CHAPTER VI.


HARDSHIPS OF THE NEW COLONY.

It is no small undertaking to reduce heavily timbered lands to farms,
especially where there are few, if any, kinds of timber of any market
value, as was the case in the Oswego wilderness subdued by this
Massachusetts colony and others who settled in with and around about them.
All the land had to be cleared twice, and much of it three times, of some
tons per acre of encumbrances. First, the trees must be felled, cut up,
rolled into heaps, and burned to ashes. Then the huge stumps must take
a few years to decay, and then be torn out, piled up in heaps, and also
burned. Last, but not always least in labor and cost, a burden of stones
had to be drawn off from portions of most of the farms and piled in
heaps or wrought into walls. But our colonists were sober, diligent, and
persevering, and under their cheerful toil the wilderness was reduced to
fruitful fields. The temporary log houses and stables soon gave place to
comfortable buildings; and the "clearings" met as the woods disappeared
before the ax.

The log chapel dwelling, sacred though it was as God's house and heaven's
gate, was one of the first to disappear. A goodly frame house was just
covered and its floors laid, but no partitions set up, when it was
gloriously consecrated by a most powerful quarterly meeting.