Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 70, No. 434, December, 1851

"The last thing at night before 'turning in,' the teamster lights his lantern and repairs to the ox-hovel. In the morning, by peep of day, and often before, his visits are repeated, to hay and provender, and card, and yoke up. While the rest of the hands are sitting or lounging around the liberal fire, shifting for their comfort, after exposure to the winter frosts through the day, he must repeatedly go out to look after the comfort of the sturdy, faithful ox. And then, for an hour or two in the morning again, whilst all, save the cook, are closing up the sweet and unbroken slumbers of the night, so welcome and necessary to the labourer, he is out amid the early frost with, I had almost said, the care of a mother, to see if 'old Turk' is not loose, whether 'Bright' favours the near fore-foot, (which felt a little hot the day before,) as he stands up on the hard floor, and then to inspect 'Swan's' provender-trough, to see if he has eaten his meal, for it was carefully noted that at the 'watering-place' last night he drank but little; whilst at the further end of the 'tie-up' he thinks he hears a little clattering noise, and presently 'little Star' is having his shins gently rapped, as a token of his master's wish to raise his foot to see if some nail has not given way in the loosened shoe; and this not for once, but every day, with numberless other cares connected with his charge."

The oxen are taken out to the forest by the last detachment of wood-cutters, when winter fairly sets in. This is the hardest trip of any. Both man and beast experience much inconvenience from the cold. Often, when driving a boat up rapids, ice forms upon the poles in the men's hands, which are already so cold and stiff that they can scarcely retain their grasp; yet an instant's cessation of exertion would be fraught with imminent peril to life and goods. The oxen, attached to long lightly-loaded sleds, are driven over rough miry tracks. "In crossing large streams, we unyoke the oxen and swim them over. If we have no boat, a raft is constructed, upon which our effects are transported, when we reyoke and pursue our route as before. Our cattle are often very reluctant to enter the water whilst the anchor-ice runs, and the cold has already begun to congeal its surface." Lakes are crossed upon the ice, which not unfrequently breaks in. Mr Springer gives an account of a journey he made, when this misfortune happened, and ten oxen at one time were struggling in the chilling waters of Baskahegan Lake. They were all got out, he tells us, although rescue under such circumstances would appear almost hopeless.

"Standing upon the edge of the ice, a man was placed by the side of each ox to keep his head out of the water. We unyoked one at a time, and throwing a rope round the roots of his horns, the warp was carried forward and attached to the little oxen, (a pair that had not broken in,) whose services on this occasion were very necessary. A strong man was placed on the ice at the edge, so that, lifting the ox by his horns, he was able to press the ice down and raise his shoulder up on the edge, when the warp-oxen would pull them out. For half-an-hour we had a lively time of it, and in an almost incredibly short time we had them all safely out, and drove them back upon the point nearly a mile. It was now very dark. We left our sleds in the water with the hay, pulling out a few armsful, which we carried to the shore to rub the oxen down with. Poor fellows! they seemed nearly chilled to death, and shook as if they would fall to pieces."

So great is the labour of taking oxen to the forest every Fall – often to a distance of two hundred miles into the interior – that the wood-cutters sometimes leave them, when they go down stream in the spring to get their own living in the wilderness, and hunt them up again in autumn. They thrive finely in the interval, and get very wild and difficult to catch; but when at last subjugated, they evidently recognise their masters, and are pleased to see them. Occasionally they disappear in the course of the summer, and are heard of no more; they are then supposed to have got "mired or cast," or to have been devoured by wolves – or by bears, which also are known to attack oxen.

"An individual who owned a very fine 'six-ox team' turned them into the woods to brouse, in a new region of country. Late in the evening, his attention was arrested by the bellowing of one of them. It continued for an hour or two, then ceased altogether. The night was very dark, and as the ox was supposed to be more than a mile distant, it was thought not advisable to venture in search of him until morning. As soon as daylight appeared, the owner started, in company with another man, to investigate the cause of the uproar. Passing on about a mile, he found one of his best oxen prostrate, and, on examination, there was found a hole eaten into the thickest part of his hind quarter nearly as large as a hat; not less than six or eight pounds of flesh were gone. He had bled profusely. The ground was torn up for rods around where the encounter occurred; the tracks indicated the assailant to be a very large bear, who had probably worried the ox out, and then satiated his ravenous appetite, feasting upon him while yet alive. A road was bushed out to the spot where the poor creature lay, and he was got upon a sled and hauled home by a yoke of his companions, where the wound was dressed. It never, however, entirely healed, though it was so far improved as to allow of its being fattened, after which he was slaughtered for food."

In cold weather in those forests the bears and wolves are exceedingly audacious. The latter have a curious habit of accompanying the teams on their journeys between the forest and the river to which they drag the logs. This has only occurred of late years, and the manner in which they thus volunteer their services as assistant drivers is exceedingly curious.

"Three teams," says Springer, "in the winter of 1844, all in the same neighbourhood, were beset with these ravenous animals. They were of unusually large size, manifesting a most singular boldness, and even familiarity, without the usual appearance of ferocity so characteristic of the animal. Sometimes one, and in another instance three, in a most unwelcome manner, volunteered their attendance, accompanying the teamster a long distance on his way. They would even jump on the log and ride, and approach very near the oxen. One of them actually jumped upon the sled, and down between the bars, while the sled was in motion. Some of the teamsters were much alarmed, keeping close to the oxen, and driving on as fast as possible. Others, more courageous, would run forward and strike at them with their goad-sticks; but the wolves sprang out of the way in an instant. But, although they seemed to act without a motive, there was something so cool and impudent in their conduct that it was trying to the nerves – even more so than an active encounter. For some time after this, firearms were a constant part of the teamster's equipage."

The distant howling and screaming of the wolves, compared by an old Yankee hunter to the screeching of forty pair of old cart-wheels, is particularly ominous and disagreeable. Springer has collected a number of curious anecdotes concerning them. One night a pack of the prowling marauders were seen trailing down Mattawamkeag River on the ice. The dwellers in a log-house hard by soaked some meat in poison and threw it out. Next morning the meat was gone, and six wolves lay dead, all within sight of each other. "Every one of them had dug a hole down through the snow into the frozen earth, in which they had thrust their noses, either for water to quench the burning thirst produced by the poison, or to snuff some antidote to the fatal drug. A bounty was obtained on each of ten dollars, besides their hides, making a fair job of it, as well as ridding the neighbourhood of an annoying enemy." Several of Mr Springer's logging and lumbering friends have contributed to his book the results of their experience, and narratives of their adventures, some of which he gives in their own words. Amongst these is an ill-written, but yet a very exciting, account of a wolf-chase, or we should perhaps rather say a man-chase, the wolves in this instance being the pursuers, and Springer's neighbour the pursued. The person in question was passionately fond of skating, and one night he left a friend's house to skate a short distance up the frozen Kennebeck, which flowed before the door. It was a bright still evening; the new moon silvered the frosty pines. After gliding a couple of miles up the river, the skater turned off into a little tributary stream, over which fir and hemlock twined their evergreen branches. The archway beneath was dark, but he fearlessly entered it, unsuspicious of peril, with a joyous laugh and hurra – an involuntary expression of exhilaration, elicited by the bracing crispness of the atmosphere, and glow of pleasant exercise. What followed is worth extracting.

"All of a sudden a sound arose, it seemed from the very ice beneath my feet. It was loud and tremendous at first, until it ended in one long yell. I was appalled. Never before had such a noise met my ears. I thought it more than mortal – so fierce, and amid such an unbroken solitude, that it seemed a fiend from hell had blown a blast from an infernal trumpet. Presently I heard the twigs on the shore snap as if from the tread of some animal, and the blood rushed back to my forehead with a bound that made my skin burn. My energies returned, and I looked around me for some means of defence. The moon shone through the opening by which I had entered the forest, and, considering this the best means of escape, I darted towards it like an arrow. It was hardly a hundred yards distant, and the swallow could scarcely outstrip my desperate flight; yet as I turned my eyes to the shore, I could see two dark objects dashing through the underbrush at a pace nearly double mine. By their great speed, and the short yells which they occasionally gave, I knew at once that they were the much dreaded grey wolf."

 

Here Springer interposes a vignette of a wolf – a most formidable and unwholesome-looking quadruped – grinning over the well-picked bone of some unlucky victim. The logger's pages are enlivened by a number of illustrations – woodcuts of course – rough enough in execution, but giving an excellent notion of the scenery, animals, and logging operations spoken of in the text. Grey wolves are of untameable fierceness, great strength and speed, and pursue their prey to the death with frightful tenacity, unwearyingly following the trail —

 
"With their long gallop, which can tire
The hounds' deep hate, the hunter's fire."
 

A more dangerous foe a benighted traveller could hardly fall in with.

"The bushes that skirted the shore," continues the hunted of wolves, "flew past with the velocity of light as I dashed on in my flight. The outlet was nearly gained; one second more and I should be comparatively safe; when my pursuers appeared on the bank, directly above me, which rose to the height of some ten feet. There was no time for thought; I bent my head, and dashed wildly forward. The wolves sprang, but, miscalculating my speed, sprang behind, whilst their intended prey glided out into the river.

"Nature turned me towards home. The light flakes of snow spun from the iron of my skates, and I was now some distance from my pursuers, when their fierce howl told me that I was again the fugitive. I did not look back; I did not feel sorry or glad; one thought of home, of the bright faces awaiting my return, of their tears if they should never see me again, and then every energy of body and mind was exerted for my escape. I was perfectly at home on the ice. Many were the days I spent on my skates, never thinking that at one time they would be my only means of safety. Every half minute an alternate yelp from my pursuers made me but too certain they were close at my heels. Nearer and nearer they came; I heard their feet pattering on the ice nearer still, until I fancied I could hear their deep breathing. Every nerve and muscle in my frame was stretched to the utmost tension. The trees along the shore seemed to dance in the uncertain light, and my brain turned with my own breathless speed, when an involuntary motion turned me out of my course. The wolves close behind, unable to stop and as unable to turn, slipped, fell, still going on far ahead, their tongues lolling out, their white tusks gleaming from their bloody mouths, their dark shaggy breasts freckled with foam; and as they passed me their eyes glared, and they howled with rage and fury. The thought flashed on my mind that by this means I could avoid them – viz., by turning aside whenever they came too near; for they, by the formation of their feet, are unable to run on ice except in a right line.

"I immediately acted on this plan. The wolves, having regained their feet, sprang directly towards me. The race was renewed for twenty yards up the stream; they were already close on my back, when I glided round and dashed past them. A fierce howl greeted my evolution, and the wolves slipped upon their haunches, and sailed onward, presenting a perfect picture of helplessness and baffled rage. Thus I gained nearly a hundred yards each turning. This was repeated two or three times, every moment the wolves getting more excited and baffled, until, coming opposite the house, a couple of staghounds, aroused by the noise, bayed furiously from their kennels. The wolves, taking the hint, stopped in their mad career, and, after a moment's consideration, turned and fled. I watched them till their dusky forms disappeared over a neighbouring hill; then, taking off my skates, I wended my way to the house."

From some unassigned reason, wolves have increased of late years in the wild forests of north-eastern Maine. Up to 1840, Mr Springer, who had been much in that district, logging in winter and clearing land in summer, never saw one. Since then they have frequently been seen in numerous parties, and of most formidable size. There would not seem to be much to choose, as far as the pleasure of the thing goes, between an encounter with one of these ravenous brutes and a tussle with a catamount. Springer, however, who must be competent to judge, considers the catamount the worse customer. He tells an ugly story, which may serve as a pendant to that of the bear's breakfast on live beef, of what happened to a logger named Smith, when on his way to join a timbering party in the woods. He had nearly reached camp, when he fell in with a catamount, or "Indian devil." Retreat was impossible; for reflection there was no time: arms he had none. Acting from impulse, he sprang up a small tree – perhaps as sensible a thing as he could have done. He had scarcely ascended his length, when the creature, fierce from hunger, made a bound and caught him by the heel. Although badly bitten, Smith managed to get his foot out of the shoe, in which the tiger-cat's teeth were firmly set, and shoe and savage fell together to the ground. What then ensued is so horrible and extraordinary that we should suspect our wood-cutting friend of imaginative decoration, but for the assurance he gives us in his preface, that "the incidents he has related are real, and that in no case is the truth sacrificed to fancy or embellishment." He shall finish his yarn himself.

"The moment he was disengaged, Smith sprang for a more secure position, and the animal at the same time leaped to another large tree, about ten feet distant, up which he ascended to an elevation equal to that of his victim, from which he threw himself upon him, firmly fixing his teeth in the calf of his leg. Hanging suspended thus until the flesh, insufficient to sustain the weight, gave way, he dropped again to the ground, carrying a portion of flesh in his mouth. Having greedily devoured this morsel, he bounded again up the opposite tree, and from thence upon Smith, in this manner renewing his attacks, and tearing away the flesh in mouthfuls from his legs. During this agonising operation, Smith contrived to cut a limb from the tree, to which he managed to bind his jack-knife, with which he could now assail his enemy at every leap. He succeeded thus in wounding him so badly that at length his attacks were discontinued, and he disappeared in the dense forest."

Smith, who, as Springer coolly informs us, "had exerted his voice to the utmost," whilst the catamount was devouring him in detail, (we can perfectly imagine a man bellowing like twenty bulls under such circumstances,) was found by his friends in a state of dreadful exhaustion and suffering, and was carried to camp on a litter. He ultimately recovered, but had sustained irreparable injuries. "Such desperate encounters are of rare occurrence," Springer quietly adds. We should think they were. Really these loggers are cool hands. Encounters with black bears are much more common, we are informed. These are strong fellows, clever at parrying blows, and at wrenching the weapon from their assailant's hand – very tenacious of life, and confirmed robbers. Springer and his comrades were once, whilst ascending a river, followed by one of them for several days. He was bent upon plunder, and one night he walked off with a bundle containing clothing, boots, shaving implements, and other things, for which it might be thought a bear could have little occasion. He examined his prize in the neighbourhood of the camp, tore the clothes to shreds, and chewed up the cow-hide boots and the handle of a razor. From the roof of a log-house, which the woodmen erected a few miles farther on, he carried off a ten-gallon keg of molasses, set it on one end, knocked the head in or out, and was about to enjoy the feast, when he was discovered, pursued, and at last killed. At page 140 we find a capital account of a fight between a family of bears (father, mother, and cubs) and two foresters; and at page 100 the stirring-up of a bear's den is graphically described.

The pine tree is subject to disease of more than one kind, the most frequent being a sort of cancer, known amongst lumber-men as "Conk" or "Konkus," whose sole external manifestation is a small brown spot, usually at several feet from the ground, and sometimes no larger than a shilling. The trees thus afflicted are noway inferior to the soundest in size and apparent beauty; but on cutting into them the rot is at once evident, the wood being reddish in colour, and of spungy texture. "Sometimes it shoots upwards, in imitation of the streaming light of the aurora borealis; in others downwards, and even both ways, preserving the same appearance." Unscrupulous loggers cheat the unwary by driving a knot or piece of a limb of the same tree into the plague-spot, and hewing it off smoothly, so as to give it the appearance of a natural knot. A great many pines are hollow at the base or butt, and these hollows are the favourite winter-retreats of Bruin the bear.

"A few rods from the main logging road where I worked one winter," said Mr Johnston, (a logger whom Springer more than once quotes,) "there stood a very large pine tree. We had nearly completed our winter's work, and it still stood unmolested, because, from appearances, it was supposed to be worthless. Whilst passing it one day, not quite satisfied with the decision that had been made upon its quality, I resolved to satisfy my own mind touching its value; so, wallowing to it through the snow, which was nearly up to my middle, I struck it several blows with the head of my axe, an experiment to test whether a tree be hollow or not. When I desisted, my attention was arrested by a slight scratching and whining. Suspecting the cause, I thumped the tree again, listening more attentively, and heard the same noise as before. It was a bear's den. Examining the tree more closely, I discovered a small hole in the trunk, near the roots, with a rim of ice on the edge of the orifice, made by the freezing of the breath and vapour from the inmates."

The logging crew were summoned, and came scampering down, eager for the fun. The snow was kicked away from the root of the tree, exposing the entrance to the den; and a small hole was cut in the opposite side, through which the family of bears were literally "stirred up with a long pole;" and when the great she-bear, annoyed at this treatment, put her head out at the door, she was cut over the pate with an axe.

"The cubs, four in number – a thing unusual by one-half – we took alive, and carried to camp, kept them a while, and finally sold them. They were quite small and harmless, of a most beautiful lustrous black, and fat as porpoises. The old dam was uncommonly large – we judged she might weigh about three hundred pounds. Her hide, when stretched out and nailed on to the end of the camp, appeared quite equal to a cow's hide in dimensions."

The attacks of wild animals are far from being the sole dangers to which the wood-cutters of Maine are exposed in following their toilsome occupation. Scarcely any phase of their adventurous existence is exempt from risk. Bad wounds are sometimes accidentally received from the axe whilst felling trees. To heal these, in the absence of surgeons, the loggers are thrown upon their own very insufficient resources. Life is also constantly endangered in felling the pine, which comes plunging down, breaking, splitting, and crushing all before it. The broken limbs which are torn from the fallen tree, and the branches it wrenches from other trees,

"rendered brittle by the intense frosts, fly in every direction, like the scattered fragments of an exploding ship. Often these wrenched limbs are suspended directly over the place where our work requires our presence, and on the slightest motion, or from a sudden gust of wind, they slip down with the stealthiness of a hawk and the velocity of an arrow. I recollect one in particular, which was wrenched from a large pine I had just felled. It lodged in the top of a towering birch, directly over where it was necessary for me to stand whilst severing the top from the trunk. Viewing its position with some anxiety, I ventured to stand and work under it, forgetting my danger in the excitement. Whilst thus engaged, the limb slipped from its position, and, falling directly before me, end foremost, penetrated the frozen earth. It was about four inches through, and ten feet long. It just grazed my cap; a little variation, and it would have dashed my head to pieces. Attracted on one occasion, whilst swamping a road, by the appearance of a large limb which stuck fast in the ground, curiosity induced me to extricate it, for the purpose of seeing how far it had penetrated. After considerable exertion, I succeeded in drawing it out, when I was amazed to find a thick cloth cap on the end of it. It had penetrated the earth to a considerable depth. Subsequently I learned that it [the cap, we presume, but Springer makes sad work of his pronouns] belonged to a man who was killed instantly by its fall, [here our logging friend must be supposed to refer to the timber,] striking him on the head, and carrying his cap into the ground with it."

 

This is not impossible, although it does a little remind us of certain adventures of the renowned Munchausen. And Springer is so pleasant a fellow, that we shall not call his veracity in question, or even tax him with that tinting of truth in which many of his countrymen excel, but of which he only here and there lays himself open to suspicion. He certainly does put our credulity a little to the strain by an anecdote of a moose deer, which he gives, however, between inverted commas, on the authority of a hunter who occasionally passed the night at the logger's camp. The moose is the largest species of deer found in the New-England forests, its size varying from that of a large pony to that of a full-grown horse. It has immense branching antlers, and, judging from its portrait, which forms the frontispiece to Forest Life, we readily believe Springer's assurance, that "the taking of moose is sometimes quite hazardous." Quite astonishing, we are sure the reader will say, is the following ride: —

"Once," hunter loquitur, "whilst out on a hunting excursion, I was pursued by a bull-moose. He approached me with his muscular neck curved, and head to the ground, in a manner not dissimilar to the attitude assumed by horned cattle when about to encounter each other. Just as he was about to make a pass at me, I sprang suddenly between his wide-spreading antlers, bestride his neck. Dexterously turning round, I seized him by the horns, and, locking my feet together under his neck, I clung to him like a sloth. With a mixture of rage and terror, he dashed wildly about, endeavouring to dislodge me; but, as my life depended upon maintaining my position, I clung to him with a corresponding desperation. After making a few ineffectual attempts to disengage me, he threw out his nose, and, laying his antlers back upon his shoulders, which formed a screen for my defence, he sprang forward into a furious run, still bearing me upon his neck. Now penetrating dense thickets, then leaping high 'windfalls,' (old fallen trees,) and struggling through swamp-mires, he finally fell from exhaustion, after carrying me about three miles. Improving the opportunity, I drew my hunting-knife from its sheath, and instantly buried it in his neck, cutting the jugular vein, which put a speedy termination to the contest and the flight."

After which we presume that he spitted the moose on a pine tree, roasted and ate it, and used its antlers for toothpicks. The adventure is worthy of Mazeppa or the Wild Huntsman. By the antlers forming a screen for the rider's defence, we are reminded of that memorable morning in the life of the great German Baron, when his horse, cut in two, just behind the saddle, by the fall of a portcullis, was sewn together with laurel-twigs, which sprouted up into a pleasant bower, beneath whose appropriate shade the redoubtable warrior thenceforward rode to victory. An awful liar, indeed, must have been the narrator of this "singular adventure," as Springer, who tells this story quite gravely, artlessly styles it. Doubtless such yarns are acceptable enough by the camp-fire, where the weary logger smokes the pipe of repose after a hard day's work; and they are by no means out of place in the logger's book, of which, however, they occupy but a small portion – by far the greater number of its chapters being filled with solid and curious information. The third and longest part, "River Life," upon which we have not touched, is highly interesting, and gives thrilling accounts of the dangers incurred during the progress down stream of the various "parcels" of logs, which, each distinguished like cattle by the owner's mark, soon mingle and form one grand "drive" on the main river. "Driving" of this kind is a very hazardous occupation. Sometimes the logs come to a "jam," get wedged together in a narrow part of the river or amongst rocks, and, whilst the drivers work with axe and lever to set the huge floating field of tree-trunks in motion again, lives are frequently lost. This is easy to understand. The removal of a single log, the keystone of the mass – nay, a single blow of the axe – often suffices to liberate acres of timber from their "dead lock," and set them furiously rushing down the rapid current. Then does woe betide those who are caught in the hurly-burly. Sometimes, the key-log being well ascertained, a man is let down, like a samphire-gatherer, by a rope from an adjacent cliff, on to the "jam." Then —

"As the place to be operated upon may in some cases be a little removed from the shore, he either walks to it with the rope attached to his body, or, untying the rope, leaves it where he can readily grasp it in time to be drawn from his perilous position. Often, where the pressure is direct, a few blows only are given with the axe, when the log snaps in an instant with a loud report, followed suddenly by the violent motion of the 'jam;' and, ere our bold river-driver is jerked half way to the top of the cliff, scores of logs, in wildest confusion, rush beneath his feet, whilst he yet dangles in the air above the trembling mass. If that rope, on which life and hope hang thus suspended, should part, worn by the sharp point of some jutting rock, death, certain and quick, were inevitable."

The wood-cutter's occupation, which, to European imagination, presents itself as peaceful, pastoral, and void of peril, assumes a very different aspect when pursued in North American forests. If any doubt this fact, let them study Springer, who will repay the trouble, and of whose volume we have rather skimmed the surface than meddled with the substance.