A CURIOUS LETTER BOX 



Bv TAPPAN ADNEY 



HE sight of a 

 little box nailed 

 to a post or tree 

 at the side of the 

 country road is 

 perhaps familiar 

 enough to us all. 

 But what made 

 this one, which I 

 show in the pic- 

 ture, seem so 

 odd, was that it 

 was far from any 

 mail route, and also it was in that part 

 of North America over which King 

 Edward holds sway, yet it bore in 

 plain letters.. "U. S. Mail." The rest 

 of the writing on the box would be 

 quite unintelligible without an explana- 

 tion. The box was set up on the road 

 to a lumber camp in the lumber 

 woods of Canada, at a point where 

 the road forked and a branch led to 

 another camp. Twice a week for 

 many years the old mail driver with 

 letters for the river settlement had 

 brought the mail up from the railroad 

 to the last settlement on the Tobique, 

 sixty miles away. From here the men 

 or "toters" as they are called, who 



hauled the oats, flour and bacon on 

 sleds into the lumber camps, would put 

 any letters there might happen to be, 

 into their pocket, and any for "Demer- 

 chant's" camp would be left off here at 

 the forks of the "tote-road." The lum- 

 bermen had long gone away and the 

 woods where it stood stuck up in an 

 old rotted stump, was miles from any 

 house and wild enough in every way, 

 and it seemed to me so curious that T 

 put down my pack and axe and made 

 the drawing which is shown here. The 

 writing reads : 



Box 



P. O. 296*4 



U. S. Mail's 

 MR. TOTER PLEA 

 SE Bring any- 

 male for A Demerchin 

 camp Black Ike 



Left-hand road 



to A. Demerchants 

 Camp. 



I suppose whoever scribbled off the 

 directions thought that King Edward 

 (Queen Victoria it was then) was far 

 off, and that "United States Mail" had 

 an impressive and important sound ; so 

 he put it on, and no one that I heard of 

 ever objected, even if it was a foreign 

 country. 



519 



