stance.

All the land was shrouded in one vast forest. It covered the mountains
from crest to river-bed, filled the plains, and stretched in sombre and
melancholy wastes towards the Mississippi. All that it contained, all
that lay hid within it and beyond it, none could tell; men only knew
that their boldest hunters, however deeply they had penetrated, had not
yet gone through it, that it was the home of the game they followed and
the wild beasts that preyed on their flocks, and that deep in its
tangled depths lurked their red foes, hawk-eyed and wolf-hearted.

Backwoods society was simple, and the duties and rights of each member
of the family were plain and clear. The man was the armed protector and
provider, the bread-winner; the woman was the housewife and
child-bearer. They married young and their families were large, for they
were strong and healthy, and their success in life depended on their own
stout arms and willing hearts. There was everywhere great equality of
conditions. Land was plenty and all else scarce; so courage, thrift, and
industry were sure of their reward. All had small farms, with the few
stock necessary to cultivate them; the farms being generally placed in
the hollows, the division lines between them, if they were close
together, being the tops of the ridges and the watercourses, especially
the former. The buildings of each farm were usually at its lowest point,
as if in the centre of an amphitheatre.[23] Each was on an average of
about 400 acres,[24] but sometimes more.[25] Tracts of low, swampy
grounds, possibly some miles from the cabin, were cleared for meadows,
the fodder being stacked, and hauled home in winter.

Each backwoodsman was not only a small farmer but also a hunter; for his
wife and children depended for their meat upon the venison and bear's
flesh procured by his rifle. The people were restless and always on the
move. After being a little while in a place, some of the men would
settle down permanently, while others would again drift off, farming and
hunting alternately to support their families.[26] The backwoodsman's
dress was in great part borrowed from his Indian foes. He wore a fur cap
or felt hat, moccasins, and either loose, thin trousers, or else simply
leggings of buckskin or elk-hide, and the Indian breech-clout. He was
always clad in the fringed hunting-shirt, of homespun or buckskin, the
most picturesque and distinctively national dress ever worn in America.
It wa