CHAPTER V.

What excitement there was among us young folks when the mighty Mississippi did at last come into view. I wondered what made the water seem to be higher than the ground where we were. We were all carried across in a steam ferry-boat, and the first Iowa soil we touched was that river bank at Fort Madison. That was on the 7th day of November, 1843. I was prepared to be pleased with everything in Iowa. The first building which loomed up in sight was the penitentiary, the most imposing structure in the village of Fort Madison; it was just a village then.

We drove about three miles up the river to our old friends, Gabriel and Rebecca Newby's home, in the Green Bay Bottom, where my schoolmate and dear friend, Mary, and I fell in each other's arms and wept for joy. Our mothers did the same. What a time we had that night talking about old ,times in Indiana, and we telling about all the old friends and neighbors we all knew so well. There were several other children in the family, but Mary was the oldest and my special friend

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REMINISCENCES.

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though I loved all of them. We found our friends, the Newbys, living in a log house at the foot of the bluffs, their immense cornfields stretching away off toward the great Mississippi. The bluffs were covered with a variety of trees, and in the bottom near the bluffs were great sugar trees, and oaks and elms as tall and majestic-looking as those we had left behind. Mr. Newby had been one of the rich men in Indiana. They lived in and owned the finest farm-house in all that region, and he owned several farms, a large flouring-mill, a store in town, the finest barn in the country, horses, carriages, and every kind of farming implement used in that day. Besides all that, their house was furnished with the most expensive furniture there was to be seen in that neighborhood. Mr. and Mrs. Newby were whole-souled, honorable people, and the children were "chips of the old block." The crisis of thirty-seven wrought his financial ruin, or nearly so. He managed to save enough out of the wreck to locate his family where land was cheap in the Green Bay Bottoms. A few articles of furniture that once adorned their elegant home could be seen in their log cabin of two rooms. They all were cheerful and in good spirits. Mary said to me: "Semira, you don't see us in as fine a home as you used to, but we are just as happy as we were there."

Those people were brave and full of pluck. Not only that, but they were endowed with bright minds. One of the daughters in after years was called a charming writer, and it was said of one of the sons, by a man who knew what he was talking about, "Tom wields a graceful pen." Everyone of "those children were endowed with brains, honor and common sense. The father and mother and two of those gifted children sleep near the great Mississippi. The mighty pacific beating its rock-bound shores, sounds an eternal requium over the grave of sparkling, brilliant "Tom."

Mary, my schoolmate and best-beloved friend of my young girlhood, married one of God's noblemen, an intelligent Christian farmer. Mary has no daughters, but is mother of eight sons. Not only the proverbial seventh son is a doctor, but she has two doctors among her sons. Mary, like myself, I presume, regales her children and grandchildren with, stories of spelling-schools, sugarmaking, apple butter boiling and Hoshour's school.

In 1843 Fort Madison was new, but the little town, and as much of the country about as we had seen, especially the Green Bay Bottom, had a charming and go-ahead look, and there was the great Mississippi river and there were our old neighbors. I wanted to stop there, but it was ordered otherwise ; there was another fearful parting, when the next morning we started for Salem. We thought then that we would visit and see each other often, but I never saw a member of that family for twenty years after that parting among the sugar trees in the Green Bay Bottom.

After climbing the long, high, steep Mississippi bluff and passing through some fine woods, we came out on the open prairie, and it was prairie almost without a tree, until we reached my uncle's house, a mile east of Salem. We passed by many fine farms, but small and uncomfortable-looking buildings. The day was cloudy and chilly and a northeast wind was blowing. The roads were good and we were so elated with the prospect of seeing our kinfolks before night that we didn't mind the weather very much. I had come to Iowa full of buoyant spirits and prepared to like everything, but that day as we plodded along through some long stretches of prairie, without a house or tree, or, anything to relieve the monotony, I couldn't help thinking they looked bleak and brown and bare. That was the 8th of November, and the greenness had all gone out of those otherwise beautiful, undulating native meadows.

There was a joyful meeting and a time of embracing when we reached my uncle's house. My mother and her sister had not met for many years, and I can see them yet, as they threw their arms around each other and shed tears of unfeigned joy. I had heard much about my uncle and aunt, Aaron and Delilah Cox, but had only seen them twice since I was old enough to remember them. They lived a long way from us in Indiana, and besides, they had been in Iowa several years. They had seven children; the oldest Eliza Ann, was fifteen; Elizabeth was next, then William, then James, then Deborah, then Mary Ellen, then the baby, Edmond. Aunt Delilah was a Quaker, a concientious, Christian Quaker, and was not satisfied to live away from her kind of people. Uncle Aaron was not a member of any denomination, but was an honest, honorable, moral, kind-hearted man; kind to his wife and children and ready to do his duty as a citizen. I had always heard him spoken of as possessing all those qualities, and when I became better acquainted with him I had reason to know it was all true!

We had not been long in my uncle's house before we learned that they were going to move to the "New Purchase," about seventy-five miles northwest of Salem. We were much astonished and sorry, for we expected to locate near Salem. Uncle and aunt had just returned from a trip to the "New Purchase," where they had bought a claim and were going to move there in the Spring. We thought they had a fine location where they were; their house was on high ground overlooking Salem, their timber was not far away, and their prairie land was just rolling enough to be all right for cultivation. My uncle had bought a large tract of land there, but on a great portion of it the title was defective, and he had lost it, which had disgusted him with the place. The man he bought of was a scoundrel arid' not responsible.

This "New Purchase" had, they told us, on the first day of May last been opened up to settlers, and a number of first-class people had made claims and quite a number
were already living on their claims. My aunt was a close observer and a good talker. She expatiated on the beauties of the country, especially on a place called "The Narrows," where the timbers bordering on the Des Moines and the timbers bordering on the Skunk rivers were not more than a mile apart. She went on to say: "The timber and prairie are more evenly divided, there are no great patches of scrubby oak and hazel brush between the prairies and the main timber, like there is here, but the clean prairie extends up to the big timber, and the trees stand out clear, like an orchard; there are many small streams and springs; they can have a good well by digging fifteen feet, and there is plenty of stone.

I have heard there is thought to be stone coal. There is already a small settlement of 'Friends,' and there is a prospect of more coming in. I like our claim; there is timber on the north and timber on the west. They say the reason there is so little brush along the edges of the timber is the Indians kept it burned off. The Indians have just left there. I saw Indian trails which looked like they had been used lately."

We rented a little cabin and spent the winter in Salem. Salem was not a very attractive place at that time, whatever it may have become since. It was located in a fine farming country, but the little town of Salem seemed to be built right down in the mud; it had a public square like nearly all other Iowa towns, and the two or three little stores, the tavern and several small dwelling-houses were located immediately on that square, without a walk of any kind, not even a board laid down to prevent the mud being carried in the houses.

Nearly all the inhabitants of Salem and the country round about were either Quakers or Methodists. The Quakers had a log meeting-house where they held meeting regularly, though the house was cold and uncomfortable; that meeting-house was used as a school-house, too, when I was there. The Methodists held their meetings in private houses, not only prayer and class-meetings, but' Sunday preaching. Those people did not seem to think it any hardship to hustle around of a Sunday morning and put their one room in order for meeting. What I mean by order was to get the beds made up and the dishes washed and seats fixed for the congregation; they had some boards leaning against the back of the house which were kept for that express purpose. They borrowed chairs from their neighbors if they lacked, It was nothing unusual to see the dinner-pot by, the fire with pork and turnips therein, cooking away while the meeting was going on. Brother Simpson or Brother Allen Johnson, one or the other, preached there nearly every Sunday. When the meeting would break up, the boards and other temporary. seats would' be taken out, and the woman of the house would spread her table as best she could with broken forks and any kind of odds and ends of old cracked plates and cups, make some coffee and biscuit, invite the preacher, and perhaps two or three others, to eat dinner with them.

Quakers predominated in, and around Salem. Many of them owned large bodies of land and raised immense crops of corn. The tavern was owned and kept by a family of Quakers by the name of Pickering. The Pickerings were remarkably tall people and much above the average in intelligence. Aquilla, the son of that Salem tavern-keeper, was a young man then. I saw him frequently in the winter of '43 and '44, but never again until I saw him moving about in the throng in the Yearly Meeting grounds at Oskaloosa, soliciting patronage for the organ of the Friends church, The Christian Worker, of which my brother was editor. If these lines are ever read by a Quaker, he or she will know who I am talking about. Aquilla Pickering was a very fine-looking man. When I saw him moving about in that vast multitude in the yearly meeting grounds, I thought of Saul, the son of Kish, for he was a head and shoulders above every other man. Early in the Spring of 1844 my uncle and family moved to the "New Purchase," and we moved four miles north of Salem and not far from a beautiful rocky creek called Cedar. There were lots of sugar trees on Cedar. One day I went with some other young, people to a sugar camp where a man was making sugar. He had some sugar about ready to "stir off" in a big iron, kettle. It had that tempting, yellow, blubbering, puffing look which sugar always has when it is about done; the man had a great big ladle in his hand and was dipping up and down in that tempting-looking mass, and I thought he would surely offer us some of it, but we were doomed to disappointment. If he had been making soap he would not have been farther from asking us to taste it.