of but little moment, and caused no anxiety.  A shelter, of logs and bark, was soon thrown up, with a crackling fire, illuminating the wilderness, blazing before it.  A couch, as soft as they had ever been accustomed to, could speedily be spread from the pliant boughs of trees.  Upon the pack-colts there were warm blankets.  And during the journey of the day they had enjoyed ample opportunity to take such game as they might need for their supper and their morning breakfast.

At length they reached the majestic flood of the Tennessee River, and crossed it, we know not how.  Then, directing their steps toward the setting sun. they pressed on, league after league, and day after day, in toilsome journey, over prairies and through forests and across mountain-ridges, for a distance of nearly four hundred miles from their starting-place, until they reached a small stream, called Mulberry Creek which flows into the Elk River, in what is now Lincoln County.

At the mouth of Mulberry Creek the adventurous emigrant found his promised land.  It was indeed a beautiful region.  The sun shines upon none more so.  The scenery, which, however, probably had but few attractions for David Crockett’s uncultivated eye, was charming.  The soil was fertile.  The streams abounded with fish and waterfowl; and prairie and forest were stocked with game.  No family need suffer from hunger here, if the husband had a rifle and knew how to use it.  A few hours’ labor would rear a cabin which would shut out wind and rain as effectually as the gorgeous walls of Windsor or Versailles.

No jets of gas or gleam of wax candles ever illumined an apartment more brilliantly than the flashing blaze of the wood fire.  And though the refectories of the Palais Royal may furnish more scientific cookery than the emigrant’s hut, they cannot furnish fatter turkeys, or more tender venison, or more delicious cuts from the buffalo and the bear than are often found browning before the coals of the log cabin.  And when we take into consideration the voracious appetites engendered in those wilds, we shall see that the emigrant needed not to look with envy upon the luxuriantly spread tables of Paris or New York.

Upon the crystal banks of the Mulberry River, David, aided by his father-in-law, reared his log cabin.  It is a remote and uncultivated region even now.  Then it was an almost unbroken wilderness, the axe of the settler having rarely disturbed its solitude.

A suitable spot for the cabin was selected, and a space of about fifteen feet by twenty feet was marked out and smoothed down for the floor.  There was no cellar.  Trees near by, of straight trunks, were felled and trimmed, and cut into logs of suitable length.  These were piled one above another, in such a way as to enclose the space, and were held in their place by being notched at the corners.  Rough boards were made for the roof by splitting straight-grained logs about four feet long.