Waterbury evening Democrat., 1890-03-22
lCopvtgid Sceared An Rights Reserpcd.l Driven From Sea to Sea;
 Or, JUST A CAMPIN'.
HY 0. O. POST.

o'clock when they turned their tired
 and jaded horses of the main road into
 by-track to the right. and a quarter
 of mile further on pulled mp in front
 of a cheap. unpainted board shanty-
 their new home upon the noun ain side.
 It was too late to think of doing any.
 thing except to make a cup of coffee
 and bunk down in the easiest way pos
 sible for the night.
 MT. Parsons, with the assistance oi
 the neighbor who came with him the
 day be.ore, had put up a cook-stove
 and made bunk for themselves on
 the floor. which remained just as they
 had crawled out of it in the morning.
 Another similar one was now made up
 in another corner of the room, and
 upon these the family slept, except
 Johnny. who occupied his wheeled cot, it having been the last thing packed on
 the wagon be.ore leaving the old home.
 When they arose the next morning the sun was shining over the mountain tops, and doing the best it could to make the scene a pleasant one.
 MT. Parsons hastily slipped on his clothes and went out to look to the horses.
 Mrs. Parsons and the girls also dressed hurriedly and then stepped to the door and looked out. It had been too dark to see much the night before, and they had been too utterly tired out to try to see even the little that might have been seen, but now they were eager to know how the place really did look.
 A sad enough contrast it was to the old home. Instead of 8 white cottage with its green blinds and wide open ve- randas. their dwelling was a rough shan; y of boards nailed perpendicularly to the framework, resembling in this respect the one which they had occu- pied for few days on the Suscol ranch. But instead of teing sixteen feet in length, these boards were but ten feet long, and as consequence there was no loft above as in the Suscol cottage
 The interior was ceiled with cotton cloth, but there were no little nj, oly made conveniences: no snk; no cup board; no partition; no porch over the door. All was ln one room and all was cheap and rough.
 Outside. the view was no more cheer ing. The shanty stood we'll up on the hill or mountain. Below, and for lit tie distance. both in front and in the rear. was piece of tolerably level ground. perhaps forty acres in all. which declined gently to the west, end ng in a beyond which the earth became broken and rocky again.
 Above the shanty the ground sloped upwards with sharper p tch for few hundred feet and then rose rapidly, be- coming more and more precipitous, un- til 1t reached the summit a third of q mile away.
 In places portions of the solid rock projected through the bar ren soil, while in others immense de- tached powders. weighing hundreds of tons. lay only slightly imbedded in the earth and looking as if push would send them crashing down the mountain side.
 Here and there stood a digger pine, it's blue-green spines looking, in the dis tance, like bunch>s of thick smoke.
 These. with a few scattering white oaks, half denuded of their limbs by the tempests, and an occasional c.ump of manz neto bushes, were the only vese- 'ation which grew here. except where some large howlder formed slight pro- ection from the wind, and prevented he rains from washing away the thin coating of earth below it, might be found 2 few punches of coarse wild grass.
 A fence of boards had been thrown aronnd the tillable ground by the last occupants, but this was down in places, and only added to the general look of and decay.
 The road by which they had come the night before could be seen at one point only, and that nearly a mile dis .ent, where it wound around a spur of the mountain and dived down into a ravine from which it emerged only to wind around other bluffs and spurs and live down into other lOllows out of the range of vision of any one standing in :he door or at the windows of the 'hanty.
 By ascending ia the summit of the ind hills could be seen stretching away towards Phippsburg and the river. with glimpse oi the valley be- vond. and of a thin line of smoke from he steamers that went pulling up and town that highway of nature; but from she lower ground on which the shanty stood this view was shut out by inter- Venlng hills, and there came & feeling of loneliness, and representation ipde- lcribable. to the three women as they Qoked out upon tho scene that first morning.
 A thick crop of self-sown oats mixed with weeds had sprung up on the ground, untitled for two years. These .he rain had beaten flat to the earth in places. while in others they still kept a half erect position and were twisted to- gether in punches.
 The few scattering grape vines, left to themselves, had broken from their supports and run riot among the weeds md grass. The peach and pear trees showed the same lack of care, the very of their growth and their appearance adding to the general look of desolation. And this was the scene upon which Martha Parsons looked, standing in the door of the shanty with her two N a pNrekk