if we give up such
a handsome bit of ground as we have cleared here without firing a shot,
we deserve to have our rifles broken before our faces."

Asa, however, did not seem altogether satisfied. It was easy to see he
was thinking of the women and children. Then said Asa's wife, Rachel, "I
calculate," said she, "that Nathan, although he is my brother, and I
oughtn't to say it, has spoke like the son of his father, who would have
let himself be scalped ten times over before he would have given up such
an almighty beautiful piece of land. And what's more, Asa, I for one
won't go back up the omnipotent dirty Mississippi; and that's a fact."

"But if a hundred Spanish soldiers come," said Asa, "and I reckon they
will come?"

"Build the blockhouse, man, to defend yourselves; and when our people up
at Salt River and Cumberland hear that the Spaniards are quarreling with
us, I guess they won't keep their hands crossed before them."

So, seeing us all, even the women, so determined, Asa gave in to our way
of thinking, and the very same day we began the blockhouse you see
before you. The walls were all of young cypress-trees, and we would fain
have roofed it with the same wood; but the smallest of the cypresses
were five or six feet thick, and it was no easy matter to split them. So
we were obliged to use fir, which, when it is dried by a few days' sun,
burns like tinder. But we little thought when we did so, what sorrow
those cursed fir planks would bring us.

When all was ready, well and solidly nailed and hammered together, we
made a chimney, so that the women might cook if necessary, and then laid
in a good store of hams and dried bear's flesh, filled the meal and
whisky tubs, and the water-casks, and brought our plough and what we had
most valuable into the blockhouse. We then planted the palisades,
securing them strongly in the ground, and to each other, so that it
might not be easy to tear them up. We left, as you see, a space of five
yards between the stockade and the house, so that we might have room to
move about in. It would be necessary for an enemy to take the palisades
before he could do any injury to the house itself, and we reckoned that
with six good rifles in such hands as ours, it would require a pretty
many Spanish musketeers to drive us from our outer defences.

In six weeks all was ready; all our tools and rations, except what we
wanted for daily use, carried into the fort, and we stood contemplating