A hole cut through the slender logs was the only window.

A fire was built in one corner, and the smoke eddied through a hole left in the roof.
The skins of bears, buffaloes, and wolves provided couches, all sufficient for weary ones, who needed no artificial opiate to promote sleep.

Such, in general, were the primitive homes of many of those bold emigrants who abandoned the comforts of civilized life for the solitudes of the wilderness.
They did not want for most of what are called the necessaries of life.
The river and the forest furnished a great variety of fish and game.
Their hut, humble as it was, effectually protected them from the deluging tempest and the inclement cold.

The climate was genial in a very high degree, and the soil, in its wonderful fertility, abundantly supplied them with corn and other simple vegetables.

But the silence and solitude which reigned are represented, by those who experienced them, as at times something dreadful.
One principal motive which led these people to cross the mountains, was the prospect of an ultimate fortune in the rise of land.