Making salts was hard work for us, though not much harder than translating some of those fables; but one needs to work to keep warm in Northern Maine in December.
In the forenoons we would all three cut and split the ash into fire-wood, then burn it and boil the ashes. Sometimes we burned eight or ten cords in a single rick, which made from seven to ten barrels of ashes. Then we poured water into the barrels, and set earthen pans or pots underneath to catch the lye as it drained through.
When our four iron kettles,–hung with "hooks" to a long pole over our arch,–were all boiling, there was a strong odor, and the steam made our eyes smart. It took a lively fire, and we made a good many ashes in the arch.
When boiled away, the lye leaves a residuum, which, in color and general appearance, resembles brown sugar. This was the "salts." It is very strong. Compared with lye, it is like the oil of peppermint compared with peppermint tea.
We had been promised six cents a pound for salts delivered at Bangor, to be refined into soda. When we met with no interruptions, we obtained from forty to fifty pounds of salts in a day. Not a very rapid way of getting rich, yet better than nothing for boys who were determined to earn something so that we could prepare for college.
But it was shocking work for the hands, handling the lye and these "salts." Round our finger nails the skin was eaten off, and the nails themselves were warped and yellowed. Often the blood followed a single accidental slop of the "juice" which settled at the bottom of the "salts." I once heard a man who used to make salts say that he spoiled a horse by carrying a bagful of the nearly dry extract thrown across the saddle. Some of the juice trickled out, and going under the saddle, not only took the hair off, but made terrible sores, which it was found well-nigh impossible to heal. The liquid corroded our iron kettles very rapidly.
All through November, December and January we worked industriously, and studied our Latin. In summer the swamp would have been unhealthy and dangerous to life; but in winter, with the mud and water-holes frozen solidly, it was a warm, comfortable location, for it lay in a great valley, inclosed by high mountain ridges, that were covered by dense growths of pine and spruce. It fairly seemed as if the great fires which we built every afternoon warmed up the whole swamp.
Our smoke would often almost hide the sun when the weather was calm. Very little wind at any time found its way into our sheltered valley. The winter fortunately was a mild one. The snow was not more than a foot deep, and rains occasionally fell, leaving an icy crust.
One of these rain storms came during the last days of January. It thawed for two days, and then became cold on the following night. Next morning, while we were getting breakfast, boiling potatoes and baking biscuits in our tin baker, we heard out in the woods, to the east of our camp, sounds as if some animal was walking on the snow and breaking through the crust.
We listened. The sounds came nearer, and pretty soon we saw through the tree trunks that they were made by a bear. Probably the warm rain had roused him out of his winter den, or else he was starved out, for he looked surly and fierce, as if he felt cross.