All hunting or fishing, all labor in forest or field, all
journeying, was at the imminent risk of life or liberty. From the
nearest swamp or thicket, from behind some fence, stump, or clump of
brake, at any moment might appear the flash of the musket or gleam of
the scalping-knife. Never ending toil under these conditions, and
unceasing vigilance, were the price of existence, and the stern
realities of life closed in upon them on every side. Labor they must,
or starvation was at the door; for their sustenance must be drawn from
their own acres. They could not look back for aid, as the towns below
were in the same condition. Women and children were not exempt from
laborious toil. Of relaxation there was little, and recreation was
unthought of. Even parental love was constrained and formal. Children
were born into a cold and cheerless atmosphere, and it is not to be
wondered at that they grew up hard and austere men and women, whose
chief or only solace was the hope of an eternity of rest and
psalm-singing, in a heaven earned by the endurance of trials with piety,
patience, and faith that all their sufferings would in some way redound
to the glory of God.

There was little desire or opportunity for cultivating the mind. A dense
ignorance of letters was the rule. Hardly a woman born of the generation
preceding Queen Anne's War could write her name, and many of the most
active and useful men could do no better. The people lived wholly off
the land. Their clothing and bedding were either from flax, raised,
pulled, rotted, broken, and swingled by the men; and hatchelled, carded,
spun, and woven into cloth, and cut, and made up by the women; or else
of wool sheared from the flocks, carded and spun by hand, and knit into
stockings, or woven into blankets or rugs, or into flannel, to be fulled
for men's wear; or into linsey-woolsey, for the women and children. To
the material for men's garments must be added buckskin for breeches and
leggins. Shoes were often made of untanned hide, moccasin fashion, a
method borrowed from the Indians. Thorns took the place of pins in
woman's gear, and thongs did duty for buttons, with men. If the maiden
did have "genuine bear's oil" for her hair, for lack of a mirror her
head must be dressed by the pool or placid spring.

The imports were the metals for the smith, guns, swords, lead, powder,
rum, salt, sickles, razors, jack-knives, scissors, needles. There was
seen occasionally, in the most fo