of this day. There was little schooling and no literary training. But
the woodsman has an education of his own. The region was wild in the
sense that it was almost uninhabited and untilled. The forests,
extending from the mountains in the East to the prairies in the West,
were almost unbroken and were the abode of wild birds and wild beasts.
Bears, deer, wild-cats, raccoons, wild turkeys, wild pigeons, wild
ducks and similar creatures abounded on every hand.

Consider now the sparseness of the population. Kentucky has an area of
40,000 square miles. One year after Lincoln's birth, the total
population, white and colored, was 406,511, or an average of ten
persons--say less than two families--to the square mile. Indiana has
an area of 36,350 square miles. In 1810 its total population was
24,520, or an average of one person to one and one-half square miles;
in 1820 it contained 147,173 inhabitants, or about four to the square
mile; in 1825 the population was about 245,000, or less than seven to
the square mile.

The capital city, Indianapolis, which is to-day of surpassing beauty,
was not built nor thought of when the boy Lincoln moved into the State.

Illinois, with its more than 56,000 square miles of territory, harbored
in 1810 only 12,282 people; in 1820, only 55,211, or less than one to
the square mile; while in 1825 its population had grown a trifle over
100,000 or less than two to the square mile.

It will thus be seen that up to his youth, Lincoln dwelt only in the
wildest of the wild woods, where the animals from the chipmunk to the
bear were much more numerous, and probably more at home, than man.