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Gass and Shields had made but slow progress in collecting timber for the boat; they complained of great difficulty in geting streight or even tolerably streight sticks of 4/2 feet long. we were obliged to make use of the willow and box alder, the cottonwood being too soft and brittle. I kept one of them collecting timber while the other shaved and fitted them.
It is then interrupted by a third fall, requiring a portage of 176 yards. Thence to the second fork of the lakes it has the same character as for the last 10 miles, except that in some places it flows with a gentle current between low banks covered with alder.
Poplar, birch, cypress, red-pine, spruce, willow, alder, arrow-wood, red-wood, hard, and other trees, all fell before the bright axes of the voyageurs, with gooseberry-bushes, currant-bushes, briars, and other shrubs innumerable. It must not be supposed that they did this heavy work with absolute impunity.
From alder bark, boiled, beaten, and strained, they get a dark, slate-coloured blue which is mixed with rabbits' gall to make it adhere. The juice of bearberries gives them a bright red. From gunpowder and water they obtain a fine black, and from coal tar a stain for work of the coarsest kind.
"Boys, that mankillin' devil must be around here; and that's what them up to the house was runnin' from Barry!" It scattered the others to the windows, to the door. "What d'you see?" "Nothin'." "Swann, if Barry is comin' to these parts, I'm goin' to pack my war-bag." "Me too, Ben. Them that get ten thousand'll earn it. I heard about the Killin' at Alder."
The white alder at this time of year is prodigal of rich and delectable odors. The jewel-weed with all its beauty has none that my sense can perceive. But that of Chelone glabra, as modest and withdrawn as the flower itself, seems hardly to belong in the swamp for all the beauty of the place.
His name was Alder. The ship was nearly ready for sea, with most of her cargo on board, so that we had not long to wait till we bid good-bye to Old England. I wish that I could make those who have never seen a ship understand what one is like. Sailors call a ship she, and often speak of her as the old girl. Our ship was built of wood, longer than most houses, and covered in by what we call a deck.
There was a gas stove at one side, a linoleum-covered table in the centre, littered with bottles, plates, and pitchers, a bed and chairs which had known better days, new obviously bruised and battered by many enforced movings. In one corner was huddled a little group of toys. He was suddenly and guiltily aware that the woman had followed his glance. "We had them in Alder Street," she said.
Forsooth there lay below them a great stretch of grass, which whiles ran into mere quagmire, and whiles was sound and better grassed; and the said plain was seamed by three long shallow pools, with, as it were, grassy causeways between them, grown over here and there with ancient alder trees; but the stony slope whereon they had reined up bent round the plain mostly to the east, as though it were the shore of a great water; and far away to the south the hills of the forest rose up blue, and not so low at the most, but that they were somewhat higher than the crest of the White Horse as ye may see it from the little Berkshire hills above the Thames.
It was very still in there; not even the cry of a jay or the drum of a woodpecker to break the silence, until suddenly I heard voices. Then, in a tangle of young alder, I picked up a trail and came soon on a group of squaws picking wild blackberries.
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