Main cabin

“ My imagination gave piratical significance to the sighing of the pine trees and the scampering of the pack rats over my roof.
Yes, my dream cabin was come true. There it stood on its lofty vantage, watching over me as I fared forth on my explorations, waiting faithfully for my return, never reproaching me for my absence, its snug walls always ready to welcome me like sheltering arms, its quickly blazing hearth cheering me like a warm, loving heart. ”

“ In writing this work, I have, with peculiar interest, lived over the scenes and incidents of my varied frontier experience; have travelled once more amid the waving grasses and beckoning flowers; heard again the bark of the wolf, and the voices of birds; felt on my brow the kiss of the health-giving breeze; worshipped anew in the log-cabin sanctuary. Yes, East and West are both dear to me. One fittingly supplements the other. Each holds the ashes of kindred. ”

“ At the bottom of this chasm, so far below my feet that I was giddy to look down, a small circular lake was visible, like the eye of a fiend. On the shore of it, near a cliff overhanging the water, stood a cabin, from the stone-weighted roof of which rose a thin column of blue smoke. About the cabin, in the narrow and sterile pasture, a few cows and sheep were grazing. What a dreadful place for a human habitation! ”

“ The smoke of his chimney mingles with that of no other: its tall column ascends to heaven solitary as the squatter himself.
The clearing is of an irregular semi-circular shape—a deep narrow stream forming the chord, and afterwards cleaving its way through the otherwise unbroken forest. In the convexity of the arc, at that point most remote from the water, stands the cabin—a log “shanty” with “clapboard” roof—on one side flanked by a rude horse-shed, on the other by a corn-crib of split rails.
Such a picture is almost peculiar to the backwoods of America. Some may deem it commonplace. ”

“ The log cabin, on the top of which a room with a steep, ornamental Swiss roof has been built, is in a valley close to a clear, rushing river, which emerges a little higher up from an inaccessible chasm of great sublimity. One side of the valley is formed by cliffs and terraces of porphyry as red as the reddest new brick, and at sunset blazing into vermilion. ”

“ The fine snow drives in through the chinks and covers the floors, but sweeping it out at intervals is both fun and exercise. There are no heaps or rubbish places outside. Near it, on the slope under the pines, is a pretty two-roomed cabin, and beyond that, near the lake, is my cabin, a very rough one. My door opens into a little room with a stone chimney, and that again into a small room with a hay bed, a chair with a tin basin on it, a shelf and some pegs. ”

“ That woodman friend of mine proved so engaging it was difficult to get away, and thus when, dusk upon us, and my object still a long distance off, he asked me to spend the night at his hut, I gladly assented.
We soon reached the cabin where the man lived by himself whilst working in the forest. It was a picturesque little place on a tree-overhung lagoon, thatched, wattled, and all about were piles of a pleasant-scented bark, collected for the purpose of tanning hides, and I could not but marvel that such a familiar process should be practised identically on two sides of the universal ether. ”

“ Instead of the narrow, noisy streets and tenanted blocks of the populous eastern city, my eyes rested on one vast green field stretching to the arching horizon, over which brooded a profound silence, intensified by the sacred hush of the Sabbath.
My host offered his own cabin for the forenoon service. His son–a sturdy young man of eighteen, inured to pioneer life–had ridden far and wide to give notice of the meeting, and he was confident of a good attendance. ”

“ I have a log cabin, raised on six posts, all to myself, with a skunk's lair underneath it, and a small lake close to it. There is a frost every night, and all day it is cool enough for a roaring fire. The ranchman, who is half hunter half stockman, and his wife are jovial, hearty Welsh people from Llanberis, who laugh with loud, cheery British laughs, sing in parts down to the youngest child, are free-hearted and hospitable, and pile the pitch-pine logs half-way up the great rude chimney. ”

“ At one end of the clearing, so near the forest that the top of a falling tree would have touched it, stood a cabin, individual in its complete darkness except for a dull ruddy glow at one end, where a window extended as high as the eaves. ”

“ Before you at the south end of the sombre, log interior is a mullioned window willing to admit more light than can penetrate the forest beyond. Before it is a fixed work table littered with papers, pencils, paints, and brushes. On each long side of the cabin is a shelf the eaves’ height, five feet from the floor. The right-hand one is packed with foods in sacks and tins and boxes, the left-hand shelf holds clothes and toys, paints and a flute, and at the far corner built to the floor in orthodox bookcase fashion, a library. ”

“ The cabin stood on a terrace that nature had levelled, looking across a swift and shallow stream towards the mountains. There was the truck patch, with its yellow squashes and melons, and cabbages and beans, where Polly Ann and I worked through the hot mornings; and the corn patch, with the great stumps of the primeval trees standing in it. All around us the silent forest threw its encircling arms, spreading up the slopes, higher and higher, to crown the crests with the little pines and hemlocks and balsam fir. ”

“ I told my tale, and asked where I could find a sheltered spot to camp.
"Stranger," slowly replied the Cracker, "my cabin's close at hand. Come home with me. It's a bad night for a man to lay out in; and the niggers would steal your traps if they knew you had anything worth taking. Come with me."
In the tall pines near at hand was a cabin of peeled rails, the chinks between them being stuffed with moss. A roof of cypress shingles kept the rain out. The log chimney, which was plastered with mud, was built outside of the walls and against an end of the rustic-looking structure. ”

“ The night after my arrival at the cabin, while suffering the most excruciating agony, and thinking that I had only been saved to die among friends, a loud knock was heard at the cabin door. An old man in mountain costume entered—a hunter, whose life was spent among the mountains. ”

“ The oldest settlers found that cabin there; and it then appeared in such a dilapidated state as to justify the belief that it had been built many years previous." "Do you know anything about it?" I eagerly asked. "I know all about it," replied the old hunter; "for I assisted in building it, and occupied it for several years, during the trapping season. That cabin," he continued, as a shade passed over his features, "has been the scene of carnage and bloodshed. But why wake up old feelings—let them sleep, let them sleep;" and the veteran drew his brawny hand over his eyes. ”

“ Now and again smoke is seen winding upwards from some rude but comfortable cabin on the shore, where a white settler and his Indian wife live in semi-civilized style. A rude garden patch adjoins the cabin, carpeted with thriving root crops, bordered by currant and gooseberry bushes, while numerous wooden frames are reared close by on which to dry salmon, cod, and halibut for winter use. Three or four half-breed children, with a marvelous wealth of hair, and clothed in a single garment reaching to the knees, watch us with open eyes and mouths as 96we glide along the smooth water-way. ”

“ The cabin, of course, was the only place for me, the soaked deck with the soaked moss on top of it being quite out of the question; but even the cabin was not fit for a dog to lie in, so chill and damp was it and so foul with the stench rising and spreading from the slime of rotted leather that I had emptied from the coffer and that made a little vile pool upon the floor. ”

“ Not far from the brink of this awful abyss, and close behind the horseshoe range of rocks, stood a humble log-cabin, occupied by an old free negress, who picked up a scanty living by telling fortunes and showing the way to the Punch Bowl. Her cabin went by the name of the Witch's Hut, or Old Hat's Cabin. A short distance from Hat's cabin the road became impassable, and the travelers got out, and, preceded by the coachman bearing the lantern, struggled along on foot through the drifted snow and against the buffeting wind and sleet to where a faint light guided them to the house. ”

“ In a couple of hours the boat was in pieces and carried up, and then your father and most of the men went up to assist the carpenter. I hardly need tell what they did, as you have the cabin before you. The roof, you see, is mostly built out of the timbers of the boat; and the lower part out of heavier wood; and a very good job they made of it. Before the morning closed in, one of the sides of the cabin was finished; and I saw them light a fire with the chips that had been cut off with the axes, and they then dressed the eggs and birds which they had collected the first day. ”

“ They set on the floor sometimes at each end, but mostly at one. They have a shed to put their wood into in the winter, or in the summer to set, converse or play, that has a door to the south. All the sides and roof of the cabin is made of bark, bound fast to poles set in the ground, and bent round on the top, or set aflat for the roof as we set our rafters; over each fire-place they leave a hole to let out the smoke, which in rainy weather they cover with a piece of bark, and this they can easily reach with a pole to push it on one side or quite over the hole. ”

“ From the high points of the road, he could look off over valleys to other peaks and see here and there the roof of a cabin with its small patch of corn and its rude out-houses. He passed tilting fields where red and blue calico dresses flashed as entire families worked with hoes, and roadside habitations of logs where raggedy children fled inside to gaze timidly around the corners of door-jambs. ”

“ Where stood the little vine-wreathed cabin now may be seen a larger and more commodious log structure, which is but a continuation of the original.
A busy scene greets our gaze all around. Men are hurrying here and there through the valley—men not of the pale-face race, but of the red race; men, clad only to the waist, with remarkable muscular developments, and fleetness of foot. ”

“ A cabin! A lake!” Mary exclaimed. “How beautiful!”
It was indeed beautiful. True, the clearing showed signs of neglect, young trees had sprouted where a field had been, the door of the cabin, standing ajar, seemed to say, “Nobody’s home. Nobody’s been home for many a day.” For all that, the gray cabin, built of great, seasoned logs, the clearing sloping down to a small, deep lake, where a flock of wild ducks swam all unafraid, made a picture one would not soon forget.
“Come,” said the Indian girl. A moment later they stepped in awed silence across the threshold of the cabin. ”

“ For a moment, as they reached the top of the hill, bear, boys, and man were outlined blackly against the sky like strange silhouettes. Then they passed over and disappeared in the thick clump of pine-trees, which hid the little cabin from the eyes of the surrounding world.
CHAPTER II. GINGER AND THE BOYS.
In less time than one would think possible, a big fire was roaring in the cabin fireplace, water was steaming in the rusty kettle on the crane, and a pile of hay and old carpet lay in one corner, ready to be made into a bed. ”

“ At the top of a ragged hill grown over with scrubby oaks stands a dingy, four-room cabin. The two rooms of which it consisted originally had been painted green, but except for a few streaks here and there the paint has long since rubbed off. A lean-to of rough boards has been added. Freight and passenger trains chug along the tracks beyond the country road leading from the village, and cough up smoke from their toiling engines. The smoke caught by the wind swirls over the hill and still further blackens the cabin and outhouses. ”

“ A glance at the interior of a log cabin in the Back Country of Virginia or North Carolina would show, in primitive design, what is, perhaps, after all the perfect home—a place where the personal life and the work life are united and where nothing futile finds space. ”

“ The exterior walls of this cabin have been treated in an unusual manner which makes something quite unique out of what might have been just another cabin. The end walls, chimney and porch are constructed of rough-hewn stone, while the front and rear walls are board and batten. The roof could be shakes, shingles or slates. Of course, this same cabin could be built any one of a number of ways, using logs or shingles instead of the stone and wood combination. The front door, to carry out the atmosphere of simplicity, should be of planks. ”

“ There are no means for building fires inside the [Pg 382] native cabins, which have little or no furniture; in place of using chairs, the natives squat upon their hams, like nearly all savage races, and most of the Eastern tribes. Their beds are composed of dried fern-leaves, sometimes raised a few inches above the level of the earth floor; but quite as often nothing but the fern-leaves intervene between the body and the ground. The wharry, or cabin, is always the same, and contains but one apartment, with a low doorway and an overhanging thatch of dried ti-tree interwoven with long grasses. ”

“ A good custom was this in the old days. Let a party of gold-hunters, game-hunters, or even hunters after health, go into the mountains and build a cabin for the season, care was always taken to leave it neat and clean and ready for the first poor wayfarer who might pass.that way.
Larison pushed as far on up the stream as his legs would take him the first day. Near the lead of the placer-mines he found a cabin with the rickety door wide open. He entered and took possession.
A fine stream of water rippled and ran through the mossy boulders under the great, sweeping pine and fir and yew trees. ”