Chester turned the question, expressed more gracefully, to the Instructor.
“He should always go round an obstacle. Never clamber over a mass of rocks or anything of that nature, unless the distance is too great to flank the obstruction. Save your strength whenever you can, boys.”
The scouts were now told to give special attention to the trees, different varieties of which were continually coming into view.
“Michael, tell me what you know of that.”
The leader pointed his staff at a tree directly in front of the youth, who cocked his head to one side and squinted at it.
“With yer permission I beg leave to say we don’t have such scand’lous growths in Ireland; it seems to be trying to shed its overcoat and not making a success of the same, as Mike Flaherty said after his friends had tarred and feathered him.”
The other boys were able to give satisfactory information. You are all familiar with the “shagbark” or “shellbark” white hickory, which furnishes you the delicious nuts that too many of you are inclined to crack with your sound teeth. The wood is white, rich, solid and makes the best kind of fuel. The tree itself is tall, graceful and has large leaves. Its most striking peculiarity is the bark, which clings in shaggy slabs to the trunk, the patches being stuck in the middle with the upper and lower ends curling outward; hence the name. In the autumn, when the frosts have popped open the husks, it is rare fun for a number of boys to seize hold of a heavy beam of wood and use it as a battering ram. When after a brief, quick run it is banged against the trunk the nuts rattle down in a shower. No imported fruit can compare with our native, thin-shelled hickory nut, which does not grow very plentifully in Maine.
“These chaps know so much more than me about the trees,” remarked Mike to his chums, “I’ll show ’em proper respict by not introoding, as Berry Mulligan said when he stepped into a hornets’ nest.”
“Tell me something about that evergreen,” said the Instructor to Isaac Rothstein, who was prompt in answering:
“It is a red cedar and I think one of the finest of all trees.”