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Some of the others were less distinguishable-among them a heavily-built man in evening-dress, with a full beard and mustache which covered his face almost to his eyes soft and bushy as the hair on a Spitz dog and as black. With a leather apron and a broad-axe he would have passed at a masquerade for an executioner of the olden time.
For a time this mill was operated by Denton Offutt, and was under the immediate supervision of Lincoln. A few heavy stakes, a part of the old dam, still show themselves at low water. This broad-axe is said to have been owned originally by Abram Bales, of New Salem; and, according to tradition, it was bought from him by Lincoln. After Lincoln forsook the woods, he sold the axe to one Mr. Irvin. Mr.
'Twus sep'rated into two halves as ef 't had been clove wi' a broad-axe! Ef 'ee had 'a seed the varmint when he kim to the ground, 'ee'd 'a thort he wur double-headed. Jest then I spied the Injuns a-comin' down both sides o' the bluff; an' havin' neyther beast nor weepun, exceptin' a knife, this child tuk a notion 'twa'n't safe to be thur any longer, an' cached; he did."
He was only a few paces from the spot, when a gigantic figure, armed with a short broad-axe, and with a Roman helmet on his head, descended from the rock in front of him, and seizing the reins of the horse forced him to halt.
But compare the health of the two men, and you shall see that his aboriginal strength the white man has lost. If the traveller tell us truly, strike the savage with a broad-axe, and in a day or two the flesh shall unite and heal as if you struck the blow into soft pitch; and the same blow shall send the white man to his grave." Were this true, the fact would be fatal.
For two plain human beings, unaccustomed to the use of the broad-axe and consumed with an impatient greed of the result, the whole business melts, in the retrospect, into a nightmare of exertion, heat, hurry, and bewilderment; sweat pouring from the face like rain, the scurry of rats, the choking exhalations of the bilge, and the throbs and splinterings of the toiling axes.
Every settler had, besides his rifle, no other instrument but an axe, a hatchet, and a butcher-knife. A saw, an auger, a froe, and a broad-axe would supply a whole settlement, and were used as common property in the erection of the log-cabin. The floor of the cabin was sometimes the earth.
I sat down on a pile of old lumber near by, and passed very nearly three hours in wondering why so many broad-shouldered fellows, who could make a sabre fall as heavy as the blow of a broad-axe, were lounging about or going backward and forward upon errands that sickly boys might do as well.
For two plain human beings, unaccustomed to the use of the broad-axe and consumed with an impatient greed of the result, the whole business melts, in the retrospect, into a nightmare of exertion, heat, hurry, and bewilderment; sweat pouring from the face like rain, the scurry of rats, the choking exhalations of the bilge, and the throbs and splinterings of the toiling axes.
On the mantel a solid hewn log of oak, a miracle of broad-axe work, were "bits o' chiny" rarely valuable as antiques to the knowing connoisseur but beyond price to the old white-haired lady who daily dusted them with reverent care as having been borne by her mother from the Highland home in the far north country when as a bride she came by the "cadger's cairt" to her new home in the lonely city of Glasgow.
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