When a social band of this description had planted their feet on the virgin soil, the first object was to fix on a spot, central to the most fertile tract of land that could be found, combining the advantages usually sought by the first settlers.  Among these was, that the station should be on the summit of a gentle swell, where pawpaw, cane, and wild clover, marked exuberant fertility; and where the trees were so sparse, and the soil beneath them so free from underbrush, that the hunter could ride at half speed.  The virgin soil, as yet friable, untrodden, and not cursed with the blight of politics, party, and feud, yielded, with little other cultivation than planting, from eighty to a hundred bushels of maize to the acre, and all other edibles suited to the soil and climate, in proportion.

The next thing, after finding this central nucleus of a settlement, was to convert it into a station, an erection which now remains to be described.  It was a desirable requisite, that a station should in close or command a flush limestone spring, for water for the settlement.  The contiguity of a salt lick and a sugar orchard, though not indispensable, was a very desirable circumstance.  The next preliminary step was to clear a considerable area, so as to leave nothing within a considerable distance of the station that could shelter an enemy from observation and a shot.  If a spring were not inclosed, or a well dug within, as an Indian siege seldom lasted beyond a few days, it was customary, in periods of alarm to have a reservoir of some sort within the station, that should be filled with water enough to supply the garrison, during the probable continuance of a siege.  It was deemed a most important consideration, that the station should overlook and command as much of the surrounding country as possible.

The form was a perfect parallelogram, including from a half to a whole acre.  A trench was then dug four or five feet deep, and large and contiguous pickets planted in this trench, so as to form a compact wall from ten to twelve feet high above the soil.  The pickets were of hard and durable timber, about a foot in diameter.  The soil about them was rammed hard.  They formed a rampart beyond the power of man to leap, climb, or by unaided physical strength to overthrow.  At the angles were small projecting squares, of still stronger material and planting, technically called flankers, with oblique port-holes, so as that the sentinel within could rake the external front of the station, without being exposed to shot from without.  Two folding gates in the front and rear, swinging on prodigious wooden hinges, gave egress and ingress to men and teams in times of security.