INCIDENTS OF FOREST LIFE.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 573, 22 March 1870, Page 3

INCIDENTS OF FOREST LIFE.

A recent Canadian writer has given us a graphic account of the adventurous life led by numbers of men in the great old forests of New Brunswick. There, a numerous class of men live, year by year, engaged in a life of toil, adventure, and danger— they are generally known by the name of Lumbermen or Loggers. Their business is to search out the finest timber of the forest, fell it, drag it to the river's side, and float it down into the bays along the coast, from which it is shipped off to American or British markets. The trees there are of all sorts — elm, birch, maple, beech, chestnut, oak, ash, poplar, hemlock, pine and hickory, all furnishing specimens of gigantic magnitude, are, however, tbe trees most frequently met with. The white pine may well be denominated the monarch of the American forests, growing to an almost incredible size. j " I have worked," says the writer, "in the forests among this timber several years, have cut many hundreds of trees, and seen many thousands, but have never found one larger than the one I felled on the Backahegan stream. This was a pumpkin pine ; its trunk was as straight and handsomely grown as a moulded candle, and measured six feet in diameter four feet from the ground, without the aid of spur roots. It was about nine rods in length, or one hundred and forty-four feet, about sixty-five of which was free of branches, and retained its diameter remarkably well. I was employed about one hour and a quarter in felling it. Ihe afternoon was beautiful ; everything was calm, and to me the circumstances were deeply interesting. After chopping an hour or so, the mighty giant, the growth of centuries, which had withstood the hurricane, and raised itself in peerless majesty above all around, began to tremble under the strokes of a mere insect, as I might appear in comparison with it. My heart palpitated as I occasionally raised my eye to its pinnacle, to catch the first indications of its fall. It came down at length with a crash which seemed to shake a hundred acres, while the loud echo rang through the forest, dying away among the distant hills. It had a hollow in the butt about the size of a barrel, and the surface of the stump was sufficiently capacious to allow a yoke of oxen to stand upon it. It made five logs, and loaded a sixox team three times. The butt log was so large that the stream did not float it in the spring ; and when the drive was taken down, we were obliged to leave it behind, much to our regret and loss." Think of a forest of gigantic trees of this description extending over hundreds of miles of country I Such are the forests of New Brunswick. The pines, which usually grow in clumps, seem to constitute the aristocracy of the forest, — the rest of the trees making up the populace. The pine is the most useful and valuable of all the trees, — being used in all kinds of house architecture, and very extensively in ship-building ; and it furnishes a large amount of employment to lumbermen, mill-men, rafters, coasters, truckmen, merchants, and mechanics of all sorts. The great pine tracks are usually in the convenient vicinity of lakes and rivers, from whence the transport of the timber to the ocean is comparatively easy. The labours of the lumber men, during fifty or more years, have made sad havoc among the pinewoods, and doubtless the pine is ultimately doomed, by the avarice and enterprise of the white man, gradually to disappear from the borders of civilisation, as have the i aborigines of the country before the onI ward march of the Saxon race. Already | have these magnificent trees been so cleared away by the woodman's axe, that the pine is | now driven far back into the interior wilderness. Hence, in order to discover the locality of the remaining pine communities, exploring expeditions are made, usually during the autumn, into wild and unknown forest regions. Sometimes the exploration is made during the winter, and then the labour of the timber hunters is both arduous and dangerous. They start on board a skiff or a bateau, with provisions, axes, guns, . and ammunition; and thus voyage some hundreds of miles into the interior, carrying the skiff on their Bhoulders across the laud where the rapids of the river are too severe to be ascended by the use of oars or poles. They sleep in the open air at nights, turning the boat bottom upwards, and taking shelter under it, if rain should fall. Occasionally they are scared by the scream of the owl, or the tramping of deer, or, what is more alarming than all, by the approach of a black bear, dangerous adventures with which are very frequent in the deep forests. Arrived at some favourable spot, one of the party ascends the highest tree, generally the spruce fir, which is easily climbed. But when a still loftier look-out is wanted, a spruce fir is felled and lodged against the trunk of some lofty pine, up which the

explorer clambers until he reaches the sum mit, and is enabled to survey the vast exten of forest around. From such a tree-top, like a mariner at the mast-head upon the look-out for whales (for indeed the pine is i the whale of the forest), large "clumps" and " veins " of pine are discovered, whose towering tops may be seen for miles around. Such views fill the bosom of the timberhunter with intense interest. They are the i object of his search— his treasure— his El Dorado— and they are beheld with peculiar and thrilling emotions. To detail the process more minutely, we ehould observe that the man in the tree-tops points out the direction in which the pines are seen, when a man at the base marks the direction indicated by a compass wliich he holds in his hand — the compass being quite as necessary in the wilderness as on the pathless ocean. When the " clump " has been fairly made out, tbe explorers retrace their steps, blazing or notching their trees, so as to enable them to return easily to the place; and then they return home to await the spring season, when felling, rolling, and rafting commence with great vivacity. A necessary preliminary of the loggers is the putting up, in the autumn, of large quantities of meadow hay, for the foddering of the teams of cattle required to drag the timber to the water. During this work the lumber-men are pestered by myriads of bloodthirsty flies— mosquitoes and midgets being the most furious and untiring in their attacks. But more stirring adventures are occasionally encountered, of which take the following instance: — . "On one occasion, while two men were crossing a small lake in a skiff, on their return from tbe meadows, where they had been putting up hay, they discovered a bear swimming from a point of land from the opposite shore. As usual in such cases, | temptation silenced prudential remonstrances ; so, changing their course, they gave chase. The craft being light, they gained fast upon the bear, who exerted himself to tbe utmost to gain the shore. But, finding himself an unequal match in the race, he turned upon his pursuers, and swam to meet them. One of the men, a short, thickset, daring sort of a fellow, seized an axe, and the moment the bear came up, inflicted a blow npon his head, which seemed to make but a slight impression. Before a second could be repeated, the bear clambered into the boat; he instantly grappled with the man who struck him, firmly setting his teeth in the man's thigh; then, settling back upon his haunches, he raised his victim in the air, and shook him as a dog would a woodchuck. The man at the helm stood for a moment in amazement, without knowing how to act, and fearing that the bear might spring overboard and drown his companion; but, recollecting the effect of a blew upon the end of a bear's snout, he struck him with a short settingpole. The bear dropped his victim into the bottom of the boat, sallied, and fell overboard, and swam again for the shore. The man bled freely from the bite, and as the wound proved too serious to allow a renewal of the encounter, they made for the shore. Medical aid was procured as soon as possible, and in the course of six weeks the man recovered. But one thing saved them from being upset ; the water proved sufficiently shoal to admit of the bear's getting bottom, from which he sprang into the boat. Had the water been deep, the boat must inevitably have been upset, in which case the consequences might have been more serious."