orts.

Some of the settlers were not quite so well pleased as Michael. They
were not so handy with their tools. John Kemp had more daughters, and
had not made or saved so much as Michael. He had no stove, but he made
a fire-place after this fashion. Four very wide ladders were placed in
a square, a little way from the wall, passing through the roof. In
front some of the bars were left out. Clay mixed with straw was then
kneaded round the rounds, or steps of the ladders and all the rest of
the space between them filled up with clay, so that all the wood was
thickly covered. The part where the bars were left out was the front of
the fire-place. It drew very well and threw out a great heat.

It was a great thing to have all the stuff for building and fencing on
the ground. The fences were made of rough logs piled up one on another
in a zigzag form. This is called a snake fence. The stumps were still
in the ground. It would take some years to get them out, but Michael
knew that he could even plough between those farthest apart, and dig in
other places, and that wheat and Indian-corn and potatoes were sure to
grow well.

Some time before, a road to the settlement had been marked out through
the forest. This was done by blazing the trees, that is cutting a piece
of bark off each with an axe. Choppers were now set to work to cut down
the trees, and burn them off, but the stumps were left standing, and the
carts and wagons had to wind their way along between them. Where the
ground was swampy, trunks of trees were placed close together across the
road: this is what is called a corduroy road. Other roads were planked
over with fir, and called plank roads; others were of gravel. In all of
them the stumps had been grubbed up, or rotted out, or blown up.

Michael's settlement, Thornhill, as it was called, was able to get on
pretty well without a road, as it could be reached by the lake and
river. Michael and John together made a canoe that they might get about
the lake. It was formed from a large log, and hollowed out. The boys
learned soon to paddle in it almost as fast as the Indians could. When
the winter set in, and the snow lay thick on the ground, roads were made
on it by beating it down hard. Over these roads sleighs, that is carts
on runners, were able to travel faster than those on wheels.

So hard had Michael and his sons worked, that before the frost set in
and the snow came down, they had been a