All domestic animals subsisted on what nature furnished in the woods during spring and summer, and each individual owner had an ear-mark for hogs and cattle recorded at the county-seat, which gave security against mistakes, and when animals became lost furnished information of ownership and acted as a substitute for a square in the “lost” column of some newspaper. It must be remembered that Ohio was not settled all over at once. It came into the Union an immense wilderness, and much of it remained unoccupied for long periods. The first tree cut, in Hardin county, was cut for bees in 1837--a dead black-walnut, seventy-two feet to the first limb. And as the counties became organized and settled the inhabitants all commenced at the same point--the same style of cabin and like simplicity--benches were used for chairs, earth for flooring and carpet, forked sticks driven into the ground with cross poles for bedsteads, clap-boards for bed-cords, and pond-grass for feathers, a single pot and frying-pan, with a few pewter dishes, constituted the primitive outfit, sooner or later, for every county in the state. The immigrants who pushed forward into the interior counties suffered most for want of mills and from the high price of freight, and merchandise, as salt, flour, and other necessaries of life, all came from Chillicothe or Zanesville. Salt was ten and twelve cents a pound, calico one dollar a yard, coffee seventy-five cents, and whisky two dollars a gallon. High prices ruled in all new settlements long after they had been reduced in and at the vicinity of Chillicothe and Zanesville; and which, too, was only partly owing to exorbitant rates for transportation. So little and so few were articles purchased, that pioneer merchants did not enter the interior counties of the state for many years, and orders for flour, and salt, and other necessaries, accompanied by the silver, would be forwarded generally by the bearer of the order, as no regular mail or line of transportation was run from one settlement to another. For want of roads the inconvenience was tolerated, as it did not detract much from the power of the inhabitants in every part of the state from living well and living easy. Still there were a few from isolation or improvidence suffered hardships and unpleasant conditions, especially in the interior counties.