Their road was at first, comparatively smooth and their journey pleasant.  Their progress was interrupted by divers little incidents; while the continual changes in the appearance of the country around them, and the anticipation of what was to come, prevented those feelings of despondency, which might otherwise have arisen on leaving a much loved home.  When the roads became bad or hilly, the family quit the wagon and trudged along on foot, the mother carrying the baby Fernando in her arms.  At sunset, their day’s journey finished, they halted in the forest by the roadside to prepare their supper and pass the night.  The horses were unharnessed, watered and secured with their heads to the trough until they had eaten their meagre allowance of corn and oats, and then were hobbled out to grass.  Over the camp fire the mother prepared the frugal supper, which being over, the emigrants arranged themselves for the night, while the faithful dog kept watch.  Amid all the privations and vicissitudes in their journey, they were cheered by the consciousness that each day lessened the distance between them and the land of promise, whose fertile soil was to recompense them for all their trials and hardships.

Gradually, as they advanced west, the roads became more and more rough and were only passable in many places by logs having been placed side by side, forming what was termed corduroy roads.  The axe and rifle of the emigrant, or mover as he is still termed in the west, were brought daily and almost hourly into use.  With the former he cut saplings, or small trees, to throw across the roads, which, in many places, were almost impassable; while with his rifle he killed squirrels, wild turkeys, or such game as the forest afforded, for their provisions were in a few days exhausted.  If, perchance, a buck crossed his path, and he brought it down by a lucky shot, it was carefully dressed and hung up in the forks of the trees; fires were built, and the meat cut into small strips and smoked and dried for future subsistence.

As they advanced, the road through the woods became more difficult to travel, the trees being merely felled and drawn aside, so as to permit a wheeled carriage to pass; and the emigrant was often obliged to be guided in his route only by the blaze of the surveyor on the trees, and at every few rods to cut away the branches which obstructed his passage.  As the stroke of the axe reverberated through the woods, no answer came back to assure him of the presence of friend or foe.  At night in these solitudes, they heard the wolves stealing through the gloom, sniffing the scent of the intruders; and now and then, then bloodshot eyes of the catamount glared through the foliage.

Days, weeks and months passed in this toilsome journey through the wilderness, so indelibly impressing it on the memory of Fernando Stevens, that he never, to his dying day, forgot that journey.  At last they arrived at the landmarks which, to Albert Stevens, indicated the proximity of his possessions.  A location for the cabin was selected near a small stream of running water, on the south side of a slight elevation.