y can one of
these structures, venerable for their years and the associations which
cluster around them, be now seen, in Tennessee. Time and improvement
have displaced them. Here and there in the older counties, may yet
be seen the old log house, which sixty years ago sheltered the first
emigrant, or gave, for the time, protection to a neighborhood, assembled
within its strong and bullet-proof walls. Such an one is the east end of
Mr. Martin's house, at Campbell's Station, and the centre part of the
mansion of this writer, at Mecklenburg, once Gilliam's Station, changed
somewhat, it is true, in some of its aspects, but preserving even yet,
in the height of the story and in its old-fashioned and capacious
fire-place, some of the features of primitive architecture on the
frontier. Such, too, is the present dwelling-house of Mr. Tipton, on
Ellejoy, in Blount County, and that of Mr. Glasgow Snoddy, in Sevier
County. But these old buildings are becoming exceedingly rare, and soon
not one of them will be seen. Their unsightly proportions and rude
architecture will not much longer offend modern taste, nor provoke the
idle and irreverent sneer of the fastidious and the fashionable. When
the last one of these pioneer houses shall have fallen into decay and
ruins, the memory of their first occupants will still be immortal and
indestructible.

"The interior of the cabin was no less unpretending and simple. The
whole furniture, of the one apartment--answering in these primitive
times the purposes of the kitchen, the dining-room, the nursery
and the dormitory--were a plain home-made bedstead or two, some
split-bottomed chairs and stools; a large puncheon, supported on four
legs, used, as occasion required, for a bench or a table, a water shelf
and a bucket; a spinning-wheel, and sometimes a loom, finished the
catalogue. The wardrobe of the family was equally plain and simple.
The walls of the house were hung round with the dresses of the females,
the hunting-shirts, clothes, and the arms and shot-pouches of the men.

"The labor and employment of a pioneer family were distributed in
accordance with surrounding circumstances. To the men was assigned the
duty of procuring subsistence and materials for clothing, erecting the
cabin and the station, opening and cultivating the farm, hunting the
wild beasts, and repelling and pursuing the Indians. The women spun
the flax, the cotton and wool, wove the cloth, made them up, milked,
churned