a short distance from it, we met its owner 

 who was returning. He was of uncer- 

 tain age, but with white hair and white 

 scraggy beard. He carried a bag partly 

 filled with gum and in one hand a long 

 pole having a small shovel-shaped piece 

 of steel fastened to one end. This imple- 

 ment he used to loosen a ball of gum 

 that was too high on the tree trunk to be 

 otherwise reached. 



The man proved to be Sam Lapham. 

 Bige knew him and I had often heard 

 about him. Sam spent most of the sum- 

 mer collecting spruce gum, which he was 

 able to sell for a good price. This un- 

 frequented part of the forest was one of 

 his camping places during the "gumming 

 season." The sticky juice of the spruce 

 tree oozes out through cracks in the 

 wood, and collects on the bark where it 

 hangs in lumps from the size of a child's 

 thumb up to the dimensions of a hen's 

 egg. In the course of years of exposure 

 to the air this pitchy material crystallizes, 

 "ripens/ 7 and becomes spruce gum. On 



26 



