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They did not fear the cold of winter; for their log-houses would have thick walls, and they had large iron stoves with flues, and plenty of fuel to be had for the trouble of chopping. After the snow had fallen, the boys would chop enough in a few days to last them all the winter, and pile it up in a great heap near the house.
These poor log-houses almost always contain a Bible, often journals, instructive books, sometimes even poetry. We in Europe, who fancy ourselves fine amateurs of good verses, would scarcely imagine that copies of Longfellow are scattered among American husbandmen. The political journals have many subscribers; those of the religious papers are no less numerous.
Occasionally they had log-houses, with even here and there a second story above the puncheon-floor, reached by a ladder; but in the main their habitations were half-faced camps, secured in front at night by fires.
These were six or seven log-houses, thatched with palmetto-leaves, built on high posts, with a porch in front, facing the water. The men's quarters were also of logs forming the two sides of a rectangle, open toward the water; the intervals and flanks were closed with log stockades.
We found good clearings on the hillside; fair fields of maize and peas, gourds and calabashes; cattle grazed in the meadows; fowls and turkeys were kept; the homes were log-houses, substantially built, in good condition, in neat enclosures; men and women, the latter in European dress, were busied with the duties of their little farms.
They were only squatters, that is, they cut down the great trees, and built log-houses, and set about making farms in the wilderness, with no better right to the soil than that which their labour gave. They needed no better right, they thought; at least, there was no one to interfere with them, and soon a thriving settlement was made in the valley.
Many of the houses in Kingston were merely log-houses, and those which consisted of joiners work were badly constructed and painted. There was no Town Hall, no Court House, and no Prison. The trade consisted chiefly in furs, brought down the Lake, and in provisions brought from Europe. There were only three merchant ships, that made eleven voyages in the year.
The necessity for constant activity in laying out their gardens, clearing the land around the place of settlement, and erecting good log-houses, all this, with fresh air and abundance of good food, kept them in excellent health and spirits, so that even the worst among them were for a time amiably disposed; and it seemed as if those nine men had, by their act of mutiny, really introduced themselves into a terrestrial paradise.
On an appointed day the Governor of the province arrived in the village, collected the officials appointed to serve in the newly-constructed or newly-arranged log-houses, ordered a simple religious ceremony to be performed by the priest, caused a formal act to be drawn up, and then declared the town to be "opened."
Signs of man's restless advent and pioneerage, hard as Nature's face is deserted dug-outs by dozens in the side-hills the scantling-hut, the telegraph-pole, the smoke of some impromptu chimney or outdoor fire at intervals little settlements of log-houses, or parties of surveyors or telegraph builders, with their comfortable tents.
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