Upon the arrival of emigrants in the country they generally take a view of that part which it is their object to settle in and according to their circumstances fix upon such a situation as may appear eligible for their business. The greater proportion are husbandmen. (From A Topographical Description of the Western Territory of America, by Gilbert Imlay, New York, 1793.) A PIONEER BOYHOOD RECOLLECTIONS OF THE WEST IN THE FORTIES BY JAMES BURTON POND In the autumn of 1843 I was four years old and living in a log house in the town of Hector, Tompkins (now Schuyler) County, New York. One of my earliest recollections is of a conversation between my father and mother regarding the expected visit of an uncle and his family, who were coming to bid us good-by before moving to Illinois. My uncle had the "Illinois fever"; he had just returned from a "land-looking" in Illinois, where he had preëmpted a new farm. I remember listening to my uncle's glowing description of the new country out in the far West beyond the Great Lakes, where he was going to make a new home. When he had gone my father talked constantly of Illinois, and the neighbors said he had Illinois fever. We passed the long winter in our log house adjoining my grandfather's farm. All the clothing and bedding people had in those days was home-made, and every household had its loom. In our home, in the single room on the first floor were father's and mother's bed, the trundle-bed, where four of us children slept (lying crosswise), the loom, the spinning-wheel for wool and tow, the flax-wheel, the swifts, reeling-bars, and the quill-wheel, besides the table and chairs. We had two rooms in the attic, one a spare room and the other for the hired help. Frequently during the long evenings my grandmother and other neighbors would come in with their knitting and their tow-cards, and either knit or card tow or heckle flax, talking about Illinois, where my uncle had gone. That mysterious word was unfathomable to me. It was finally decided that we should go there too, and all our furniture, with bedding, spinning-wheels, loom, and crockery, was packed up, and on Monday morning, March 20, 1844, we started for the new country. At Ithaca our goods were put on board a canal-boat, and the next morning I awoke to find myself on Cayuga Lake, in tow of a steamer. For days we traveled slowly on the Erie Canal, with no memorable incidents except an occasional "low bridge," one of which swept our provision-chest nearly the length of the deck.