A man and his wife, with two children, moved into the Township of Ops, into a dense forest, eight miles from the nearest settler. For months he chopped away at the forest trees, all alone, and succeeded at length in making a clearing in the forest, and erecting a log-house for himself and his family. The logs were peeled and notched at the ends, and laid up squarely, each tier making the house the diameter of a log higher. A hole was cut through for a doorway, and another for a window. To form a door he split some thin slabs from a straight-grained cedar, and pinned them with wooden pins to cross slats. The most ingenious parts of the construction, however, were the hinges. Iron hinges he had not, and could not get. With the auger he bored a hole through the end of a square piece of wood, and, sharpening the other end with his axe, he then bored a hole into one of the logs of the house, constituting in part a door-jamb, and drove the piece of wood into this hole. This formed the top part of the hinge, and the bottom part was fashioned in exactly the same way. Now to the door, in like manner, he fastened two pegs of wood with holes bored through their ends. Placing the ends of the hinges above one another they presented the four ends with holes leading through them, the one above the other. Next he made a long pin with his handy jacknife, leaving a run at one end of it, and making it long enough to reach from the top to the lower hinge. Through the holes at the ends of the hinge this long pin was placed, and thus the door was hung. The roof of the log-house was perhaps the greatest curiosity. Hollow basswood (linden) trees were generally used. These were first cut the length required, then split through the centre, each half forming a trough. A layer of these troughs was laid lengthwise from the ridge-pole to the eaves, all over the house-top, upon their backs, the bark side down. Over these was laid a second layer, reversed, or bark side up, and the edges of the upper layer fitted into the hollows of the lower one. In this way the settler made a roof for his house quickly and easily. Such a roof shed water tolerably well, too, until the logs began to rot. This primitive house built, the settler put in a small crop in the tiny clearing. At this period in the country’s history the virgin soil produced bountifully, and the crops once put in were almost sure to give fair returns. When autumn came with its gorgeous colors--the leaves of the forest in the north temperate zone rivalling in beauty anything the tropics can show us--the settler’s crop was a good one.