social superiority over those who did not. Thomas Lincoln, concluding
that Kentucky was no country for a poor man, determined to seek his
fortune in Indiana. He had heard of rich and unoccupied lands in Perry
County in that State, and thither he determined to go. He built a rude
raft, loaded it with his kit of tools and four hundred gallons of
whisky, and trusted his fortunes to the winding water-courses. He met
with only one accident on his way: his raft capsized in the Ohio
River, but he fished up his kit of tools and most of the ardent
spirits, and arrived safely at the place of a settler named Posey,
with whom he left his odd invoice of household goods for the
wilderness, while he started on foot to look for a home in the dense
forest. He selected a spot which pleased him in his first day's
journey. He then walked back to Knob Creek and brought his family on
to their new home. No humbler cavalcade ever invaded the Indiana
timber. Besides his wife and two children, his earthly possessions
were of the slightest, for the backs of two borrowed horses sufficed
for the load. Insufficient bedding and clothing, a few pans and
kettles, were their sole movable wealth. They relied on Lincoln's kit
of tools for their furniture, and on his rifle for their food. At
Posey's they hired a wagon and literally hewed a path through the
wilderness to their new habitation near Little Pigeon Creek, a mile
and a half east of Gentryville, in a rich and fertile forest country.

Thomas Lincoln, with the assistance of his wife and children, built a
temporary shelter of the sort called in the frontier language "a half-
faced camp"; merely a shed of poles, which defended the inmates on
three sides from foul weather, but left them open to its inclemency in
front. For a whole year his family lived in this wretched fold, while
he was clearing a little patch of ground for planting corn, and
building a rough cabin for a permanent residence. They moved into the