[16] Wood is used for fuel throughout Germany, and the numerous forests are under the care of officers, called foresters, who have assistants, called huntsmen, under them; they plant, thin, manage, and cut the timber; also preserve game, kill vermin, &c.—Tr.
[17] Rough shanties and small log-houses are sometimes covered with planks, as in the text; but the more usual course in America is to roof houses with shingles, which are rectangular pieces of pine split (with a shingle knife) into the thickness of about a quarter of an inch, or less, and these are nailed on, overlapping each other, like tiles; they are light, weathertight, and durable, and only inferior to tiles, slate or tin, in being more liable to accidents by fire.—Tr.
[18] As the old chimney, even assuming it to have been of brick, would not have sufficed, the reader may perhaps ask where the bricks and mortar came from; but it is common in shanties in the woods, when these cannot be had, to form chimneys of slabs of bass-wood, and plaster them with clay. It need hardly be added that they sometimes take fire.—Tr.
[19] Persons who once take to chopping—i. e., felling trees—prefer it to all other work, and even feel a kind of passion for it.—Tr.
CHAPTER V. EXCURSIONS HITHER AND THITHER.
We have almost too long neglected a principal person in our narrative, Young Werner; we left him sadly musing on the banks of the beautiful Hudson River, and must now return to him.
"Well," said Helldorf, smiling, "have you nearly done looking? My friend, my friend, it almost seems to me as though the most serious thoughts in the world—thoughts of marriage—were floating in your head. Consider that your chief object in coming to America was to earn something, and that until that is done—— Well, then," he said, interrupting himself with a smile, when he saw that Werner turned his back impatiently upon him, "it's the old story, and all that I may say will not alter it. But come along, Werner, else we shall really miss our boat, and that's the most important thing to us at present."
"And will you indeed accompany me, my dear Helldorf?" asked the young man.