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MECHANIC ARTS.

lages of civilization, would expect from a population placed in such destitute circumstances.

My reader will naturally ask where were their mills for grinding grain   where their tanners for making leather   where their smith shops for making and repairing their farming utensils? "Who were their carpenters, tailors, cabinet workmen, shoemakers and weavers? The answer is, those manufacturers did not exist, nor had they any tradesmen who were professedly such. Every family were under the necessity of doin   every thing for themselves as well as they could.

The hommony blocks and hand mills were in use in most of our houses. The first was made of a large block of wood about three feet long, with an excavation burned in one end, wide at the top and narrow at the bottom, so that the action of the pestle on the bottom threw the corn up to the sides towards the top of it, from whence it continually fell down into the center. In consequence of this movement, the whole mass of the grain was pretty equally subjected to the strokes of the pestle. In the fall of the year, whilst the Indian corn was soft, the block and pestle did very well for making meal for journeycake and mush, but were rather slow when the corn became hard.

The sweep was sometimes used to lessen the toil of pounding grain into meal. This was a pole of some springy elastic wood, thirty feet long or more, the but-end of which was placed under the side of a house or a large stump. This pole was supported by two forks, placed about one third of its length from the but-end, so as to elevate the small end about fifteen feet from the ground. To this was attached, by a large mortise, a piece of sapling about five or six inches in diameter and eight or ten feet long, the lower end of which was shaped so as to answer for a pestle, and a pin of wood was put through it at a proper bight, so that two persons could work at the sweep at once. This simple machine very much lessened the labor and expedited the work.