112 A TASTE OF MAINE BIRCH. 



made especially for the camper-opt ; yes, and for the 

 woodman and frontiersman generally. It is a mag- 

 azine, a furnishing store set up in the wilderness, 

 whose goods are free to every comer. The whole 

 equipment of the camp lies folded in it, and comes 

 forth at the heck of the woodman's axe ; tent, water- 

 proof roof, boat, camp utensils, buckets, cups, plates, 

 spoons, napkins, table-cloths, paper for letters or your 

 journal, torches, candles, kindling-wood, and fuel. 

 The canoe-birch yields you its vestments with the 

 utmost liberality. Ask for its coat, and it gives you 

 its waistcoat also. Its bark seems wrapped about it 

 layer upon layer, and comes off with great ease. We 

 saw many rude structures and cabins shingled and 

 sided with it, and haystacks capped with it. Near a 

 maple-sugar camp there was a large pile of birch- 

 bark sap-buckets, each bucket made of a piece of 

 bark about a yard square, folded up as the tinman 

 folds up a sheet of tin to make a square vessel, the 

 corners bent around against the sides and held by a 

 wooden pin. When, one day, we were overtaken by 

 a shower in traveling through the woods, our guide 

 quickly stripped large sheets of the bark from a near 

 tree, and we had each a perfect umbrella as by 

 magic. When the rain was over, and we moved on, 

 I wrapped mine about me like a large leather apron, 

 and it shielded my clothes from the wet bushes. 

 When we came to a spring, Uncle Nathan would 

 have a birch-bark cup ready before any of us could 

 get a tin one out of his knapsack, and I think water 



