To convert the wheat into flour was a more difficult matter. The government had provided a few little hand-mills, but they were not adapted to the purpose; so that the settler took a lesson from the Indian, burned a large hole in the top of an oak stump and pounded the wheat to a powder with a pestle or a cannon ball suspended from the end of a sweep. It was not many years before government mills were erected at different points, where there was a sufficient supply of water-power. The localities thus served suffered little inconvenience, as compared with less favoured districts. Ten, fifteen, or twenty years wrought a great change in the wilderness home. Small clearings were everywhere to be seen. Barns had been built, the houses had been enlarged, and the melodious tinkling of bells betrayed the presence of cattle. Sheep and swine were also found on every farm, but they had to be guarded to protect them from marauding bears and wolves. Of horses there were but few. Awkward as the ox may appear, he was more than a match for the horse in finding a sure footing among the stumps, logs, and fallen timbers. Breaking in "Buck and Bright" to come under the yoke and to respond to the "gee", "haw", and the snap of the whip was a tedious undertaking, but was successfully accomplished. The general store made its appearance, but the pioneer had learned to be independent and still supplied most of his own wants. He raised his own flax, and when it was ripe he pulled it by hand, tied it into small sheaves so that it would dry quickly, and shocked it up. When it was cured, it was taken to the barn and threshed out with a flail. The straw was then spread out on the ground and left for two or three weeks, until it had rotted sufficiently to permit the stalks to be broken without severing the outer rind, which supplied the shreds. The object was to get it in such a condition that this outer part could be freed from the inner. It was first put through a crackle, which was a bench four feet long, composed of three or four boards standing on their edges and just far enough apart, that three or four similar boards, framed together and operated from a hinge like a pair of nut-crackers, would, when closed down, drop into the several spaces between the lower boards. The straw was passed over the lower boards at right angles, and the operator raised and lowered the upper frame, bringing it down on the flax, breaking the stalks, and loosening the outer shreds from the inner pulp. To remove the pulp the stalks were then drawn over a heckle, which was a board with scores of long nails protruding through. This combed the coarser pulp away, when the same process was repeated over a finer heckle, which left the shreds ready to be spun into thread on a spinning wheel similar to, but smaller than that used in spinning wool. The thread was then bleached, dyed, wound into balls, and passed on to the weaver. The farmer also raised his own sheep, sheared them, and