Lake Umbagog.
1907.
  For upwards of twenty years after I first saw them
the stub forests about the shores of Lake Umbagog continued
to be among its most characteristic and in some
respects, also, its most attractive features. But they could not last
indefinitely. One after another the lifeless trees weakened by
decay, by the attacks of wood boring insects and by the loosening
effects of water under their roots, tottered and fell, sometimes
during violent gales but perhaps oftener - strange as the
fact may seem - when the weather was nearly or quite calm.
 I have noticed that whenever dead trees fall in calm weather
it is usually during or just after a prolonged rain which,
of course, soaks into the trunks and branches adding materially to
their weight.
Stub Forests (4)
  Once when there was literally no wind stirring I was approaching
a point in my boat when a tall stub, at the very base of which
I was intending to land, toppled towards me and buried itself
in the lake. I have heard others fall in the dead of night
when the air was still and when the crashing of the heavy
trunks striking the water or the duller sounds produced by
their impact with the earth, were not less stretching their
impression. At the outlet of the lake, numbers of stubs
were removed by the lumbermen some twenty years ago
because they impeded the passage of the logs in spring
and about the same time very many of the dryer and 
sounder ones in the coves near Upton town were cut by the
country people for fuel. Thus the disintegrating forces of
nature somewhat aided by the hand of man have done
their work until by now the stubs are nearly gone and the shores of the lake perhaps as generally and
uniformly clothed with living vegetation as they were before Errol
dam was built. But the verdure is not the same as then for most
of the pines, spruces and arbor vitaes have disappeared and their
places have been taken very largely by deciduous trees & shrubs.