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A boy who lived on the west side of the Alleghany Mountains in those days afterward wrote a book telling all about this rough life. His name was Joseph Doddridge. He spent his boyhood in a log cabin, in constant danger from Indians. The settlers had built a fort in the middle of the settlement. Sometimes in the night Joseph would hear a man tapping gently on the back window of his father’s cabin. As soon as anybody waked up, the man would whisper, “Indians!” Joseph’s father would then take down his gun. The children would be dressed in the dark as quickly as possible. Such things as would be needed in the fort were then picked up. Not a word was spoken, nor was any candle lighted. Even the little children learned to be perfectly silent, and the dogs were taught not to bark. When all was ready, the family would hurry away along the foot path to the fort. All the other families in the settlement would be called in the same way.

Every fall these settlers sent pack horses over the mountains. The horses were loaded with the skins of animals. When they came back, they carried salt, which was the one thing that could not be made in the settlement. But the men never thought it worth while to bring home with them tea and coffee or other unnecessary things.

When Joseph was about seven years of age, he was sent over the mountains to school. The little boy was very much puzzled when he first saw a house that was plastered inside. He had never in his life seen anything but a cabin built of logs. He could not understand how a plastered house was built. It seemed to him like something that had grown that way.

When supper time came in this plastered house, he saw a teacup and saucer for the first time in his life. The people in his neighborhood used wooden bowls to drink out of. But here he saw what seemed to him to be a little cup standing in a bigger one. He had never heard of coffee. He only knew that the brownish-looking stuff in his cup was not milk, or hominy, or soup. What to do with the little cups, or how to make use of the spoon that was in them, he could not tell, so he watched the big folks handle their cups and spoons. He drank the coffee just as they did, but he disliked it very much. It made the tears come into his eyes to drink it. When he got his cup nearly empty, it was filled again. He did not dare to say that he had had enough, and he did not know what to do. At last he saw one man turn his empty cup bottom upward in the saucer, and lay his little spoon across the bottom of the cup. That was the custom in those days. He saw that this man’s cup was not filled any more. So Joseph drank his coffee as quickly as possible, turned his cup over in the saucer, and laid the spoon across the bottom. He was delighted that he did not have to drink any more coffee.