Annals of our ancestors; one hundred and fifty years of history in the ...

HOME BUILDING IN MINNESOTA 237
their beds upon the floor of the house of a kind friend and spent
the night. The next morning they went about four miles
farther down into the woods south of Fairliaven. It was virgm
wilderness, and the maple trees were fine. Down there in
the woods they prepared for sugar-making; they gathered
sumach from which to make their spiles and dug out troughs
to catch the sap. For the latter they cut down some fine
Cottonwood, basswood, and popple trees and split them into
blocks to make four hundred troughs. When these troughs
were ready they distributed them along over from forty to
fifty acres, placing them on end by the trees so they would
keep clean until time to open camp. In the evenings they sat
in their cabin and punched out the soft pith of the sumach
sticks to make two spiles each for their four hundred trees.
Levi Frost was a carpenter and handy with tools generally
and he made an evaporating pan of sheet iron in which to boil
down the sugar water; so that soon everything was in readiness,
even to a barrel fixed on the stone sled, that sap from the more
distant trees might be drawn into camp.
Though their camp was very primitive they had happy
times there. Brother William took his books out with him,
and my husband described with merriment a familiar scene in
camp—William stretched at full length upon the floor by the
little box stove, reading French, while Alvah stepped over his
legs cooking supper. Their candlestick was a block with three
nails driven in it to hold the candle in place, and often by its
light would William read aloud from Dickens or Lamb —
ah, to be with him anywhere was a liberal education. While
all these preparations were going on in camp, I, at home, made
beaten biscuits by the pailful and fried quantities of doughnuts
to send out to them by Amos.
The work of the week seemed to reach its highest pitch on
Saturday. Bread and pies and fried cakes and beaten biscuits,
all must be in readiness. Then I had to get Amos off^ for Fairhaven
just in time to meet the campers as they were leaving
the town and give them a lift as they started upon the poorly
broken road between Fairhaven and Maine Prairie. I re-
call a Saturday when there was a heavy snowstorm, and I