IN THE PINES. 227 



So our poet-naturalist tries to emulate the early set- 

 tlers and turn chandler himself, and gives us his proc- 

 ess of making tallow in the following paragraph : 



" I have since made some tallow myself. Holding a 

 basket beneath the bare twigs in April, I rubbed them 

 together between my hands, and thus gathered a quart 

 in twenty minutes, to which were added enough to 

 make three pints, and I might have gathered them 

 much faster with a suitable rake and a shallow basket. 

 They have little prominences like those of an orange, 

 all creased in tallow, which also fills the interstices 

 down to the stone. The oily part rose to the top, mak- 

 ing it look like a savory black broth, which smelled 

 much like balm or other herb tea. You let it cool, 

 then skim off the tallow from the surface, melt this 

 again and strain it. I got about a quarter of a ppund 

 weight .from my three pints, and more yet remained 

 within the berries." 



What use he made of his tallow is lost to the world, 

 and we are left to infer that the experiment was simply 

 to test the truth of the record, winch gives us another 

 instance of his accepting nothing upon trust. 



How many lives have come and gone since the chil- 

 dren of the pioneers gathered the berries to light -their 

 cabins, and what a change in the lives of their descend- 

 ants ! while, extensive tracts of pine-barrens are to this 

 day unchanged — precisely the same as the early settlers 

 found them two centuries ago. But within a few years 

 past it has been found that the pine-barrens of Southern 



