When A-bra-ham was sev-en years old, his fa-ther Thom-as Lin-coln, found his farm too much for him. What he liked best was change. He said it would suit him to move to the West, where rich soil and more game could be found.
He thought he would take what he could of their
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 poor goods, set off and hunt up a home. So he built a frail¹ craft, put his wares² on it, but soon got on the snags and lost most of what he had. He swam to the shore. In a few days the wa-ters, which had come up as high as the banks, went down, and folks a-long shore helped him get up a few of his goods from the bot-tom of the riv-er. These goods he put in-to a new boat, which he said he would pay for as soon as he could, and then float-ed down the O-hi-o to Thomp-son’s Land-ing. Here he put what he had brought with him in-to a store-house, and went off a score of miles through the woods to Pig-eon Creek³. He found the soil all he thought it would be. He chose a tract⁴ of land, and then made a long trip to “en-ter his claim” at Vin-cennes. The next thing to do was to go back to Ken-tuc-ky.
The cool days of No-vem-ber had come ere wife and chil-dren, with two hor-ses which a friend had loaned, and what goods were left, set out for the far off land of In-di-an-a. When night came they slept on the ground on beds made of leaves and pine twigs⁵. They ate the game the ri-fles brought down, cooking it by the camp fire. From time to time they had to ford⁶ or swim streams. They were glad that no rain fell in all their long route.
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ON THE WAY TO INDIANA.
Sa-rah and A-bra-ham thought it was nice to spend weeks in the free, wild life of the woods. A-corns and wal-nuts they found, and fish came up when they put
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 a fat worm on their hooks. They could wade⁷ and swim in the cool brooks⁸ and gather huge piles of dried leaves for their sound sleep at night.

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