kind were difficult to be procured; and it was with some difficulty that two stout wagons were at last hired to carry Mr. Edgarton's movables, and a dearborn obtained to convey his family, it being agreed that one of the gentlemen should drive the latter vehicle while the other walked, alternately. Arrangements were accordingly made to set out the next morning.
The settlement in which Mr. Edgarton had judiciously determined to pitch his tent, and enjoy the healthful innocence and rural felicity of the farmer's life, was new; and the country to be traversed to reach it entirely unsettled. There were two or three houses scattered through the wilderness on the road, one of which the party might have reached by setting out early in the morning, and they had determined to do so. But there was so much fixing and preparing to be done, so much stowing of baggage and packing of trunks, such momentous preparations to guard against cold and heat, hunger and thirst, fatigue, accident, robbery, disease, and death, that it was near noon before the cavalcade was prepared to move. Even then they were
