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I wandered into the lonely but beautiful forest, with a companion who owned the soil, and who had told me that the lumberers were robbing him and every settler around of their best pine timber. After some toiling and tracing the sound of the axes, few and far between, felling in the distance, we came upon the unvarying boy at cookery, the axe, and the dog.
The rain prevented our continuing any longer in the woods; so giving some of our provisions and utensils to the Indians, we took leave of them. This being the steamer's day, I set out for the lake at once. The lumberers said that they came round their camps, and they gave them a vulgar name.
The Humane Hopwood was a very shy Sailer, being, in truth, as Leaky an old Tub as ever escaped breaking up for Fire-Wood at Lumberers' Wharfs, and we were seven weeks at Sea before we fell in with a trade-wind, and then setting every Rag we could hoist, went gaily before that Favourable breeze, and so cast anchor at Port Royal in the island of Jamaica. Captain Handsell was as good as his word.
There is but one clearing upon its shores, and that had been made by lumberers many years before; the place abounded with red cedar. A second growth of young timber had grown up in this spot, which was covered also with raspberry-bushes several hundred acres being entirely overgrown with this delicious berry.
We also heard the hylodes and tree-toads, and the lumberers singing in their camp a quarter of a mile off.
But if I were about to visit a party of lumberers in the forest, I should not be disposed to pass a whole winter with them. Even of a very good thing one may have too much, I would go up in the spring, when the rafts are being formed in the small tributary streams, and I would come down upon one of them, shooting the rapids of the rivers as soon as the first freshets had left the way open.
This proved rather an imaginative description on Andy's part, like many other of his verbal sketches; for the raft was infantine compared with its congeners of the great lake and the St. Lawrence. A couple of bonds lashed together that was all; and a bond containeth twenty cribs, and a crib containeth a variable amount of beams, according to lumberers' arithmetical tables.
The detachment, after passing all the establishments of lumberers, extended its explorations beyond the remotest Indian paths, and leaving its boats penetrated on foot several miles to the south of the highest point of the stream in which boats could float. In this progress through unexplored ground a lake wholly unknown was discovered.
The lumberers sometimes cook them with molasses. They were used in Arnold's expedition. This sauce was very grateful to us who had been confined to hard bread, pork, and moose-meat, and, notwithstanding their seeds, we all three pronounced them equal to the common cranberry; but perhaps some allowance is to be made for our forest appetites.
The waters of Boston harbor, two centuries ago, presented to the wondering eyes of 'divers sober and godly' persons, apparitions similar to those narrated by our veracious friend, the captain. The lumberers of the St. John tell, with bated breath, of an antique French caravel, which sails up the Carleton Falls, where no mortal vessel or steamer can follow.
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