FOREST LIFE

AND

FOREST TREES:

COMPRISING

WINTER CAMP-LIFE AMONG THE
LOGGERS, AND WILD-WOOD
ADVENTURE.

WITH

DESCRIPTIONS OF LUMBERING OPERATIONS ON
THE VARIOUS RIVERS OF MAINE AND
NEW BRUNSWICK.

BY JOHN S. SPRINGER.

NEW YORK:
HARPER & BROTHERS, PUBLISHERS,
82 CLIFF STREET.

1851.

Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year one thousand eight hundred and fifty-one, by

Harper & Brothers,

in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the Southern District of New York.

PREFACE.

The writer of the following pages was reared among the Pine forests of Maine, and has spent several of the most pleasant years of his life in active participation in many of the scenes here delineated.

The incidents he has related are real, and in no case is the truth sacrificed to fancy or embellishment.

When the author commenced writing, his motive was to indulge somewhat in pleasant reminiscences of the past, and to live over again that portion of his life which, in general, was so pleasantly spent among the wild mountains, forests, lakes, and rivers of Maine. It was during this retrospective exercise with his pen that the idea of writing a book, embracing his own experience and observations during the time in which he participated in the lumberman's life, suggested itself.

Recollecting that, while the life, habits, and adventures of many classes of men had engaged the attention of the reading community, and that, among the multitude of narratives issued from the press, nothing of interest or importance had been put forth exemplifying the life and adventures of a very large class of persons known as lumbermen, he naturally became possessed with a desire to entertain others with some relation of what appeared to him to afford sufficient material for a book of some interest, and chiefly because the matter it might embrace had never been presented in a connected detail.

Suggesting the substance of what has already been said to several intelligent lumbermen, an interest was at once awakened in their feelings upon the subject, accompanied with an urgent request that the plan should be prosecuted, and that a work should be prepared which might make their pursuits, adventures, and hardships more generally known. To many of these friends the author is also indebted for some assistance in furnishing statistical matter.

In incorporating the somewhat lengthy notice of Forest Trees, forming the first part of this volume, the author has ventured to make his own taste and feelings the criterion by which he has been guided in his selections and observations for the reader, and although they may not hold a strict relation to the narrative, he hopes that they may not be deemed inappropriate or uninteresting.

This volume makes no pretensions to literary merit; sooner would it, indeed, claim kindred with the wild and uncultivated scenes of which it is but a simple relation.

In justice to the gentlemen whom he has quoted in arranging the statistical portion of this volume, as well as to himself, the author would state that the material was procured some four years ago. The statement of this fact may account for any discrepancy which may appear from more recent accounts of the lumbering interests, should they be found to vary from the representations here made.

The Author.

PART I.
TREES OF AMERICA.

PART II.
THE PINE-TREE, OR FOREST LIFE.

PART III.
RIVER LIFE.

CONTENTS.

PART I.

TREES OF AMERICA.

PART II.

THE PINE-TREE, OR FOREST LIFE.

PART III.

RIVER LIFE.

LIST OF ENGRAVINGS.

FOREST LIFE AND FOREST TREES.

PART I.

CHAPTER I.

Trees, how regarded by Lumbermen.‌—‌Cedars of Lebanon.‌—‌Oldest Tree on Record.‌—‌Napoleon's Regard for it.‌—‌Dimensions.‌—‌Durability of the Cedar, how accounted for.‌—‌The Oak.‌—‌Religious Veneration in which it was held by the Druids.‌—‌The Uses to which their Shade was appropriated.‌—‌Curious Valuation of Oak Forests by the Ancient Saxons.‌—‌The Number of Species.‌—‌Its Value.‌—‌Remarkable old Oak in Brighton.‌—‌Charter Oak.‌—‌Button-wood Tree.‌—‌Remarkable Rapidity of its Growth.‌—‌Remarkable Size of one measured by Washington.‌—‌by Michaux.‌—‌Disease in 1842, '43, and '44.‌—‌The Oriental Plane-tree. ‌—‌Great Favorite with the Ancients.‌—‌Cimon's Effort to gratify the Athenians.‌—‌Pliny's Account of its Transportation.‌—‌The Privilege of its Shade a Tax.‌—‌Used as an Ornament.‌—‌Nourished with Wine.‌—‌ Hortensius and Cicero.‌—‌Pliny's curious Account of one of remarkable Size.

Lumbermen are accustomed to classify and rate forest trees by the lower, middle, and higher grades, just as animals are classified, from the muscle, through the intermediate grades, up to man, the crowning master-piece of the Creator's skill. But while man is universally recognized as first in the scale of animated nature, there is less uniformity of sentiment in respect to trees, as to which is entitled to hold the first rank in the vegetable kingdom. In the days of King David and Solomon, the noble Cedars of Lebanon held the pre-eminence, and were celebrated in verse as emblems of beauty, grandeur, and especially of durability; but "with the moderns the Cedar is emblematical of sadness and mourning":

"Perhaps the oldest tree on record is the Cypress of Somma, in Lombardy. It is supposed to have been planted in the year of the birth of Christ, and on that account is looked upon with reverence by the inhabitants; but an ancient chronicle at Milan is said to prove that it was a tree in the time of Julius Cæsar, B.C. 42. It is one hundred and twenty-three feet high, and twenty-three feet in circumference at one foot from the ground. Napoleon, when laying down the plan for his great road over the Simplon, diverged from a straight line to avoid injuring this tree." [1]

"The Cedar was styled the glory of Lebanon. The Temple of Solomon and that of Diana at Ephesus were built of this wood. The number of these trees is now greatly diminished. They were often of vast size, sometimes girting thirty-six feet, perfectly sound, with a lofty height, whose spreading branches extended one hundred and ten feet." The durability of the Cedar is said to be attributable to two qualities: "1st, the bitterness of the wood, which protects it from the depredations of worms; and, 2dly, its resin, which preserves it from the injuries of the weather."

To the Oak some assign the first rank. It is celebrated in the East, and by many of the ancients was regarded with religious veneration. In the West, and by moderns, it is employed more as an emblem of the strength, compactness, and durability of the state.

"The religious veneration paid to this tree by the original natives of Britain, in the time of the Druids, is well known to every reader of British history." The patriarch Abraham resided under an Oak, or a grove of Oaks; and it is believed that he planted a grove of this tree. "In fact, since, in hot countries, nothing is more desirable than shade—nothing more refreshing than the shade of a tree—we may easily suppose the inhabitants would resort for such enjoyment to

Oaks, and groves of Oaks, were esteemed proper places for religious services; so that while the Methodist denomination may not claim originality in holding grove or camp-meetings, they may, at least, plead the usages of antiquity in their defense. Altars were set up under them; affairs of state were discussed and ratified under their ample shade.

"Abimelech was made king under an Oak." "Absalom rode upon a mule which went under the thick boughs of a great Oak, and his head caught hold of the Oak, and he was taken up between the heaven and the earth," and, while there suspended, was slain by Joab and his armor-bearers.

"In England, whose Oak forests are now one of the sources of national wealth and naval supremacy, the tree was once prized only for the acorns, which were the chief support of those large herds of swine whose flesh formed so considerable a part of the food of the Saxons. Woods of old, says Burnett, were valued according to the number of hogs they could fatten; and so rigidly were the forest lands surveyed, that, in ancient records, such as the Doomsday-book, woods are mentioned of a single hog. The right of feeding hogs in woods, called pannage, formed, some centuries ago, one of the most valuable kinds of property. With this right monasteries were endowed, and it often constituted the dowry of the daughters of the Saxon kings." [2]

Of the Oak some naturalists have enumerated twenty-four species. The wood of the White Oak is distinguished by three properties, which give to it its great value: hardness, toughness, and durability. The great variety of purposes to which it is appropriated shows it to be a tree of great value. For ship and carriage building, and in the manufacture of implements of husbandry, it is very valuable. This tree also holds rank on account of its size. In the "Report on the Trees and Shrubs of Massachusetts," notice is given of one still standing in Brighton. "In October, 1845, it measured twenty-five feet and nine inches in circumference at the surface. At three feet, it is twenty-two feet four inches; at six feet, fifteen feet two inches. It tapers gradually to the height of about twenty-five feet, where the stump of its ancient top is visible, below which point four or five branches are thrown out, which rise twenty or thirty feet higher. Below, the places of many former limbs are covered over by immense gnarled and bossed protuberances. The trunk is hollow at the base, with a large opening on the southwest, through which boys and men may easily enter. It had probably passed its prime centuries before the first English voice was heard on the shores of Massachusetts Bay. It is still clad with abundant foliage, and, if respected as its venerable age deserves, it may stand an object of admiration for centuries to come."

The Charter Oak, in Hartford, Connecticut, is said to measure at the ground thirty-six feet; and in the smallest place above it is eight feet four inches in diameter.

THE BUTTON-WOOD TREE.

This tree is "remarkable for the rapidity of its growth, especially when standing near water. Loudon mentions one which, standing near a pond, had in twenty years attained the height of eighty feet, with a trunk eight feet in circumference at three feet from the ground, and a head of the diameter of forty-eight feet." "Nowhere is this tree more vigorous than along the rivers of Pennsylvania and Virginia, and especially on the Ohio and its tributaries." 'General Washington measured a Button-wood growing on an island in the Ohio, and found its girth, at five feet from the ground, about forty feet.' "In 1802, the younger Michaux and his companions found a large tree of this kind on the right bank of the Ohio, thirty-six miles from Marietta. Its base was swollen in an extraordinary manner, but, at four feet from the ground, its circumference was found to be forty-seven feet," or fifteen feet and eight inches in diameter. It is said that "it may be propagated with more ease than any tree of the forest." "It is valuable stove fuel." S. W. Pomeroy, Esq., a writer in the New England Farmer, expresses the opinion that, on land possessing the same fertility, this tree will furnish fuel which will give the greatest amount of caloric to the acre, except the locust on dry soil.

It will be remembered that in 1842, '43, and '44, this tree appeared to be under the influence of a general blight throughout the Eastern States. Various opinions were entertained respecting the cause of the malady which occasioned so much regret. "By most persons it was considered the effect of frost, supposing the tree not to have matured its wood, viz., the new shoots, during the previous summer, so that it was incapable of resisting the effect of frost." Others ascribed it to the action of some insect or worm, and others believed it to be some unaccountable disease, while others regarded the phenomenon as a providential token of the approach of some important event unknown and unanticipated. The tree has now pretty generally recovered from its malady.

"The Oriental Plane-tree holds the same place on the Eastern continent which our Button-wood does on this." "It was the greatest favorite among the ancients." "Cimon sought to gratify the Athenians by planting a public walk with them." "It was considered the finest shade tree in Europe." "Pliny tells the story of its having been brought across the Ionian Sea, to shade the tomb of Diomedes, in the island of the hero. From thence it was taken to Sicily, then to Italy; from Italy to Spain, and even into the most remote parts of the then barbarous France, where the natives were made to pay for the privilege of sitting under its shade.

"No tree was ever so great a favorite with the Romans. They ornamented their villas with it, valuing it above all other trees for the depth of its salutary shade, &c. They nourished it with pure wine; and Hortensius is related to have begged of his rival, Cicero, to exchange turns with him in a cause in which they were engaged, that he might himself do this office for a tree he had planted in his Tusculanum."

"Pliny describes some of the most remarkable planes. In the walks of the Academy at Athens were trees whose trunks were about forty-eight feet from the ground to the branches. In his own time there was one in Lycia, near a cool fountain by the road side, with a cavity of eighty-one feet circuit within its trunk, and a forest-like head, and arms like trees overshadowing broad fields. Within this apartment, made by moss-covered stones, to resemble a grotto, Licinius Mucianus thought it a fact worthy of history, that he dined with nineteen companions, and slept there too, not regretting splendid marbles, pictures, and golden-fretted roofs, and missing only the sound of rain drops pattering on the leaves." [3]

CHAPTER II.

The Elm.‌—‌English Elm.‌—‌Scotch Elm.‌—‌Slippery Elm.‌—‌American Elm. ‌—‌Superiority of latter.‌—‌Different Shapes, how accounted for.‌—‌ Great Elm on Boston Common.‌—‌Rapidity of Growth.‌—‌The Riding Stick.‌—‌Remarkable Dimensions of noted Trees.‌—‌Boston Elm again.‌—‌ Its Age.‌—‌By whom set out.‌—‌Washington Elm, why so named.‌—‌"Trees of Peace," a Tribute of Respect.‌—‌English Elm in England and America.‌—‌Uses in France.‌—‌In Russia.‌—‌Birch Family.‌—‌Its Variety and Uses.‌—‌The Maple Family.‌—‌Number of Species.‌—‌Red Maple.‌—‌Unrivaled Beauty of American Forests.‌—‌Rock Maple.‌—‌Amount of Wood cut from one in Blandford.‌—‌Curious method of distinguishing it from the River Maple.‌—‌Amount and Value of the Sugar in Massachusetts.‌—‌Great Product from one Tree.‌—‌Sugar Maple in the State of Maine.‌—‌Dr. Jackson's Reports, &c.

THE ELM-TREE.

Of this family there are several varieties. The American, the English, the Scotch, and Slippery Elm. Of this enumeration, the American Elm stands first in point of ornament, while the timber of the English Elm is esteemed more highly on account of the toughness of the wood.

It has been well said that the Elm is a tree deservedly esteemed for its ornament and shade. "The American Elm assumes many different shapes, and all of them beautiful. Of these, three are most striking and distinct. The tall Etruscan vase is formed by four or five limbs separating at twenty or thirty feet from the ground, going up with a gradual divergency to sixty or seventy, and then bending rapidly outward, forming a flat top with a pendent border." "Transplanting the Elm, it is said, often produces in it a character akin to that of the Oak. It is then a broad, round-headed tree." "Of this kind is the 'Great Elm' on Boston Common."

Few trees of other species are to be found standing near the abodes of civilized life which have attained the vast dimensions of the Elm. Whatever may have been the peculiar properties of other trees, they have disappeared. Upturned by the passing hurricane, or leveled by the woodman's ax, they have passed away, while the Elm stands at our doors associated with the history and memory of the different generations which, like its autumnal sheddings, have long time ago mingled with the dust.

The Elm grows with great rapidity, which, in addition to its beauty as an ornament, secures for it the favor of man. "I once heard," says the author of Massachusetts Reports, &c., an old man, standing under the shade of a tree nearly two feet in diameter, which towered above all around it, say, "This tree, after I had been many years successful in business, and in a change of fortune had retired to this farm, with a little that remained, I stuck into the ground after I had used it as a stick in a ride of eight miles from P."

"From its having been so long a favorite, it has been more frequently spared, and oftener transplanted than any other tree. There are, in all parts of the state, many fine old trees standing." "In Springfield, in a field a few rods north of the hotel, is an Elm which was twenty-five feet and nine inches in circumference at three feet from the ground." The great Elm on Boston Common measures, at the same distance from the ground, seventeen feet eleven inches in circumference. "It is said to have been planted about the year 1670, by Captain Daniel Henchman, an ancestor of Governor Hancock. It is, therefore, more than one hundred and seventy-five years old." "There is an Elm in Hatfield, near the town-house, which measures at the ground forty-one feet; at three and one half feet from the ground it measures twenty-seven feet in circumference. The smallest place in the trunk is seven feet four inches in diameter. The top spreads over an area of one hundred and eight feet in diameter, making a circle of three hundred and twenty-four feet, covering a surface of over seven thousand five hundred square feet." "The Washington Elm, in Cambridge—so called because beneath its shade, or near it, General Washington is said to have first drawn his sword on taking the command of the American army—measured, in 1842, fifteen feet two inches at one foot, thirteen feet two at three feet from the ground. The celebrated Whitfield preached under the shade of this tree in 1744." "Two Elms were set out by the Indians in front of the house of the Rev. Oliver Peabody, who succeeded, in 1722, to the venerable Eliot, the Indian apostle, in the same truly Christian ministry, in Natick," Massachusetts. "This voluntary offering of the grateful savages they called Trees of Peace."

There is an Elm standing in front of Mr. J. Chickering's house, Westford, Massachusetts, which I recently measured eighteen inches from the ground. Its circumference was twenty feet, and its spurs were not prominent, as will be inferred from the fact that at four feet from the ground it measured eighteen feet in circumference. Seven and a half feet from the ground it divides into two branches, each of itself a very large trunk, the largest of which would measure three feet and a half in diameter. Seven or eight feet from the first division, at short intervals, the main branch, which grew on the west side next the house, divides into eight more branches, all nearly equal in size, and averaging a circumference of four and a half feet. About forty feet from the base of the tree these eight branches subdivide into twenty-one other branches, and so on indefinitely to the terminating twigs. The east main branch was divided into four principals, equal in size to the corresponding ones on the other side, and were subdivided also in the same manner as the one described.

In height it is about seventy feet, vase-topped, with a pendent border. The extent of the spreading branches, northwest and southeast, was one hundred and five feet; those corresponding with the exact opposite points of the compass extended ninety-five feet, giving an area of three hundred feet in circumference. Some of the pendent branches, which drooped within a few feet of the ground, I judged to be forty feet in length. These, stretched to a horizontal position, would give a breadth of one hundred and eighty feet to the top. Various opinions obtain respecting the number of solid feet it contains, ranging from nine to eleven hundred.

An old gentleman residing in the immediate vicinity, now eighty years old, told us that he could very well remember it when but a small tree, from which we infer its age to be about one hundred years. It appears to be perfectly sound, and now thrives as vigorously as a young sapling. It is a magnificent specimen of the vegetable kingdom, majestically imposing, awakening in the spectator a feeling of veneration in spite of himself. So ample is its wide-spreading Etruscan-shaped top, that at fifty rods' distance (were the trunk hid) one might mistake it for a group of twenty good-sized trees.

"The Slippery Elm has a strong resemblance to the common Elm. It has less of the drooping appearance, and is commonly a much smaller tree." "The inner bark of this Elm contains a great quantity of mucilage. Flour prepared from the bark, by drying perfectly and grinding, and mixed with milk, like arrowroot, is a wholesome and nutritious food for infants and invalids." "Dr. Darlington says that, in the last war with Great Britain, the soldiers on the Canada frontier found this, in times of scarcity of forage, a grateful and nutritious food for their horses."

'The English Elm is said to have been introduced by importation, and planted by a wheel-wright for his own use in making hubs for wheels, for which purpose they are probably superior to any other wood known.' In its appearance it is said to have 'less grace than the American Elm, but more stateliness and grandeur.' 'It is distinguished from the American Elm, also, by the rough, broken character of its bark, which is darker, and also by having one principal stem, which soars upward to a great height, and the boldness and abruptness with which it throws out its branches. The leaves are of a darker color, smaller, and closer.'

'The largest dimensions given of the English Elm on the Continent is sixty feet high, and twenty feet in circumference at the ground, containing two hundred and sixty-eight feet of timber.' "The Crawley Elm stands in the village of Crawley, on the high road from London to Brighton. Its trunk measures sixty-one feet in circumference at the ground, and thirty-five feet round the inside at two feet from the base. This tree is not so large as would seem from this account, as it diminishes very rapidly upward."

"The noblest and most beautiful English Elms in this country are found in Roxbury, the largest of which measures fifteen feet five inches five feet from the ground; it holds its size fully to the height of twenty or twenty-five feet, where it divides into three large branches, the main central one of which rises upward to a height much above one hundred feet." "As among the ancient Romans, so in France at the present day, the leaves and shoots are used to feed cattle. In Russia, the leaves of a species of the Elm are used as a substitute for tea. The inner bark is in some places made into mats, and in Norway they kiln-dry it, and grind it with corn as an ingredient in bread."

THE BIRCH.

Of the Birch family there are several varieties, called the Black, Yellow, Red, Canoe, the Gray, and the Dwarf. Of these the Yellow and Canoe Birches are the most interesting and useful. The general outlines of the Yellow Birch often resemble the Elm, the root-spurs rise high up the trunk, protruding much beyond the regular circle of its shaft. It is very firmly rooted, capable of withstanding a violent blast. It attains to the height of seventy or eighty feet, and often measures from nine to ten feet in circumference three and four feet from the ground. Its wood is very useful for cabinet purposes, and is excellent for fuel.

The White or Canoe Birch is most remarkable for the beautiful thin sheets of bark which it affords, from which the Indian canoe is constructed. It also makes excellent covering for a tent. In some parts of the northern regions it is said to attain a diameter of six or seven feet.

The White Birch possesses "in an eminent degree the lightness and airiness of the Birch family, spreading out its glistening leaves on the ends of a very slender and often pencil spray, with an indescribable softness. So that Coleridge might have called it as he did the corresponding European species,