the lower portion of the trunk, to prevent the sap from rising. In a
short time the withered branches were ready for burning, and in the
midst of the stumps the first crop of corn and vegetables was
planted. Often the settler did not even burn the girdled trees, but
planted his crop under the dead foliage.

In regions nearer to the east, as in western New York, it was
sometimes possible to repay a large portion of the cost of clearing
by the sale of pot and pearl ashes extracted from the logs, which
were brought together into huge piles for burning. [Footnote: Life
of Thurlow Weed (Autobiography), I., ii.] This was accomplished by a
"log-rolling," under the united efforts of the neighbors, as in the
case of the "raising." More commonly in the west the logs were
wasted by burning, except such as were split into rails, which, laid
one above another, made the zig-zag "worm-fences" for the protection
of the fields of the pioneer.

When a clearing was sold to a later comer, fifty or sixty dollars,
in addition to the government price of land, was commonly charged
for forty acres, enclosed and partly cleared. [Footnote: Kingdom,
America, 10, 54.] It was estimated that the cost of a farm of three
hundred and twenty acres at the edge of the prairie in Illinois, at
this time, would be divided as follows: for one hundred and sixty
acres of prairie, two hundred dollars; for fencing it into four
forty-acre fields with rail-fences, one hundred and sixty dollars;
for breaking it up with a plough, two dollars per acre, or three
hundred and twenty dollars; eighty acres of timber land and eighty
acres of pasture prairie, two hundred dollars. Thus, with cabins,
stables, etc., it cost a little over a thousand dollars to secure an
improved farm of three hundred and twenty acres. [Footnote: J.M.