Each family depends upon itself for most of the necessaries of life. Each member has his own work. The father is the protector and provider; the mother is the housekeeper, the cook, the weaver, and the tailor. Father and sons work out-of-doors with axe, hoe, and sickle; while indoors the hum of the spinning-wheel or the clatter of the loom shows that mother and daughters are busily doing their part. There are some articles, however, like salt and iron, which the settlers cannot always get in the backwoods. These they must obtain by barter. So each family collects all the furs it can, and once a year, after the harvest is gathered, loads them on pack-horses, which are driven across the mountains to some large trading town on the seacoast. There the skins are traded for the needed iron or salt. Often many neighbors plan to go together on such a journey. Sometimes they drive before them their steers and hogs to find a market in the east. A bushel of salt costs in these early days a good cow and calf. Now, that is a great deal to pay; and furthermore, as each small and poorly fed pack-animal can carry but two bushels, salt is a highly prized article. Since it is so expensive and hard to get, it has to be used sparingly by the mountaineers. Therefore the housewife, instead of salting or pickling her meat, preserves or "jerks" it by drying it in the sun or smoking it over the fire. The Tennessee settler, like Boone's followers in Kentucky, dresses very much like the Indians, for that is the easiest and most fitting way in which to clothe himself for the forest life he leads. And very fine do many stalwart figures appear in the fur cap and moccasins, the loose trousers, or simply leggings of buckskin, and the fringed hunting-shirt reaching nearly to the knees. It is held in by a broad belt having a tomahawk in one side and a knife in the other. [Illustration: A Kentucky Pioneer's Cabin.] While this free outdoor life develops strong and vigorous bodies, there is not much schooling in these backwoods settlements. Most boys and girls learn very little except reading and writing and very simple ciphering, or arithmetic. If there are any schoolhouses at all, they are log huts, dimly lighted and furnished very scantily and rudely. The schoolmaster, as a rule, does not know much of books, and is quite untrained as a teacher. His discipline, though severe, is very poor. And he is paid in a way that may seem strange to you. He receives very little in cash, and for the rest of his wages he "boards around" with the families of the children he teaches, making his stay longer or shorter according to the number of children in school.