In the mean time, Amidab Peters, who was our guide from Olympus, with the two boys, was busy chopping down the trees on my farm, and preparing logs for a house; while I, as a boss on the roads, was receiving what would have been thought great wages in a town even in America. But the hard fare to which my duty subjected me, and the frequent instances in which I saw men pulled down with the hatchet in their hands by the ague, made the employment so unsatisfactory, that I resolved to retire from it, and give my whole attention to my own land, notwithstanding the infirm construction of my frame for the toil of clearing.

Moreover, by this time I had learned something of the expedients of settlers; and was convinced that girdling the trees is a quicker and better way for the first operations of new beginners, especially such as have had no experience of the woods, nor have been practised with the axe, than the laborious undertaking of hewing down each particular huge tree by itself. To girdle is to cut a ring round the bark of the trunk into the timber, which causes the tree to die: in the course of two or three years it falls; and being then well dried, is easily burnt off. As this work does not require a powerful arm, it suited me exactly.

As soon as a sufficient number of proper logs for my house had been prepared, and brought to the place by a team of oxen hired for the purpose, I made a bee; that is, I collected as many of the most expert and able-bodied of the settlers to assist at the raising, by which I got the walls of a most excellent house up in the course of a single day, without peril of life or limb among the workmen; a rare blessing, and, as I accepted it, a pleasant omen of happiness to those who were destined to be the inmates of the dwelling.