The American Larch or Tamarack, a Tree of the 



Swamps 



Jay Traver 



" 'Give me of your roots, Tamarack! 

 Of your fibrous roots, O Larch- tree! 

 My canoe to bind together 

 vSo to bind the ends together 

 That the water may not em 

 That the water may not wet mc. 

 And the larch with all its fibers 

 Shivered in the air of morning, 

 Touched his forehead with its tassels, 

 Said with one long sigh of sorrow, 

 Take them all, O Hiawatha.* " 



So sang the poet Longfellow in his beautiful poem of the Ameri- 

 can Indian as he used to be. We see at once from the dialogue 

 above the usefulness of the larch-tree to the craftsman-ship of the 

 Indians, especially in the manufacture of those wonderful canoes 



which could 



"Float upon the water 

 Like a yellow water-lily." 



Not only was the larch of importance to the Indians, but it is of 

 great commercial importance at the present day. Its strong, 

 fibrous wood is extremely valuable for the building of ships, rail- 

 road-ties and telegraph poles, and is quite extensively used for 

 furniture, especially for beautiful cabinet work, for it may be 

 polished very highly. The species which grows on the Apennines 

 is quite remarkable for its ability to take a high polish. It is said 

 that Raphael painted many of his earliest pictures on boards from 

 the larch-tree. This tree is well adapted for strong, tall masts for 

 ships; it is very durable, so much so that in certain old French 

 castles the beams of this wood have been found to be intact after 

 the stones around them had crumbled. Many old stories are in 

 existence concerning the durability and the incombustibility of the 

 wood of this tree. It is said that Julius Caesar when besieging a 

 castle in the Alps, wished to set fire to a wooden tower in front of 

 the gates. He heaped up logs of larch around it, but was abso- 

 lutely unable to make them burn. He must have then been 

 reminded that 



"robusta larix igni impenetrabile lignum." 



Another quite different tale comes to us from Evelyn, one of the 

 first Englishmen to write about trees, of a ship which was found 



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