week, all working together to begin the settlement, till we were all
provided with rough huts and shelters for the valuable stores and
ammunition brought out. After which people began to shift for
themselves, to try and improve the rough places first built.

CHAPTER THREE.

With a new place, every touch makes a difference; and when some of those
touches are given by the hand of a gardener, nature begins to help.

It was so at our Georgia home. Every bit of time my father or Morgan
could find to spare, they were digging, or trimming, or planting, till
Sarah would set to and grumble to me because they would not come in to
their meals.

"I wouldn't care, sir," she would say, "only the supper's getting
spoiled."

"But the home made more beautiful," replied my father; and then I have
heard him say as he glanced through the window at flower and tree
flourishing wonderfully in that beautiful climate, "If my poor wife had
lived to see all this!"

Early and late worked Morgan, battling with the wild vines and beautiful
growths that seemed to be always trying to make the garden we were
redeeming from the wilderness come back to its former state. But he
found time to gratify me, and he would screw up his dry Welsh face and
beckon to me sometimes to bring a stick and hunt out squirrel, coon, or
some ugly little alligator, which he knew to be hiding under the roots
of a tree in some pool. Then, as much to please me as for use, a punt
was bought from the owners of a brig which had sailed across from
Bristol to make her last voyage, being condemned to breaking up at our
infant port.

The boat, however, was nearly new, and came into my father's hands
complete, with mast, sail, ropes, and oars; and it was not long before I
gained the mastery over all that it was necessary to learn in the
management.

Morgan's fishing-tackle came into use, and after a little instruction
and help from the Welshman, I began to wage war upon the fish in our
stream and in the river, catching, beside, ugly little reptiles of the
tortoise or turtle family--strange objects to be hauled up from muddy
depths at one end of a line, but some of them very good eating all the
same.

The little settlement throve as the time went on, and though the Indians
were supposed to be threatening, and to look with very little favour
upon the settlement so near their hunting-grounds, all remained
peaceful, and we had nothing but haughty overbearing words from