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Many other sleds were drawn up before the door; indeed, certain of the young men who had not their especial sweethearts took their ox-sleds and went from door to door collecting the young women. Many a jingling load slipped along the snowy road to the tavern that night, and the ball-room filled rapidly. At eight o'clock the ball opened.
l. l. $ 2 Yokes of Oxen, at 25 = 50 = 250 1 Horse 20 = 100 2 Ox-carts, at 15 = 30 = 150 1 Waggon 20 = 100 2 Ox-sleds, at 1 = 2 = 10 2 Ox-ploughs, at 2 = 4 = 20 1 Single Horse-plough 1 = 5 2 Harrows 2 = 4 = 20 Cradles, scythes, hoes, rakes, flails, etc. 4 = 20 Fanning-mill, hay-cutter, and corn-sheller. 4 = 20 15 Cows, steers, and heifers 45 = 225 6 Shoats, or pigs, six months old 10 = 50
Only the best old-growth maple, birch and beech were cut for fuel great trees two and three feet in diameter. The trunks were cut into eight-foot lengths, rolled on the ox-sleds with levers, and then hauled home to the yard in front of the wood-house, where they lay in four huge piles till March, when all hands turned to, with axes and saws, and worked it up.
During this disheartening time, General Greene was a great help, with his courage and patriotism and cheerfulness. In February, Colonel Henry Knox returned from the forts on Lake Champlain with a long train of forty-two ox-sleds, carrying artillery and ammunition.
They came with ox-sleds and chains and, what surprised him beyond measure, was three women in one of the sleds who had come to make dinner and took possession of his shanty. They worked with a will. The logs were hauled and built into heaps and fire set, and every art the backwoodsman knows was used to make them burn.
"I speak," he continued, "of New Babylon before the coming of the canal put an end to the log cabins, the spinning-wheels, the ox-sleds, the corduroy roads, the miasmatic swamps, the wolves, the bears, the fever, the ague, the blue pill, and all the rude makeshifts and backwoods' evils which to your forefathers and mine were stern reality.
News had gone far and near that preaching was to be enjoyed that Sabbath at the 'Corner; and from daybreak it had made a stir along the roads. Ox-sleds, waggons, mounted horses, came thither apace by every available path through the woods.
Four trees are wanted for the keel which altogether will measure 146 feet in length and hew sixteen inches square. The story of the building of the Essex is that of an aroused and reliant people. The great timbers were cut in the wood lots of the towns near by and were hauled through the snowy streets of Salem on ox-sleds while the people cheered them as they passed.
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