249.  Young Lincoln makes a voyage to New Orleans; how he handled the robbers.—­At this time a neighbor hired Abraham to go with his son to New Orleans.  The two young men were to take a flat-boat loaded with corn and other produce down the Ohio and the Mississippi.  It was called a voyage of about eighteen hundred miles, and it would take between three and four weeks.

[Illustration:  LINCOLN ON THE FLAT-BOAT GOING DOWN THE MISSISSIPPI RIVER.]

Young Lincoln was greatly pleased with the thought of making such a trip.  He had never been away any distance from home, and, as he told his father, he felt that he wanted to see something more of the world.  His father made no objection, but, as he bade his son good by, he said, Take care that in trying to see the world you don’t see the bottom of the Mississippi.

The two young men managed to get the boat through safely.  But one night a gang of negroes came on board, intending to rob them of part of their cargo.  Lincoln soon showed the robbers he could handle a club as vigorously as he could an axe, and the rascals, bruised and bleeding, were glad to get off with their lives.

250.  The Lincolns move to Illinois; what Abraham did; hunting frolics; how Abraham chopped; how he bought his clothes.—­Not long after young Lincoln’s return, his father moved to Illinois.[5] It was a two weeks’ journey through the woods with ox-teams.  Abraham helped his father build a comfortable log cabin; then he and a man named John Hanks split walnut rails, and fenced in fifteen acres of land for a cornfield.

[Illustration:  THE LOG CABIN IN ILLINOIS WHICH LINCOLN HELPED HIS FATHER BUILD.]

That part of the country had but few settlers, and it was still full of wild beasts.  When the men got tired of work and wanted a frolic, they had a grand wolf-hunt.  First, a tall pole was set up in a clearing;[6] next, the hunters in the woods formed a great circle of perhaps ten miles in extent.  Then they began to move nearer and nearer together, beating the bushes and yelling with all their might.  The frightened wolves, deer, and other wild creatures inside of the circle of hunters were driven to the pole in the clearing; there they were shot down in heaps.

Young Lincoln was not much of a hunter, but he always tried to do his part.  Yet, after all, he liked the axe better than he did the rifle.  He would start off before light in the morning and walk to his work in the woods, five or six miles away.  There he would chop steadily all day.  The neighbors knew, when they hired him, that he wouldn’t sit down on the first log he came to and fall asleep.  Once when he needed a new pair of trousers, he made a bargain for them with a Mrs. Nancy Miller.  She agreed to make him a certain number of yards of tow cloth,[7] and dye it brown with walnut bark.  For every yard she made, Lincoln bound himself to split four hundred good fence-rails for her.  In this way he made his axe pay for all his clothes.