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Handbook of Nature-Study 



woods, where it eventually arrived after numerous stops for reloading almost 

 everything but the kettle. 



When we came to the boiling place, we lifted the kettle into position and 

 flanked it with two great logs against which the fire was to be kindled. 

 Meanwhile the oxen and stoneboat returned to the house for a load of 

 buckets. The oxen blinking, with bowed heads, or with noses lifted aloft 

 to keep the underbrush from striking their faces, "gee'd and haw'd" up hill 

 and down dale through the woods, stopping here and there while the men 

 with augers bored holes in certain trees near other holes which had bled 

 sweet juices in years gone by. When the auger was withdrawn, the sap 

 followed it, and enthusiastic young tongues met it half way, though they 

 received more chips than sweetness therefrom ; then the spiles were driven 

 in with a wooden mallet. 



The next day after "tapping," those of us large enough to wear the neck- 

 yoke donned cheerfully this badge of servitude and with its help brought 



pails of sap to the kettle, and the 

 "boiling" began. As the evening 

 shades gathered, how delicious was 

 the odor of the sap steam, per- 

 meating the woods farther than 

 the shafts of firelight pierced the 

 gloom! How weird and delightful 

 was this night experience in the 

 woods! And how cheerfully we 

 swallowed the smoke which the 

 contrary wind seemed ever to turn 

 toward us! We poked the fire to 

 send the sparks upward, and now 

 and then added more sap from a 

 barrel, and removed the scum from 

 the boiling liquid with a skimmer 

 thrust into the cleft of a long stick 

 for a handle. As the evening wore 

 on, we drew closer to each other 

 as we told stories of the Indians, 

 bears, panthers and wolves which 

 had roamed these woods when our 

 father was a little boy; and came 

 to each of us a disquieting suspicion 



Sugar maple growing in the open. 



that perhaps they were not all gone 

 yet, for everything seemed possible 

 in those night-shrouded woods ; and 



our hearts suddenly "jumped into our throats" when near by there 

 sounded the tremulous, blood-curdling cry of the screech owl. 



After about three days of gathering and boiling sap, came the "siruping 

 down." During all that afternoon we added no more sap and we watched 

 carefully the tawny, steaming mass in the kettle; when it threatened to 

 boil over, we threw in a thin slice of fat pork which seemed to have some 

 mysterious calming influence. The odor grew more and more delicious and 

 presently the sirup was pronounced sufficiently thick. The kettle was 

 swung off the logs and the sirup dipped through a cloth strainer into a 

 carrying-pail. Oh, the blackness of the residue left on that strainer! But 



