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The feel of snow was in the air and over by the cook-shack men were hauling fire-wood on a pole-drag. The team brought up sharply before the door of the office which was located at one end of a long, low building of logs, the two other rooms of which contained stoves, chairs, and a few rough deal-tables.
A year later she entered a convent as a novice, and lived a strict life under the direction of the hermit Arseny, who wrote letters to her at long intervals. Father Sergius lived as a recluse for another seven years. At first he accepted much of what people brought him tea, sugar, white bread, milk, clothing, and fire-wood.
The fact is, I purchased a camel-load a few days ago, and his Excellency's servants had nearly begged it all away. People generally burn dried and dead branches of the palm, which, in this season, is abundant. It is not good fire-wood; there is plenty of flame and smoke, but little heat.
On his mother's last birthday though Peter didn't know then that it was to be her last he made for her his first sketch in water-colors. By herculean efforts he had managed to get his materials; he had picked berries, weeded gardens until his head whirled and his back ached, chopped fire-wood, run errands, caught crabs. Presently he had his paper and colors.
The incessant walking we were subject to, the low and unwholesome diet we had lived upon, the severe and weakening attacks of illness caused by that diet, having daily, and sometimes twice a day, to dig for water, to carry all our fire-wood from a distance upon our backs, to harness, unharness, water, and attend to the horses, besides other trifling occupations, making up our daily routine, usually so completely exhausted us, that we had neither spirit nor energy left.
Owing to the fact that the Confederates were all around us, we were short of fire-wood too. Stone river ran through the fortress, and there were some big logs in the river, which I suppose had been there ever since the work was constructed, and we dragged them out and used them to eke out our fires. They were all water-soaked, and hardly did more than smoulder, but they helped some.
The common method of dressing food here is by boiling, and as fire-wood is very scarce, and the inhabitants have no other fuel, they make use of a contrivance to save it, that is not wholly unknown in Europe, but is seldom practised, except in camps.
During damp or chilly days, and on the evenings of late September, the fire burned cheerily on the hearth of their Franklin stove. The old gentleman had a curious fancy in regard to his fire-wood. He did not want the straight, shapely sticks from their mountain land, but gnarled and crooked billets, cut from trees about the place that had required pruning and removal.
Useless timber lying exposed to the air, vine-poles, large logs of fire-wood seasoning out of doors, heaped up in front of the farmhouse porch, stumps of trees, vine-stocks and big branches of all kinds are her favourite building-yards. A solitary and industrious worker, she bores, bit by bit, circular passages the width of one's thumb, as clear-cut as though they were made with an auger.
Several black natives were seen on shore flourishing their spears. Abreast of the Endeavour was a village of about eight huts, and not far off four small canoes, with a man fishing in each. Presently an old woman with three children came out of the forest, laden with fire-wood.
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