righted, and, with what had been saved from the wreek, Thomas Lincoln landed at Thompson's Ferry, found an ox-cart to transport his slender stock of valuables into the forest, and finally piled them in an oak-opening in Spencer County, Indiana, about eighteen miles from the river.

Left at home, in their dismantled cabin, with a scanty supply of provisions, the mother and little ones made the most of their time. The two children attended Caleb Hazel's school, but Abraham found time to snare game for the family dinner-pot, and, in an emergency, the housemother could knock over a deer at long range. One bedticking, filled with dried forest leaves and husks, sufficed for their rest at night, and, bright and early in the morning, the future President was out in the nipping autumn air, chopping wood for the day's fire. As the time drew near for the father's return, Mrs. Lincoln leading her living boy, paid her last visit to the grave of the little one whom she had lost in infancy. And his sad mother's prayers and tears by the side of the unmarked mound in the wilderness, soon to be left behind by the emigrants, made an impression on the mind of the lad that time never effaced.

But when Thomas Lincoln returned to his small brood, it was not with any boastfulness. He had met with what was to them a great loss. Much of their meagre stock of household stuff and farming tools was at the bottom of the Ohio River. Leaving the rescued fragments in care of a friendly settler, he had made a bee-line for the old Kentucky home; and here he was with a flattering report

SEEKING A NEW HOME.

II

of the richness of the land to which they were bound to go.

It was a long journey that was before them. Procuring two horses and loading them with the household stuff and wardrobe of the family, Thomas Lincoln, wife, and two children took up their line of march for the new home in Indiana. At night, they slept on the fragrant pine twigs; and by day they plodded their way toward the Ohio River. They were like true soldiers of fortune, subsisting on the country through which they marched. Here and there, it was needful to clear their way through tangled thickets, and now and again they came to streams that must be forded or swum. By all sorts of expedients, the little family contrived to get on from day to day, occupying a week in this transit from one home to another. The nights were cool but pleasant. No rain

fell on them in the way, and when, after a week of free and easy life in the woods, they came to the bank of the river and looked over into the promised land, they saw nothing but forest, almost trackless forest, stretching far up and down the stream, silent save for its ripplings and the occasional note of some wandering bird.

The Lincoln Home in Indiana-Hard Times-The Boy of the BackwoodsLog-Cabin Building-Abraham's Lincoln's First Letter-The Funeral in the Wilderness-The Boy's First Book.

NDIANA had been admitted into the Union as a State,

I'

and the tide of immigration setting into the new State was full and far spreading. But neighbors were not uncomfortably near the Lincolns in their new home. Picking up their property left in charge of one of the scattered settlers by Thomas Lincoln on his first visit, the forlorn family pushed on into the wilderness, where on a grassy knoll in the heart of the untrodden forest, they fixed upon the site of their future dwelling-place.

A slight hunter's camp was all that could be built to shelter the new settlers during their first winter in the woods of Southern Indiana. This was what was sometimes called a "half-faced camp," open on one side and that the lower. Four uprights, forked at the top, formed the corner-posts, the rear being higher than the front. On these corner-poles were laid the cross-pieces needed to form the edges of the roof, and across these were the sloping rafters, covered with split "shakes" or thin slabs