ions and hardships.
As we may well conceive, there were few luxuries to be found in the
wilderness, in the midst of which they had fixed their new habitations.
They often suffered even for the most indispensable necessaries of life.
To obtain salt, they had to travel many miles to the licks, through a
country infested with savages; and they were often obliged to remain
there for several days, until they could procure a supply.

There were then no regular roads in Kentucky. The forests were filled
with a luxuriant undergrowth, thickly interspersed with the cane, and the
whole closely interlaced with the wild pea-vine. These circumstances
rendered them nearly impassable; and almost the only chance of effecting
a passage through this vegetable wilderness, was by following the paths
or traces made by the herds of buffalo and other wild beasts. Luckily
these traces were numerous, especially in the vicinity of the licks,
which the buffalo were in the habit of frequenting, to drink the salt
water, or lick the earth impregnated with salt.

The new colonists resided in log-cabins, rudely constructed, with no
glass in the windows, with floors of dirt, or, in the better sort of
dwellings, of puncheons of split timber, roughly hewed with the axe.
After they had worn out the clothing brought with them from the old
settlements, both men and women were under the necessity of wearing
buckskin or homespun apparel. Such a thing as a store was not known
in Kentucky for many years: and the names of broadcloth, ginghams
and calicoes, were never even so much as breathed. Moccasins made of
buckskin, supplied the place of our modern shoes, blankets thrown over
the shoulder, answered the purpose of our present fashionable coats and
cloaks; and handkerchiefs tied around the head served instead of hats
and bonnets. A modern fashionable bonnet would have been a matter of
real wonderment in those days of unaffected simplicity.

The furniture of the cabins was of the same primitive character. Stools
were used instead of chairs: the table was made of slabs of timber,
rudely put together. Wooden vessels and platters supplied the place
of our modern plates and china-ware; and a "tin cup was an article of
delicate furniture, almost as rare as an iron-fork[12]," The beds were
either placed on the floor, or on bedsteads of puncheons, supported by
forked pieces of timber, driven into the ground, or resting on pins
let into auger-holes in the sides of the