178 LITERARY PILGRIMAGES 



first made. Then the iron with a half-circle cut- 

 ting edge was driven in deep at the bottom of this 

 to make a place for the spout of hard wood, 

 grooved with a gouge and finished with draw- 

 shave and pocket-knife. Troughs of white maple 

 or basswood, split in halves, dug out with the axe 

 and smoothed with the gouge, were used to catch 

 the sap, which was gathered in hand-made pails 

 hung from a " sap-yoke " which rested on the 

 bearer's shoulders and took the weight. 



The boiling was in the big black iron kettle 

 which the elder Grimes remembers so well. It 

 was hung by chains from a pole set up on two 

 crotched sticks. Beneath it were two big green 

 logs between which the fire was kept. Sugar 

 houses were unknown and dry wood was rare, 

 yet with care a respectably clean sugar was made. 



A piece of wood taken from one of these trees 

 in 1873 i s s tiU preserved in Vermont. It is twenty 

 inches by four, yet it shows five boxing places, 

 two deep in the wood and three that the later 

 growth of the tree had not been able to cover. 

 Sugar was made from these trees in 1764, and 

 they were tapped each year by some member of 



