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.