After the swamps, rivers, and lakes freeze, and the fallen snow has covered the ground, supplies for the rest of the winter and spring operations, consisting of hay, grain, flour, beef, pork, molasses, &c., are hauled on to the ground with horse-teams. In some instances the route extends two hundred and fifty miles from the head of ship navigation. As these routes, for the most part, lay through dense forests, over rough roads, along the frozen channels of rivers, across bleak and expansive lakes, far removed from the fireside and home of the hardy logger, there is something of the hardships of adventure, if not its romance, connected with the experience of these transporting teams during their winter trips.
Sometimes loaded sleds break down in their passage over the rough forest roads, or horses tire by extra exertion over untrodden snows, and night overtakes the lone teamster, many miles from the abode of any human being, amid frosts and snow, without fire and without comfortable sustenance. Detaching his horses, and covering them with their blankets, if he be loaded with hay, he allows them to feed from the load during the night, while, muffled in his coat, he burrows deep in the hay, alternately lulled and aroused by the tinkling of the horses' bells and by the howling of the hungry wolf. Sometimes the treacherous ice parts beneath his horses, and the swift current carries them under, hiding them in a moment and forever from his vision. I recollect the occurrence of the following thrilling event. It is customary to travel on ice as far as it makes on the rivers and streams, taking to the shore to pass the open and rapid sections, and then returning to the river and traveling as before. Returning homeward, after a trip into the woods with a load of provision, just at nightfall, might have been seen a span of fine horses, measuring off their ten miles an hour with the ease and fleetness of reindeers, upon the smooth surface of one of our eastern rivers far up in the interior. With vision circumscribed by the gathering darkness, and misjudging his position, the driver, quietly seated upon his sled, failed to see the danger in season to check the speed of his horses, when suddenly he plunged into one of those open places in the river where the water ran too rapidly to allow it to freeze. A few rods below the ice closed over again, beneath which the current swept with fearful rapidity. With the teamster still floating upon the half-sunken sled, the horses swam directly down with the current to the edge of the ice below. The moment they reached it, the noble creatures, as if confident of clearing the chilling element at a bound, simultaneously reared, and, striking their fore feet upon the ice, their hinder parts sank in the deep channel, and, falling backward, they were swept beneath the ice, together with the sled attached, and were drowned, while the teamster alone escaped by springing from the sled before it went under.
When a team breaks in where the water is stagnant, a deliberate and calculating teamster may succeed in extricating his horses, while a shiftless man will let them drown. A gentleman of my acquaintance harnessed a fine mare into a single sled, loaded with provisions, which he sent by an Irishman up into the woods to his logging-camps. While passing the river, the horse broke in, and, after struggling several hours, sank through exhaustion and chill, and was drowned.
In giving a brief account of the affair, Pat, evidently affected by the disaster, observed, "Ah! indade, sir, but she looked at me very wishfully, indade she did, sir!" "But why did you not help her, Patrick?" "'Dade, sir, an' didn't I put on the whip pretty smartly, sure?"
It is quite common for drogers, as they are sometimes called, to form a northern caravan, by congregating together in their up-river tours to the number of twenty, and sometimes thirty teams. Some of these are composed of two horses, and others from four to six. Company, and mutual assistance in cases of necessity, are the motives which unite them, and the difficulties which they encounter often call into requisition this friendly interference.
I was once passing up the Penobscot in company with twenty or thirty horse-teams, all loaded with supplies, immediately after a thaw, which had so far wasted the snow that we were obliged to leave the land road, and, at some risk, venture upon the ice, although in many places it was thin, and covered with water to the depth of two feet.
It was deemed prudent to form a line with the teams at such distances apart as would subject the ice to the pressure of one team only on a given point, the whole preceded by a man with ax in hand to test its capacity to bear the approaching load. In some instances, where the current was stagnant, the ice was sufficiently strong to bear us for a mile or two without much alteration in our course. In places where the swiftness of the current had prevented the formation of ice of suitable thickness, we were obliged to use much caution, passing from one side of the river to the other to avoid suspicious places, making but little progress in our serpentine path. In this way several miles had been traveled without accident, which induced our pilot to exercise less vigilance, when suddenly the line was broken by the disappearance of one team through the ice. The alarm passed along the line, with the order to "Hold up! a team in!" "Don't close up; we shall all be in together!" But teamsters are afraid of ice over a running current; indeed, there is imminent danger to life under such circumstances. Some reined up; others, taking alarm, made for the shore; others put their horses into the run and passed by; while others, more cool and generous, came to the rescue of the drowning team. It proved to be a pair of our heaviest horses. The load consisted of thirteen barrels of pork, with other lighter articles, the whole team and load weighing over three tons. It was the work of but a few moments to extricate the horses, after disengaging them from their harness. The barrels rolled from the sled, and sank in fifteen feet of water. The most of the teamsters concurred in the opinion that the barrels were not recoverable; but, procuring a long pole, with a sharp pike in the end, I ran it down and stuck it firmly into one of the staves, and raised one barrel with perfect ease to the surface. A rope was thrown around it, by which it was rolled out upon the firm ice. Thus one after another was fished up, reloaded, and we were under way again in less than an hour.
About noon we stopped to feed the horses and take some dinner on the ice. Unloosing the straps which attached the horses to the pole, we proceeded to bait. While thus situated, a company of volunteers, returning from the bloodless boundary war on the Aroostook, passed us, who, to amuse themselves, wantonly discharged a volley of musketry, which created a tremendous panic among our horses, causing them to upset several loads, breaking harnesses, and doing other damage, which occasioned considerable delay, and much swearing among the exasperated teamsters. One of our little teamsters was so enraged that he challenged the whole company to fight him. I really believe he would have engaged any one, or any number of them, had they halted.
During the first three or four days' travel, particularly up the Penobscot, we find taverns at convenient distances for the accommodation of travelers, after which we leave, on some of the up-river routes, all settlements, for the distant and wild locations of the logging-camps. All along these solitary routes, at convenient distances, of late years, log shanties have been erected for the accommodation, principally, of supply-teams, where, during the winter, the temporary inn-holders do a driving business, abandoning the premises when the traveling season is over.
