These block-houses were devised in the early days of the first settlements made in our country, and furnished rallying points for the settlers when attacked by the Indians. On the Western frontier they were enlarged and improved to meet the military exigencies arising in a country which swarmed with savages. [Footnote: Doddridge's Notes.] In some forts, instead of block-houses, the angles were furnished with bastions; a large folding gate, made of thick slabs nearest the spring, closed the forts; the stockade, bastion, cabin, and block-house walls were furnished with port-holes at proper heights and distances. The whole of the outside was made completely bullet-proof; the families belonging to these forts were so attached to their own cabins on their farms that they seldom moved into the forts in the spring until compelled by some alarm, i.e., when it was announced by some murder that Indians were in the settlement. We have described thus in detail the fortified posts established along the frontier for the purpose of showing that the life of the pioneer woman, from the earliest times, was, and now is, to a large extent, a military one. She was forced to learn a soldier's habits and a soldier's virtues. Eternal vigilance was the price of safety, and during the absence of the male members of the household, which were frequent and sometimes protracted, the women were on guard-duty, and acted as the sentinels of their home fortresses. Watchful against stratagem as against violent attack, they passed many a night all alone in their isolated cabins, averting danger with all a woman's fertility of resource, and meeting it with all the courage of a man. On one occasion a party of Indians approached a solitary log-house with the intention of murdering the inmates. With their usual caution, one of their number was sent forward to reconnoiter, who, discovering the only persons within to be a woman, two or three children, and a negro man, rushed in by himself and seized the negro. The woman caught up the axe and with a single blow laid the savage warrior dead at her feet, while the children closed the door, and, with ready sagacity, employed themselves fastening it. The rest of the Indians came up and attempted to force an entrance, but the negro and the children kept the door closed, and the intrepid mother, having no effective weapon, picked up a gun-barrel which had neither stock nor lock and pointed it at the savages through the apertures between the logs. The Indians, deceived by the appearance of a gun, and daunted by the death of their companion, retired. The station, the fort, and the block-house were the only refuge of the isolated settlers when the Indians became bolder in their attacks.