fumes direct; but usually,
to get out of the way. That, however, being impracticable,
we at length sat extempore, and were kicked and
jostled accordingly. In the meanwhile our landlady, in
whom was much curiosity, a little reverence, and a misty
idea that her guests were great folks, and towards whom as
aristocrats it was republican to feel enmity, our landlady
maintained at intervals a very lively talk, as for example:

“From Loo'ville, I allow!”

“No—from Philadelphia.”

A sudden pause—a turn to look at us more narrowly,
while she still affectionately patted some wet meal into
shape for the oven.

“Well!—now!—I wonder!—hem!—Come to enter land,
'spose—powerful bottom on the Shining—heavy timber,
though. He's your old man, mam?”

Mrs. C. assented. The hostess then stooped to deposit
the perfect hall, and continued:

“Our wooden country's mighty rough, I allow, for some

folks—right hard to git gals here, mam—folks has to be
their own niggurs, mam—what mought your name be?”

Mrs. C. told the lady, and then in a timid and piteous sort
of tone inquired if girls could not be hired by the year?
To this the landlady replied at first with a stare—then with
a smile—and then added:

“Well! sort a allow not—most time, mam, you'll have
to work your own ash hopper”—(viz. a lie-cask, or, rather,
an inverted pyramidical box to contain ashes, resembling a
hopper in a mill)—“Nan”—(name of little flax head)—
“Nan, sort a turn them thare chickins.”

And thus the cabin lady kept on doing up her small stock
of English into Hoosierisms and other figures; now, with
the question direct—now, the question implied; then, with
a soliloquy—then, an apostrophe: and all the time cleaning
and cutting up chickens, making pones, and working and
wriggling among pots, skillets and people's limbs (?) and
feet, with an adroitness and grace gained by practice only;
and all this, without upsetting any thing, scalding any body,
or even spilling any food—excepting, maybe, a little grease,
flour and salt. Nor did she lose time by dropping down
curtsey fashion to inspect the progress of things baked or
fried: but she bent over as if she had hinges in the hips,
according to nature doubtless, but contrary to the Lady's
Book; although the necessary backward motion to balance
the head projected beyond the base, did render garments
short by nature still shorter, as grammarians would say, by
position.

Corn-bread takes its own time to bake; and therefore it
was late when the good woman, having placed the “chicken
fixins” on a large dinner-plate, and poured over them the
last drop of unabsorbed and unevaporated oil, set all on the
table, and then, giving her heated and perspiring face a last
wipe with the corner of her tow-linen apron, and also giving

her thumb and finger a rub on the same cleanser, she sung
out the ordinary summons:

“Well! come, sit up.”

This sit-up we instantly performed—as well, at least, as
we could—while she stood up to pour out the tea, complimenting
all the time its quality, saying—“'Tisn't nun of your
spice-wood or yarb stuff, but the rele gineine slore tea.”
Nanny remained near the dutch oven to keep us supplied
with red-hot pones, or corn-balls—and hard enough by the
way, to do execution from cannon. The teacups used, held
a scant pint; and to do exact justice to each cup, the mistress
held the teapot in one hand and the water-pot in the
other, pouring from both at once till the cup was brim-full
of the mixture:—an admirable system of impartiality, and
if the pots have spouts of equal diameters, the very way to
make precisely “half and half.” But sorry am I to say, that
on the present occasion, the water-pot had the best and
easiest delivery.

“And could you eat, Mr. Carlton?”

How could we avoid it, Mr. Nice? Besides, we were
most vulgarly hungry. And the consequence was, that, at
the arrival of the woodman and his two sons, other cornbread
was baked, and, for want of chicken, bacon was fried.

“But how did you do about retiring?”

We men-folks, my dear Miss, went out to see what sort
of weather we were likely to have; and on coming in again,
the ladies were very modestly covered up in bed—and then
we—got into bed—in the usual way. I have no doubt Mr.
Carlton managed a little awkwardly: but I fear the reader
will discover, that in his attempts at doing as Rome does,
and so forth, Mr. Carlton departed finally from the native
sweetness and simplicity of eastern and fashionable life;
still we seemed to leave rather an unfavourable impression
at the cabin, since, just before our setting out in the morning,
the landlady told the driver privately—“Well! I allow

the stranger and his woman-body thinks themselves mighty
big-bugs—but maybe they aint got more silver than Squire
Snoddy across Big Bean creek; and his wife don't think
nuthin on slinging round like her gal—but never mind, maybe
Mrs. Callten or Crawltin, or somethin or nuther, will larn
how too.”