After reaching the place selected for their settlement, the younger children are set to clearing away the brush and piling it up in heaps ready for burning. The father and the elder sons, who are big enough to wield an axe, lose no time in cutting down trees and making a clearing for the log cabin. All work with a will, and soon the cabin is ready. [Illustration: Living-Room of the Early Settler.] The furniture, like the cabin itself, is rude and simple. A bedstead is set up in a corner, a washstand is placed near by, and a few three-legged stools are put here and there; and of course there is a table to eat at. Places are quickly found for the water bucket, used to bring water from the stream, the gourd dipper with which to fill it, and other small utensils; while pegs driven into the wall in convenient places hold clothes, rifles, skins, and the like. [Illustration: Grinding Indian Corn.] If our pioneers are well-to-do, there may be tucked away in some pack a wool blanket, but usually the chief covering on the bed is the dried skin of some animal: deer, bear, or perhaps buffalo. There is plenty of food, though of course it is plain and simple, consisting mostly of game. Instead of the pork and beef which are largely eaten in the east, we shall find these settlers making their meal of bear's meat or venison. For flour corn-meal is used. Each family has a mill for grinding the kernels into meal, while for beating it into hominy they use a crude mortar, made perhaps by burning a hole in the top of a block of wood. Bread-making is a simpler matter with them than with us, for a dough of corn-meal is mixed on a wooden trencher and then either baked in the ashes and called ash-cake or before the fire on a board and called johnny-cake. Corn-meal is also made into mush, or hasty pudding; and when the settler has cows, mush-and-milk is a common dish, especially for supper. For butter the settlers use the fat of bear's meat or the gravy of the goose. Instead of coffee, they make a drink of parched rye and beans, and for tea they boil sassafras root. Every backwoodsman must be able to use the rifle to good effect, for he has to provide his own meat and protect himself and his family from attack. He must be skilful also in hiding, in moving noiselessly through the forests, and in imitating the notes and calls of different beasts and birds. Sharp eyes and ears must tell him where to look for his game, and his aim must be swift and sure. But most important of all, he must be able to endure hardship and exposure. Sometimes he lives for months in the woods with no food but meat and no shelter but a lean-to of brush or even the trunk of a hollow tree into which he may crawl. Deer and bear are the most plentiful game; but now and then there is an exciting combat with wolves, panthers, or cougars, while prowling Indians keep him ever on his guard. The pioneer must be strong, alert, and brave.