“I thought I should bring you to your senses. Have you seen the pig?”
“Yes; he’s a beauty!”
“Well, you haven’t seen the garden.”
“A garden on a burn! Who ever heard of such a thing?” said Charlie.
“You don’t know everything, if you have been to Portland, and worked in a ship-yard. Come ‘long o’ me.”
He led them to the south side of the log barn, and there they beheld a sight that astonished them not a little. Right among the stumps were growing, in the greatest imaginable luxuriance, beans, peas (second crop), squashes, cucumbers, potatoes, cabbages, watermelons, and flat-turnips. The peas and squash-vines had completely covered the stumps, and large squashes were hanging from them, and lying between the great forked roots of the trees in all directions.
“Didn’t take many sticks for the peas,” said Joe, “stumps are so thick. What do you think of that for a cowcumber?” pointing to a very large one. “Just see the watermillions!” taking up one as large as a large pumpkin. “All this kind of truck grows first-rate on a burn—squashes, turnips, peas, and especially watermillions. But come, if we are going to set that bear-trap, it’s time we were at it.”
When they arrived at the place Joe had selected, he cut a large log, three feet in diameter and about fifteen feet long, rolled another of the same length and size on top of it, then set two large stakes at each end where the two logs were to touch each other, driving them down with his axe. These were to keep the top log from rolling off the under one. They now lifted the top log up. It was as much as the three could lift, and John held it with a handspike, while Joe and Charlie set the trap, which was done in this manner: A round stick was laid across the bottom log, and a sharpened stake set under the upper one, the end of it resting on this round stick, and the bait fastened to the round stick. The moment the bear pulled the bait towards him, it caused the round stick to roll, and down came the great log on his head.
“I could have set it more ticklish,” said Joe, “but I was afraid the wind would spring it; and these plaguy coons, that eat whatever a bear eats, will do it.”
It is evident, that as the trap is now arranged, the bear might approach on the side, pull the bait out, and spring the trap without being caught. In order to prevent this, a row of strong stakes is set in the ground on the side where the bait is, forming a pen enclosing the bait placed upon the end of the round stick, which projects into the pen; thus the bear, in order to reach the bait, must crawl between and across the logs, and by pulling the bait, brings down the top log upon him.