The dwelling-house, on every frontier in Tennessee, was the log-cabin.  A carpenter and a mason were not needed to build them—­much less the painter, the glazier, or the upholsterer.  Every settler had, besides his rifle, no other instrument but an axe, a hatchet, and a butcher-knife.  A saw, an auger, a froe, and a broad-axe would supply a whole settlement, and were used as common property in the erection of the log-cabin.  The floor of the cabin was sometimes the earth.  No saw-mill was yet erected; and, if the means or leisure of the occupant authorized it, he split out puncheons for the floor and for the shutter of the entrance to his cabin.  The door was hung with wooden hinges and fastened by a wooden latch.

“Such was the habitation of the pioneer Tennessean.  Scarcely can one of these structures, venerable for their years and the associations which cluster around them, be now seen, in Tennessee.  Time and improvement have displaced them.  Here and there in the older counties, may yet be seen the old log house, which sixty years ago sheltered the first emigrant, or gave, for the time, protection to a neighborhood, assembled within its strong and bullet-proof walls.  Such an one is the east end of Mr. Martin’s house, at Campbell’s Station, and the centre part of the mansion of this writer, at Mecklenburg, once Gilliam’s Station, changed somewhat, it is true, in some of its aspects, but preserving even yet, in the height of the story and in its old-fashioned and capacious fire-place, some of the features of primitive architecture on the frontier.  Such, too, is the present dwelling-house of Mr. Tipton, on Ellejoy, in Blount County, and that of Mr. Glasgow Snoddy, in Sevier County.  But these old buildings are becoming exceedingly rare, and soon not one of them will be seen.  Their unsightly proportions and rude architecture will not much longer offend modern taste, nor provoke the idle and irreverent sneer of the fastidious and the fashionable.  When the last one of these pioneer houses shall have fallen into decay and ruins, the memory of their first occupants will still be immortal and indestructible.

“The interior of the cabin was no less unpretending and simple.  The whole furniture, of the one apartment—­answering in these primitive times the purposes of the kitchen, the dining-room, the nursery and the dormitory—­were a plain home-made bedstead or two, some split-bottomed chairs and stools; a large puncheon, supported on four legs, used, as occasion required, for a bench or a table, a water shelf and a bucket; a spinning-wheel, and sometimes a loom, finished the catalogue.  The wardrobe of the family was equally plain and simple.  The walls of the house were hung round with the dresses of the females, the hunting-shirts, clothes, and the arms and shot-pouches of the men.