There the skins
are traded for the needed iron or salt.
Often many neighbors plan to go together on such a journey. Sometimes they
drive before them their steers and hogs to find a market in the east.
A bushel of salt costs in these early days a good cow and calf. Now, that
is a great deal to pay; and furthermore, as each small and poorly fed
pack-animal can carry but two bushels, salt is a highly prized article.
Since it is so expensive and hard to get, it has to be used sparingly by
the mountaineers. Therefore the housewife, instead of salting or pickling
her meat, preserves or "jerks" it by drying it in the sun or smoking it
over the fire.
The Tennessee settler, like Boone's followers in Kentucky, dresses very
much like the Indians, for that is the easiest and most fitting way in
which to clothe himself for the forest life he leads. And very fine do
many stalwart figures appear in the fur cap and moccasins, the loose
trousers, or simply leggings of buckskin, and the fringed hunting-shirt
reaching nearly to the knees. It is held in by a broad belt having a
tomahawk in one side and a knife in the other.
[Illustration: A Kentucky Pioneer's Cabin.
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