146 THE PINE-TREE, OR 



ing harnesses, and doing other damage, which occasioned consid- 

 erable delay, and much swearing among the exasperated team- 

 sters. One of our little teamsters was so enraged that he chal- 

 lenged the whole company to fight him. I really believe he 

 would have engaged any one, or any number of them, had they 

 halted. 



During the first three or four days' travel, particularly up the 

 Penobscot, we find taverns at convenient distances for the ac- 

 commodation of travelers, after which we leave, on some of the 

 up-river routes, all settlements, for the distant and wild locations 

 of the logging-camps. All along these solitary routes, at con- 

 venient distances, of late years, log shanties have been erected 

 for the accommodation, principally, of supply-teams, where, dur- 

 ing the winter, the temporary inn-holders do a driving business, 

 abandoning the premises when the traveling season is over. 



It may not be uninteresting to take a peep into one of these 

 log taverns. We see here, then, rude walls thrown up of round 

 logs, notched together at the ends — a building about as high as 

 a common one-story house, covered with shingles laid upon ribs 



