The Pine Rat, in his vocation as a picker-up of every unconsidered trifle, is an adept at charcoal-burning, on the sly. The business of legitimate charcoal-manufacture is also largely practised in the Pines, although the growing value of wood interferes sadly with the coalers. Here and there, however, a few acres are marked out every year for charring, and the coal-pits are established in the clearing made by felling the trees. The "coaling," as it is technically termed, is an assemblage of "pits," or piles of wood, conical in form, and about ten feet in height by twenty in diameter. The wood is cut in equal lengths, and is piled three or four tiers high, each log resting on the end of that below it, and inclining slightly inwards. An opening is left in the centre of the pile, serving as a chimney; and the exterior is overlaid with strips of turf, called "floats," which form an almost air-tight covering. When the pile is overlaid, fire is set at various small apertures in the sides, and when the whole "pit" is fairly burning, the chimney is closed, in order to prevent too rapid combustion, and the whole pile is slowly converted into charcoal. The application of the term "pit" to these piles is worthy of remark. It is due, of course, to the fact, that for centuries it was customary to burn charcoal in excavated pits, until it was discovered that gradual combustion could be as well secured by another and less tedious method.
The Pine Rat glories in his surreptitious coal-pits. In secluded portions of the forest, he may continually be discovered pottering over a "coaling," for which he has stolen the wood. This, indeed, is his only handicraft,—the single labor to which he condescends or is equal. Two or three men sometimes band together and build themselves huts after the curious fashion peculiar to the Rat, namely, by piling sticks or branches in a slope on each side of some tall pine, so that a wigwam, with the trunk of the tree in the centre, is constructed. Inside this triangular shelter—the idea of which was probably borrowed from the Indians—the Pine Rat ensconces himself with his whiskey-bottle at night, crouching in dread of the darkness, or of Leeds's devil, aforesaid. In this respect he singularly resembles the Bohemian charcoal-burner, who trembles at the thought of Rübezahl, that malicious goblin, who has an army of mountain-dwarfs and gnomes at his command. So long as the sunlight inspires our Rat with confidence, however, he will work at his coal-pit, while one comrade is away in the forest, snaring game, and another has, perhaps, been dispatched to the precincts of civilization with his wagon-load of coal. Yes! the Pine Rat sometimes treads the streets of cities,—nay, even extends his wanderings to the banks of the Delaware and the Hudson, to Philadelphia and Trenton, to Jersey City and New York. Then, who so sharp as the grimy tatterdemalion, who passes from street to street and from house to house, with his swart and rickety wagon, and his jangling bell, the discordant clangor of which, when we hear it, calls up horrible recollections of the bells that froze our hearts in plague-stricken cities of other lands, when doomed galley-slaves and forçats wheeled awful vehicles of putrefaction through the streets, clashing and clinking their clamorous bells for more and still more corpses, and foully jesting over the Death which they knew was already upon them! But the long-drawn, monotonous, nasal cry of the charcoal-vender—who has not heard it?—"Cha-r-coa'! Cha-r-coa'!"—is more cheerful than the demoniac laughter of the desperate galley-slaves, and his bell sounds musically when we hear it and think of theirs. Sometimes a couple of these peregrinants may be seen to encounter each other in the streets, and straightway there is an adjournment to the nearest bar-room, where the most scientific method of "springing the arch" is discussed over a glass of whiskey, at three cents the quart. Springing the arch, though few may be able to interpret the phrase, is a trick by which every housewife has suffered. It is the secret of piling the coal into the measure in such a manner as to make the smaller quantity pass for the larger, or, in other words, to make three pecks go for a bushel. So the Pine Rat vindicates his claim to a common humanity with all the rest of us men and women; for have not we all our secret and most approved method of springing the arch,—of palming off our three short pecks for a full and bounteous imperial bushel? Ah, yes! brothers and sisters, whisper it, if you will, below your breath, but we all can do the Pine Rat's trick!
We shall not suffer his company much longer in this world,—poor, neglected, pitiable, darkened soul that he is, this fellow-citizen of ours. He must move on; for civilization, like a stern, prosaic policeman, will have no idlers in the path. There must be no vagrants, not even in the forest, the once free and merry greenwood, our policeman-civilization says; nay, the forest, even, must keep a-moving! We must have farms here, and happy homesteads, and orchards heavy with promise of cider, and wheat golden as hope, instead of silent aisles and avenues of mournful pine-trees, sheltering such forlorn miscreations as our poor cranberry-stealing friends! Railways are piercing the Pines; surveyors are marking them out in imaginary squares; market-gardeners are engaging land; and farmers are clearing it. The Rat is driven from point to point, from one means of subsistence to another; and shortly, he will have to make the bitter choice between regulated labor and starvation clean off from the face of the earth. There is no room for a gypsy in all our wide America! The Rat must follow the Indian,—must fade like breath from a window-pane in winter!
In fact, the forest, left so long in its aboriginal savagery, is about to be regenerated. A railroad is to be constructed, this year, which will place Hanover and the centre of the forest within one hour's travel of Philadelphia; and it is scarcely too much to anticipate, that, within five years, thousands of acres, now dense with pines and cedars of a hundred rings, will be laid out in blooming market-gardens and in fields of generous corn. Such little cultivation as has hitherto been attempted has been attended by the most astonishing results; and persons have actually returned from the West and South, in order to occupy farms in the neighborhood of Hanover.
In one respect c'est dommage; one is grieved to part with the game that is now so plentiful in the Pines. Owing to the beneficent provision of the laws of New Jersey, which stringently forbid every description of hunting in the State during alternate periods of five years, game of all kinds has an opportunity to multiply; and at the termination of the season of rest, in October, 1858, there was some noble hunting in the neighborhood of Hanover. Five years hence, bears and deer will be a tradition, panthers and raccoons a myth, partridges and quails a vain and melancholy recollection, in what shall then be known as what was once the Pines.
* * * * *
THE LAST BIRD.
Little Bird that singest
Far atop, this warm December day,
Heaven bestead thee, that thou wingest,
Ere the welcome song is done, thy way
To more certain weather,
Where, built high and solemnly, the skies,
Shaken by no storm together,
Fixed in vaults of steadfast sapphire rise!
There, the smile that mocks us
Answers with its warm serenity;
There, the prison-ice that locks us
Melts forgotten in a purple sea.