It was scarcely imposing.
Further on, a cooking stove under a tree, a saddle and bridle, a few household implements scattered about, indicated the "ranch." Like most pioneer clearings, it was simply a disorganized raid upon nature that had left behind a desolate battlefield strewn with waste and decay.

The fallen trees, the crushed thicket, the splintered limbs, the rudely torn-up soil, were made hideous by their grotesque juxtaposition with the wrecked fragments of civilization, in empty cans, broken bottles, battered hats, soleless boots, frayed stockings, cast-off rags, and the crowning absurdity of the twisted-wire skeleton of a hooped skirt hanging from a branch.

The wildest defile, the densest thicket, the most virgin solitude, was less dreary and forlorn than this first footprint of man.

The only redeeming feature of this prolonged bivouac was the cabin itself.

Built of the half-cylindrical strips of pine bark, and thatched with the same material, it had a certain picturesque rusticity.