[Illustration: Distribution of the Population of the United States Fourth Census, 1820] %305. The Log Cabin.%--In that case the settler would cut down a few saplings, make a "half-faced camp," and begin his clearing. The "half-faced camp" was a shed. Three sides were of logs laid one on another horizontally. The roof was of saplings covered with branches or bark. The fourth side was open, and when it rained was closed by hanging up deerskin curtains. In this camp the newcomer and his family would live while he grubbed up the bushes and cut down trees enough to make a log cabin. If he were a thrifty, painstaking man, he would smooth each log on four sides with his ax, and notch it half through at each end so that when they were placed one on another the faces would nearly touch. Saplings would make the rafters, and on them would be fastened planks laid clapboard fashion, or possibly split shingles. An opening was of course left for a door, although many a cabin was built without a window, and when the door was shut received no light save that which came down the chimney, which was always on the outside of the house. To form it, an opening eight feet long and six feet high was left at one end of the house, and around this a sort of bay window was built of logs and lined with stones on the inside. Above the top of the opening the chimney contracted and was made of branches smeared both inside and out with clay. Generally the chimney went to the peak of the roof; but it was by no means unusual for it to stop about halfway up the end of the cabin. [Illustration: Log cabin[1]] [Footnote 1: The birthplace of Abraham Lincoln, restored (reproduced, together with the first picture on the next page, from Tarbell's _Early Life of Abraham Lincoln_, by permission of the publishers, S.S. McClure, Limited).] If the settler was too poor to buy glass, or if glass could not be had, the window frame was covered with greased paper, which let in the light but could not be seen through. The door was of plank with leather hinges, or with iron hinges made from an old wagon tire by the nearest blacksmith or by the settler himself. There was no knob, no lock, no bolt. In place of them there was a wooden latch on the inside, which could be lifted by a person on the outside of the door by a leather strip which came through a hole in the door and hung down. When this latch string was out, anybody could pull it, lift the latch, and come in. When it was drawn inside, nobody could come in without knocking. The floor was made of "puncheons," or planks split and hewn with an ax from the trunk of a tree, and laid with the round side down. The furniture the settler brought with him, or made on the spot. [Illustration: Hand mill [1]]