144 AROUND AN OLD HOMESTEAD. 



the letters were stamped), far on the inside, a foot, 

 nine inches, and eighteen inches respectively within the 

 trees, and dating, of course, long before their downfall. 

 I have also followed up the old lines of some of the 

 first government surveys in the West, the blazes of 

 which were forty-five years of age and over; and it was 

 not always easy to distinguish the scars of the bruises 

 and scrapings, left perhaps by one tree falling against 

 another, from the original blazes, so indistinct had 

 these become in the years. In many cases the only way 

 by which we could with certainty recognize the blaze 

 from a scar was by the faint score marks of the ax 

 still visible in the wood, or by the fact that the edges of 

 the blaze on the bark would always be smooth where 

 the ax had shaved into the tree, and not rough and 

 uneven, as in a scar. A line tree, too, will almost al- 

 ways be blazed on both sides, and there will be others 

 in a continuous direction near it, whereas a tree is sel- 

 dom similarly bruised on both sides, and there are in 

 any event not many such in a straight course. It was 

 very interesting to rediscover and restore these lines 

 through the woods. The figures of the section, range, 

 and township could still be seen on the corner trees, 

 half a foot or more inside the tree, on the face of the 

 old blaze, almost hidden now by bark and the increase 

 of new wood bulging in at the sides. I have also traced 

 and reblazed with fresh slashes of the ax, for my own 

 use, old trails through the forest, made by the Indians 

 who had lived there or by hunters and trappers. I 

 think a beech holds a blaze the longest of any of the 

 trees, and is the best to use on that account, if on the 

 line, and the easiest for the ax. It is the one most fre- 



