From some unassigned reason, wolves have increased of late years in the wild forests of north-eastern Maine. Up to 1840, Mr Springer, who had been much in that district, logging in winter and clearing land in summer, never saw one. Since then they have frequently been seen in numerous parties, and of most formidable size. There would not seem to be much to choose, as far as the pleasure of the thing goes, between an encounter with one of these ravenous brutes and a tussle with a catamount. Springer, however, who must be competent to judge, considers the catamount the worse customer. He tells an ugly story, which may serve as a pendant to that of the bear's breakfast on live beef, of what happened to a logger named Smith, when on his way to join a timbering party in the woods. He had nearly reached camp, when he fell in with a catamount, or "Indian devil." Retreat was impossible; for reflection there was no time: arms he had none. Acting from impulse, he sprang up a small tree—perhaps as sensible a thing as he could have done. He had scarcely ascended his length, when the creature, fierce from hunger, made a bound and caught him by the heel. Although badly bitten, Smith managed to get his foot out of the shoe, in which the tiger-cat's teeth were firmly set, and shoe and savage fell together to the ground. What then ensued is so horrible and extraordinary that we should suspect our wood-cutting friend of imaginative decoration, but for the assurance he gives us in his preface, that "the incidents he has related are real, and that in no case is the truth sacrificed to fancy or embellishment." He shall finish his yarn himself.
"The moment he was disengaged, Smith sprang for a more secure position, and the animal at the same time leaped to another large tree, about ten feet distant, up which he ascended to an elevation equal to that of his victim, from which he threw himself upon him, firmly fixing his teeth in the calf of his leg. Hanging suspended thus until the flesh, insufficient to sustain the weight, gave way, he dropped again to the ground, carrying a portion of flesh in his mouth. Having greedily devoured this morsel, he bounded again up the opposite tree, and from thence upon Smith, in this manner renewing his attacks, and tearing away the flesh in mouthfuls from his legs. During this agonising operation, Smith contrived to cut a limb from the tree, to which he managed to bind his jack-knife, with which he could now assail his enemy at every leap. He succeeded thus in wounding him so badly that at length his attacks were discontinued, and he disappeared in the dense forest."
Smith, who, as Springer coolly informs us, "had exerted his voice to the utmost," whilst the catamount was devouring him in detail, (we can perfectly imagine a man bellowing like twenty bulls under such circumstances,) was found by his friends in a state of dreadful exhaustion and suffering, and was carried to camp on a litter. He ultimately recovered, but had sustained irreparable injuries. "Such desperate encounters are of rare occurrence," Springer quietly adds. We should think they were. Really these loggers are cool hands. Encounters with black bears are much more common, we are informed. These are strong fellows, clever at parrying blows, and at wrenching the weapon from their assailant's hand—very tenacious of life, and confirmed robbers. Springer and his comrades were once, whilst ascending a river, followed by one of them for several days. He was bent upon plunder, and one night he walked off with a bundle containing clothing, boots, shaving implements, and other things, for which it might be thought a bear could have little occasion. He examined his prize in the neighbourhood of the camp, tore the clothes to shreds, and chewed up the cow-hide boots and the handle of a razor. From the roof of a log-house, which the woodmen erected a few miles farther on, he carried off a ten-gallon keg of molasses, set it on one end, knocked the head in or out, and was about to enjoy the feast, when he was discovered, pursued, and at last killed. At page 140 we find a capital account of a fight between a family of bears (father, mother, and cubs) and two foresters; and at page 100 the stirring-up of a bear's den is graphically described.
The pine tree is subject to disease of more than one kind, the most frequent being a sort of cancer, known amongst lumber-men as "Conk" or "Konkus," whose sole external manifestation is a small brown spot, usually at several feet from the ground, and sometimes no larger than a shilling. The trees thus afflicted are noway inferior to the soundest in size and apparent beauty; but on cutting into them the rot is at once evident, the wood being reddish in colour, and of spungy texture. "Sometimes it shoots upwards, in imitation of the streaming light of the aurora borealis; in others downwards, and even both ways, preserving the same appearance." Unscrupulous loggers cheat the unwary by driving a knot or piece of a limb of the same tree into the plague-spot, and hewing it off smoothly, so as to give it the appearance of a natural knot. A great many pines are hollow at the base or butt, and these hollows are the favourite winter-retreats of Bruin the bear.
"A few rods from the main logging road where I worked one winter," said Mr Johnston, (a logger whom Springer more than once quotes,) "there stood a very large pine tree. We had nearly completed our winter's work, and it still stood unmolested, because, from appearances, it was supposed to be worthless. Whilst passing it one day, not quite satisfied with the decision that had been made upon its quality, I resolved to satisfy my own mind touching its value; so, wallowing to it through the snow, which was nearly up to my middle, I struck it several blows with the head of my axe, an experiment to test whether a tree be hollow or not. When I desisted, my attention was arrested by a slight scratching and whining. Suspecting the cause, I thumped the tree again, listening more attentively, and heard the same noise as before. It was a bear's den. Examining the tree more closely, I discovered a small hole in the trunk, near the roots, with a rim of ice on the edge of the orifice, made by the freezing of the breath and vapour from the inmates."
The logging crew were summoned, and came scampering down, eager for the fun. The snow was kicked away from the root of the tree, exposing the entrance to the den; and a small hole was cut in the opposite side, through which the family of bears were literally "stirred up with a long pole;" and when the great she-bear, annoyed at this treatment, put her head out at the door, she was cut over the pate with an axe.
"The cubs, four in number—a thing unusual by one-half—we took alive, and carried to camp, kept them a while, and finally sold them. They were quite small and harmless, of a most beautiful lustrous black, and fat as porpoises. The old dam was uncommonly large—we judged she might weigh about three hundred pounds. Her hide, when stretched out and nailed on to the end of the camp, appeared quite equal to a cow's hide in dimensions."
The attacks of wild animals are far from being the sole dangers to which the wood-cutters of Maine are exposed in following their toilsome occupation. Scarcely any phase of their adventurous existence is exempt from risk. Bad wounds are sometimes accidentally received from the axe whilst felling trees. To heal these, in the absence of surgeons, the loggers are thrown upon their own very insufficient resources. Life is also constantly endangered in felling the pine, which comes plunging down, breaking, splitting, and crushing all before it. The broken limbs which are torn from the fallen tree, and the branches it wrenches from other trees,
"rendered brittle by the intense frosts, fly in every direction, like the scattered fragments of an exploding ship. Often these wrenched limbs are suspended directly over the place where our work requires our presence, and on the slightest motion, or from a sudden gust of wind, they slip down with the stealthiness of a hawk and the velocity of an arrow. I recollect one in particular, which was wrenched from a large pine I had just felled. It lodged in the top of a towering birch, directly over where it was necessary for me to stand whilst severing the top from the trunk. Viewing its position with some anxiety, I ventured to stand and work under it, forgetting my danger in the excitement. Whilst thus engaged, the limb slipped from its position, and, falling directly before me, end foremost, penetrated the frozen earth. It was about four inches through, and ten feet long. It just grazed my cap; a little variation, and it would have dashed my head to pieces. Attracted on one occasion, whilst swamping a road, by the appearance of a large limb which stuck fast in the ground, curiosity induced me to extricate it, for the purpose of seeing how far it had penetrated. After considerable exertion, I succeeded in drawing it out, when I was amazed to find a thick cloth cap on the end of it. It had penetrated the earth to a considerable depth. Subsequently I learned that it [the cap, we presume, but Springer makes sad work of his pronouns] belonged to a man who was killed instantly by its fall, [here our logging friend must be supposed to refer to the timber,] striking him on the head, and carrying his cap into the ground with it."
This is not impossible, although it does a little remind us of certain adventures of the renowned Munchausen. And Springer is so pleasant a fellow, that we shall not call his veracity in question, or even tax him with that tinting of truth in which many of his countrymen excel, but of which he only here and there lays himself open to suspicion. He certainly does put our credulity a little to the strain by an anecdote of a moose deer, which he gives, however, between inverted commas, on the authority of a hunter who occasionally passed the night at the logger's camp. The moose is the largest species of deer found in the New-England forests, its size varying from that of a large pony to that of a full-grown horse. It has immense branching antlers, and, judging from its portrait, which forms the frontispiece to Forest Life, we readily believe Springer's assurance, that "the taking of moose is sometimes quite hazardous." Quite astonishing, we are sure the reader will say, is the following ride:—