TURPENTINE, ROSIN, PITCH, &C. 173 



The workiug commences about April, and continues through the 

 summer. 



" The cutting the trees/' says an intelligent writer in the Trans, 

 actions of the Society of Arts and Manufactures, " for the purpose 

 of collecting is called boxing them, and it is reckoned a good day's 

 work to box sixty in a day ; the trees will not run longer than four 

 years, and it is necessary to take off a thin piece of the wood about 

 once a week, and also as often as it rains, as that stops the trees run- 

 ning. While in North Carolina, I was particular in my enquiries 

 respecting the making of tar and pitch, and I saw several tar kilns; 

 they have two sons of wood that they make it from, both of which 

 are the pitch pine : the sort from which most of it is made are old 

 trees, wi.ich have fallen down in the woods, and whose sap is rotted off, 

 and is what they call light wood, not from the weight of it, as it is 

 very heavy, but from its combustible nature, as il will light with a 

 candle, and a piece of it thrown into the fire will give light enough 

 to read and write by. All the pitch-pine will not become light- 

 wood ; the people concerned in making tar know it from the ap- 

 pearance of the turpentine in the grain of the wood. The other 

 sort of wood which is used, after the trees which have been boxed 

 for turpentine have done running, they split off the faces over which 

 the turpentine has run ; and of this wood is made what is called 

 green tar, being made from green wood instead of dry. 



f* When a sufficient quantity of wood is got together, the first 

 step is to fix a stake in the ground, to which they fasten a string, and 

 from the stake, as a centre, they describe a circle on the ground 

 according to the size they wish to have the kiln They consider 

 that one, twenty feet in diameter, and fourteen feet high, should pro- 

 duce them two hundred barrels of tar. They then dig out all the 

 earth a spit deep, shelving inwards within the circle, and sloping to 

 the centre ; the earth taken out is thrown up in a bank about one 

 foot and a half high round the edge of the circle ; they next get a 

 pine that will split straight, of a sufficient length to reach from the 

 centre of the circle some way beyond the bank ; this pine is split 

 through the middle, and both parts are then hollowed out after 

 which they are put together, and sunk in such a way, that one end 

 which comes without the bank, where a hole is dug in the ground 

 for the tar to run into, aud whence the tar is taken up and barrelled 



