

IN THE LUMBER WOODS 



221 



Very delicious are his smoking dishes of baked beans, which 

 have been cooking all night in a ' bean hole,' This is a pit of 

 glowing hardwood coals in which the pot is buried, and afterwards 

 covered over entirely with fresh earth, leaving the beans to simmer 

 gently throughout the long winter's night. Very crisp and brown 

 are his red and white streaked slices of pork and bacon. He knows 

 exactly the juncture when to fork them out of the sputtering fry- 

 ing-pan. Tea, black as ink, sweetened with molasses or ' sugar 

 house syrup ', is always near the fire by day and by night, and is 

 used in vast quantities. Sometimes in a rare fit of good humour 

 the cook will brew ' spruce beer ', a wonderful concoction, which 



A FOREST LUMBER CAMP ON THE LA HAVE, NOVA SCOTIA. 



is said to naturalize a man to the forest at once, and make him 

 dream of the wind soughing among the swaying branches of the 

 pines all the night through. 



No picture of lumber camp is complete without some descrip- 

 tion of man's constant forest companion, that drab-coloured imp 

 of iniquity known as the moose bird, also as the ' whiskey jack ' 

 and ' camp robber'. The familiarity of these birds is astonishing. 

 Giving vent to extraordinary cries they enter the door and steal 

 from beside the camp fire whenever the cook's back is turned. 

 Their harsh notes, sometimes musical but generally discordant, 

 are almost the only sounds in nature which disturb the tense 



