TURPENTINE FROM BRITISH FIRS. 345 



extracting turpentine; which is done by cutting a hollow in 

 the tree about six inches from the ground, and then taking 

 the bark off from a space of about eighteen inches above it, 

 from the sappy wood. The turpentine runs from April to 

 October, and is caught by the hollow befow. Some of the 

 trees were cut on two sides, and only a strip of the bark 

 left of about four inches in breadth on each of the other 

 two sides, for conveyance of the sap necessary for the sup- 

 port of the tree. A Captain Cook, with whom I had beeia 

 travelling, informed me, that some trees would run six or 

 seven years, and that every year the bark was cut away 

 higher and higher, till the tree would run no longer, and I 

 observed many that had done running, and they were in 

 general stripped of the bark on two sides, as high as a man 

 could reach, and some were dead from the operation ; others 

 did not look much the worse for it. I find the usual task 

 is for one man to attend three thousand trees, which, taken 

 together, would produce from one hundred to one hundred 

 and ten barrels of turpentine. 



April 15, 1792. 

 ON my return from Wilmington to Cowen's tavern, dis- Farther ac- 

 tant about sixteen miles, I was informed, that the master '^'^"^^ ^ ^^' 

 of the house had been a superintendant of negroes, who 

 collected turpentine. I found the information I had be- 

 fore received was not perfectly correct ; he told me he at- 

 tended to six slaves for a year for a planter, and between 

 the 1st of April and the 1st of September they made six 

 hundred barrels of turpentine. The cutting the trees 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 neces- 

 sary 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 

 running. While in North Carolina, I was particular in 

 my inquiries respecting the making of tar and |)itch, and I 

 saw several tar-kilns; they have two sorts of wood that Tar made from 

 they make it from, both of which are the pitch-pine; the^°^^°'^^'' 

 sort from which most of it is made are old trees, which 

 have fallen down in the woods, and the sap rotted offj and 



is 



