The scene around bore witness to his labors. It was the
repulsive transition from savagery to civilization, from the forest to
the farm. The victims of his axe lay strewn about the dismal "clearing"
in a chaos of prostrate trunks, tangled boughs, and withered leaves,
waiting for the fire that was to be the next agent in the process of
improvement; while around, voiceless and grim, stood the living forest,
gazing on the desolation, and biding its own day of doom. The owner of
the cabin was miles away, hunting in the woods for the wild turkey and
venison which were the chief food of himself and his family till the
soil could be tamed into the bearing of crops.
Towards night he returned; and as he issued from the forest shadows he
saw a column of blue smoke rising quietly in the still evening air. He
ran to the spot; and there, among the smouldering logs of his dwelling,
lay, scalped and mangled, the dead bodies of wife and children. A
war-party had passed that way. Breathless, palpitating, his brain on
fire, he rushed through the thickening night to carry the alarm to his
nearest neighbor, three miles distant.
Such was the character and the fate of many incipient settlements of the
utmost border. Farther east, they had a different aspect. Here, small
farms with well-built log-houses, cattle, crops of wheat and Indian
corn, were strung at intervals along some woody valley of the lower
Alleghanies: yesterday a scene of hardy toil; to-day swept with
destruction from end to end.
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