With Axe and Rifle

Some time after the termination of the long war which England had waged in the cause of liberty when well-nigh all the world was up in arms against her, my father, Captain Patrick Loraine, having served for many years as a subaltern, believing that he should no longer find employment for his sword, sold out of the army, and with the proceeds of his commission in his pocket, quitting the old country, came to the United States in the hopes of making his fortune more rapidly than he could expect to do at home.

Finding that as a British officer he was looked upon with distrust in the Eastern States, he made his way westward until he finally located himself in Illinois on a fertile spot, sheltered on the north by a wide extent of forest, and overlooking that part of the river Ohio which separates the state from Kentucky. I remember even now the appearance of the country. On the eastern side was a range of hills of slight elevation, on one of which our house stood, while westward stretched away as far as the eye could reach, a vast plain, with the mighty Mississippi beyond. The scenery could boast of no great beauty except such as lofty trees, the prairie, with its varied tints of green and brown, yellow cornfields, rich meadows in the valleys, and the shining river in the distance, canopied by the blue vault of heaven, could give it. Still, it was my home, and as such I should have loved it, had it possessed even less pretensions to beauty.