THE LOG CABIN.--To build a log cabin the settler would fell trees of the proper size, cut them into logs, and with his ax notch them half through at the ends. Laid one on another these logs formed the four sides of the cabin. Openings were left for a door, one window, and a huge fireplace; the cracks between the logs were filled with mud; the roof was of hewn boards, and the chimney of logs smeared on the inside with clay and lined at the bottom with stones. Greased paper did duty for glass in the window. The door swung on wooden hinges and was fastened with a wooden latch on the inside, which was raised from the outside by a leather string passed through a hole in the door. Some cabins had no floor but the earth; in others the floor was of puncheons, or planks split and hewn from trunks of trees and laid with the round side down. [10] [Illustration: CORN-HUSK MOP.] PIONEER LIFE.--If the farm were wooded, the first labor of the settler was to grub up the bushes, cut down the smaller trees, and kill the larger ones by cutting a girdle around each near the roots. When the trees were felled, the neighbors would come and help roll the logs into great piles for burning. From the ashes the settler made potash; for many years potash was one of the important exports of the country. In the land thus cleared and laid open to the sun the pioneer planted his corn, flax, wheat, and vegetables. The corn he shelled on a gritter, and ground in a handmill, or pounded in a wooden mortar with a wooden pestle, or carried on horseback to some mill perhaps fifteen miles away. Cooking stoves were not used. Game was roasted by hanging it by a leather string before an open fire. All baking was done in a Dutch oven on the hearth, or in an out oven built, as its name implies, out of doors. [11] Deerskin in the early days, and later tow linen, woolens, jeans, and linseys, were the chief materials for clothing till store goods became common. [12] The amusements of the pioneers were like those of colonial days--shooting matches, bear hunts, races, militia musters, raisings, log rollings, weddings, corn huskings, and quilting parties. [Illustration: BREAKING FLAX.] FIVE NEW STATES.--The first effect of the emigration to the West was such an increase of population there that five new states were admitted in five years. They were Indiana (1816), Mississippi (1817), Illinois (1818), Alabama (1819), Missouri (1821). As Louisiana (1812) and Maine (1820) had also been admitted by 1821, the Union then included twenty-four states (map, p. 279). POWER OF THE WEST.--A second result of this building of the West was an increase in its political importance. The West in 1815 sent to Congress 8 senators and 28 members of the House; after 1822 it sent 18 senators out of 48, and 47 members of the House out of 213. [Illustration: TRADING WITH A RIVER MERCHANT.]