Furniture for the house was made by the old soldier; this was generally of the roughest kind. They had the fashion of exchanging work, as well as of having bees. Some of them had been mechanics in other days. A carpenter was a valuable acquisition, and while others would assist him to do his heavy work, he would in return do those little nicer jobs by which the household comforts would be increased. No chests of drawers were required; benches were made of split basswood, upon which to sit, and tables were manufactured in the same style. The bedstead was constructed at the end of the cabin, by taking poles of suitable size and inserting the ends between the logs which formed the walls on either side. These would be placed, before the cracks were filled in and plastered. CLEARING THE LAND. A log hut constructed, wherein to live; and such plain rough articles of furniture as were really necessary provided, the next thing was to clear the land, thickly covered with large trees and tangled brush. Many a swing of the unhandy axe had to be made ere the trees could be felled, and disposed of; and the ground made ready for the grain or root. A few years later, and the settler would, in the dry summer season, fire the woods, so as to kill the trees. By the next year they would have become dry, so that by setting fire again they would burn down. In this way much labor was saved. But sometimes the fire would prove unmanageable and threaten to destroy the little house and log barn, as well as crops. Another mode of destroying the large trees, was to girdle them—that is, to cut through the bark all around the tree, whereby it was killed, so that the following year it would likewise burn down. A portion of the disbanded troops, as well as other loyalists, had been bred to agricultural pursuits; and some of them, at least those who had not been very long in arms, could the more readily adapt themselves to their new circumstances, and resume their early occupation. The axe of the woodsman was soon swung as vigorously along the shores of the well wooded river and bay, as it had been in the forests years before, in the backwoods of New England.