For Abraham, on the
other hand, it was an event which must have opened up wide vistas of
future hope and ambition. Allen Gentry probably was nominal supercargo
and steersman, but we may easily surmise that Lincoln, as the "bow oar,"
carried his full half of general responsibility. For this service the
elder Gentry paid him eight dollars a month and his passage home on a
steamboat. It was the future President's first eager look into the wide,
wide world.
Abraham's devotion to his books and his sums stands forth in more
striking light from the fact that his habits differed from those of most
frontier boys in one important particular. Almost every youth of the
backwoods early became a habitual hunter and superior marksman. The
Indiana woods were yet swarming with game, and the larder of every cabin
depended largely upon this great storehouse of wild meat.[2] The Pigeon
Creek settlement was especially fortunate on this point. There was in
the neighborhood of the Lincoln home what was known in the West as a
deer-lick--that is, there existed a feeble salt-spring, which
impregnated the soil in its vicinity or created little pools of brackish
water--and various kinds of animals, particularly deer, resorted there
to satisfy their natural craving for salt by drinking from these or
licking the moist earth.
Pages:
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37