“About two or three cents apiece, but that pays well for their work, and they bring in a heap of stuff through a winter. Of course, you know that these poles are split later, and used for barrels, the smaller ones for nail kegs, and to put around boxes. Down South all the orange boxes have such bindings.”
“Is that all the ways of earning a living up here in this wonderful country?” Thad asked, deeply interested.
“I should say decidedly not,” replied the other. “Why, I couldn’t begin to tell you the different things men do up here, besides acting as guides; fire wardens, to protect the woods; and logging. There’s the professional honey hunter who spends most of his time summers in locating bee trees. Then there’s the axe-handle man. He needs ash of a larger growth than the hoop-pole fellow. The trees are chopped in the fall, and then by means of a ‘froe’ and an axe, each handle is shaped out in a rough state. Then they are buried, that they may season without cracking.”
“How funny that is,” said Bumpus, who was listening to all this with eager ears.
“For fear that the wood may split,” continued Allan, “each end is daubed with a paint which is part grease; because ash goes to pieces mighty easy, if the sun gets at it. The rough handles are sent away to a factory to be nicely finished. Then there’s the fellow who hunts for ship knees; and I tell you he has no picnic. I tried it once, and I give you my word I don’t want to go out again.”
“Ship knees!” echoed Giraffe.
“Yes, and there are heaps of these picked up, but only after tough work. The prospector goes out with his axe, hunting for hack or back juniper, or tamarack. He must examine every one he finds to make sure it has just the right kind of a bend or crook; and then comes the job of digging it out, which is a muscle racking business, believe me.”
“Any more?” demanded Bumpus, when Allen paused to finish his coffee.
“Oh! yes, lots. I remember the fellow who goes after hemlock bark for the tanneries. Then there are the Indians who make baskets: or who prefer to have the old style birch bark canoe, to one of these elegant up-to-date canvas ones, that are built on exactly the same model as those used hundreds of years ago. Big birches are few and far between up in Maine now, and sometimes, as Sebattis here has told me, one of the Penobscots will travel nearly fifty miles before he can strike a tree large enough to make a canoe, yielding a piece of bark without a crack, or a knot-hole, where a branch has been lopped off.”
“That winds up the list, then, does it?” asked Step Hen, getting up.