Gaining Experience--Getting Wet.
Some field experience which I had acquired in surveying when a sophomore
in college, assisted me greatly in quickly learning how to subdivide the
sections, while my knowledge of timber gained at an early age, when
assisting my father in choosing trees in the forest suitable for his
uses as a manufacturer, aided me greatly in judging the quality and
quantity of the pine timber growing in the greater forests of the
Northwest.
Freshly equipped with provisions, and with plats corrected up to date,
we returned to the deep woods. There we divided into parties of only
two--the land looker and his assistant. The latter's duty was chiefly to
help carry the supplies of uncooked foods, blankets, tent, etc., to
pitch tent at night, and, ordinarily, to do the most of the cooking,
though seldom all of it. On some days much good vacant (unentered) pine
was found, and on other days none at all. Several miles of woods were at
times laboriously passed through, without seeing any timber worth
entering (buying). Some portions would consist of hardwood ridges of
maple, oak, elm; some of poplar, birch, basswood; others of long
stretches of tamarack and spruce swamps, sections of which would be
almost without wooded growth, so marshy and wet that the moss-covered
bottom would scarcely support our weight, encumbered as we always were
by pack sacks upon our backs, which weighed when starting as much as
sixty pounds and sometimes more. Their weight diminished daily as we
cooked and ate from our store which they contained.
[Illustration: "The almost saucy, yet sociable red squirrel". (Page
48.)]
Windfalls--places where cyclones or hurricanes had passed--were
sometimes encountered. The cyclones left the trees twisted and broken,
their trunks and branches pointing in various directions; the hurricanes
generally left the trees tipped partly or entirely to the ground, their
roots turned up and their trunks pointing quite uniformly in the same
relative direction. The getting through, over, under, and _beyond_ these
places, which vary from a few rods to a possible mile across, especially
in winter when the mantle of snow hides the pitfalls and screens the
rotten trunks and limbs from view, tries the courage, patience, and
endurance of the woodsman. All of the time he must use his compass and
keep his true direction as well as measure the distance, otherwise he
would not know where he was located. Without this knowledge his work
could not proceed.
Sometimes we would come to a natural meadow grown up with alders, around
the borders of which stood much young poplar. A stream of water flowed
through the meadow, and the beavers had discovered that it was eminently
fitted, if not designed, for their necessities. Accordingly, they had
selected an advantageous spot where nature had kindly thrown up a bank
of earth on each side and drawn the ends down comparatively near to the
stream. Small trees were near by, and these they had cut down, and then
cut into such lengths as were right, in their judgment, for constructing
a water-tight dam across the narrow channel between the two opposite
banks of earth. The flow of water being thus checked by the beaver dam,
the water set-back and overflowed the meadow to its remotest confines,
and even submerged some of the trunks of the trees to perhaps a depth of
two feet. Out further in the meadow and amongst the alders where had
flowed the natural stream, the water in the pond was much deeper.
These ponds sometimes lay directly across the line of our survey and
inconvenienced us greatly. We disliked to make "offsets" in our lines
and thus go around the dam, for the traveling in such places was usually
very slow and tedious. The saving of time is always important to the
land hunter, since he must carry his provisions, and wishes to
accomplish all that is possible before the last day's rations are
reached. It was not strange, then, if we first tried the depth of the
water in the pond by wading and feeling our way. While we could keep our
pack sacks from becoming wet, we continued to wade toward the opposite
shore, meantime remembering or keeping in sight some object on the
opposite shore, in the direct course we must travel, which we had
located by means of our compass before entering the water. Sometimes a
retreat had to be made by reason of too great depth of water. During the
summer months we did not mind simply getting wet clothes by wading; but
once in the fall just before ice had formed, this chilly proposition of
wading across, was undertaken voluntarily, and was only one of many
uncomfortable things that entered into the woodsman's life.
Subjected thus to much inconvenience and discomfort by those valuable
little animals, we could but admire their wisdom in choosing places for
their subaqueous homes. They feed upon the bark of the alder, the
poplar, the birch, and of some other trees. These grew where they
constructed their dam and along the margin of the pond of water thus
formed. They cut down these trees by gnawing entirely around their
trunks, then they cut off branches and sections of the trunks of the
trees, and drew them into their houses under the ice. Most trees cut by
the beaver are of small diameter. I once measured one beaver stump and
found it to be fourteen inches in diameter. I still have in my
possession a section of a white cedar stump measuring seventeen inches
in circumference that had been gnawed off by beavers. It is the only
cedar tree I have ever known to have been cut down by these wise little
creatures.