GING BEE. -- LIME-BURNING. -- SHINGLING. -- ARRIVAL OF MY BROTHER-
IN-LAW. -- BIRTH OF MY SON. -- SAD JOURNEY TO DARLINGTON. -- LOSE MY
WAY. -- AM REFUSED A LIFT. -- MY BOYISH ANGER. -- MY WIFE'S DEATH. --
THE FUNERAL. -- I LEAVE DARLINGTON.

MY fallow was finished by the first week in July, but I did not put
fire to it until the first week in August, because the timber was so
green. Indeed, I did not expect the fire would run at all. I was,
however, agreeably deceived, for I got a very respectable burn, which
gave me great help.

As soon as the ground was cool enough, I made a logging Bee, at which I
had five yokes of oxen and twenty men, four men to each team. The
teamster selects a good place to commence a heap, generally against
some large log which the cattle would be unable to move. They draw all
the logs within a reasonable distance in front of the large log. The
men with hand-spikes roll them, one upon the top of the other, until
the heap is seven or eight feet high, and ten or twelve broad. All the
chips, sticks, and rubbish are then picked up and thrown on the top of
the heap. A team and four good men should log and pick an acre a day
when the burn has been good.

My hive worked well, for we had five acres logged and set fire to the
same evening. On a dark night, a hundred or two of these large heaps
all on fire at once have a very fine effect, and shed a broad glare of
light for a considerable distance. In the month of July in the new
settlements, the whole country at night appears lit up by these fires.

I was anxious to commence building my house, so that I might have it
ready to receive my wife in before the winter commenced. My first step
towards it was to build a lime-heap. I calculated I should require for
plastering my walls and building my chimneys, about a hundred bushels.

We set to work, accordingly, and built an immense log-heap of all the
largest logs I could get together. It took at least the timber growing
on half an acre of land for this purpose, and kept five men and myself
busy all day to complete it. We made a frame of logs on the top of the
heap, to keep the stone from falling over the side. We drew for this
purpose twenty cart-loads of lime-stone, which we threw upon the summit
of the heap, having broken it small with a sledge-hammer; fire was then
applied to the heap, which was consumed by the next morning. But it
left such a mass of hot coals, that it was a week before the lime coul