§04 
FOREST AN:D_STHEAM, 
bination store. " 'Twas the other gent what come by 
himself. He wanted the best stuff I had, and told me to 
^arge the biM, two d^lars, to you, so I done it, seem' he^g 
was one of the partj^" . T* 
"The Long Lost Doct6r d'eserVes anothe¥"degre1ej_ S&id 
Jack.- "I wondered where he got ii. I had one drink of 
it and it made me think of tlie time 1 ate tabasco sauce for 
datchup by mistake." 
I said nothing, but I paid the bill. I have never 
been able to rightly decide which was the real chmax— 
whether it was when I was treed by the bear or when I 
paid that bill. Fayette Durlin, Ju. .. 
In the Old Plymouth Woods.. 
/'rffm the Boston. Globe. 
Plymouth has the largest township in Massachusetts, 
the oldest civili^zation, the most dramatic history and the 
gr&atest wilderness. Between Plymouth village on the 
north and Buzzards Bay on the south. Gar.ver and Ware- 
ham on the west and the shore on the east, is an immense 
tract of barren woodland, as sparsely settled as it was 
two centuries and a half ago. There are a few deer there, 
a few rabbits and many foxes, partridges and qua-il, while 
the numerous ponds are full of black bass and pickerel, 
but for more than fifty years the land has been steadily 
decreasing in value. 
The area of the township of Plymouth is 5o,979 acres, 
or about eighty square miles, and of this territorj- sixty 
square miles is practically uninhabited. The population 
of . the township is estimated to be cj.ooo, of which nine- 
teen-twentieths live in Plymouth village, Manomet, Chii- 
tonville, Ellisville, Cedarville and the o.ther settlements 
along the coast. 
"The people of Plymouth live upon history, and every 
carriage driver will talk off volumes in the course of a 
Iialf-day ride. The monuments, the consecrated rocks, 
the museums and ancient homes of the pilgrims, are thor- 
oughly known, but the great wilderness is called Plym- 
outh Woods with a sweep of the hand which banishes 
it- from further mention. "They do say," remarks some 
old. resident, "that there is a pond for every day in the 
year and a mudhole for leap year." This oft-repeated 
statement rather stretches the facts, but i the ponds, many 
of which are large enough to be called lake5, are really a 
feature of the town. William T. Davis says there are 175 
which have names and contain fish. But the ponds, beau- 
tiful as they are, Have attracted but a small handful of 
summer visitors, who have satisfied their longings for 
a.lodge in some vast wilderness. But from the first there 
seemed much hesitancy about settling in the Plymouth, 
Woods. The woods of pine and oak could not be cleared 
without great labor, and even when a clearing was made 
the soil proved to be poor and unproductive. The salt 
niarshes and cedar groves to the north of Plymouth 
seemed far more attractive, so the southern countr>' was 
left, to a few hardy men. who, like the Indians they dis- 
placed, lived chiefly by fishing and hunting. 
As time went on. however, there came a demand for 
lumber and fuel, which made the woods more valuable. 
Wood lots were then a marketable property, and ihe 
whole territory was cut. up by wood roads, many of 
which still remain, apparently for no other purpose than 
to confuse the traveler. But for the past fifty years the 
timber has steadily decreased in value. Pitch pine is re- 
placed by white pine for building and by coal for burn- 
ing. The steam engine, which at first burned wood and 
thus increased its marketable value, not only gave up 
wood for coal, but brought coal to Plymouth in competi- 
tion with the native fuel. Cordwood, which would have 
brought $8 a cord fifty years ago, can be bought for $4 
or $4.50 to-day. This wood costs $1.25 a cord to cut and 
must then be piled up for six months or a year to season,, 
with a good chance of being burned by a forest fire and 
thus becoming a dead loss. Even if it escapes the fire it 
costs $2 a cord to haul it into town over the deep-rutted 
SE^ndy roads, so that the final profit is small. But even 
this margin of profit disappears when it was shown that 
the fires have frequently devastated the available wood- 
land, and that it has been necessary to allow the oaks to 
grow twenty or thirty years and the pines even longer 
before the}"- are fit to cut. 
So, as game has grown scarce and wood unprofitable, 
many of the original settlers have bandoned the farm for 
the town, in mo^t cases being able to sell out for a small 
sum to a Portuguese or Italian immigrant. It is con- 
ceded rthat these foreigners can live where a native would 
starve to death. The Italians particularly seem to have 
the-art of getting the utmost possible from a small patch 
of. unfertile soil. They choose little farms on the out- 
skirts, of the villages and do considerable business ' with 
people of their own race. A typical farm - of this sort 
lies just at the edge of, the woods. The rocky pasture 
and the rough meadow" are bare and dry, but the cow and 
spare- horse are led by boys to graze by the wayside. An 
older boy was plowing over a field of stubble'under the 
persoaal direction of a big, black-bearded Itahan, who 
swore strange Tioman oaths • in tones ^ of thunder. His 
qpipns', corn and cabbages -showed infinite care. In the 
fall his harvest is easily made in time for his whole fam- 
ily-' to- go to work in the cranberry bogs, where between 
them they can make enough money to'last them througTi 
the ■•winter. . : 
In the old days when woodland was ".sold >the bog land 
was' thiKiwn in without even, being measured, but during 
*e la^t forty years cranberry bogs have become enor- 
'^.■^■ously. valuable, and the cranberrv industry has been 
the- -salvation of the town. There is' a small income in 
m9:yflowers. pond lillies, swampberries and blackberries, 
which- abound in the. woods, but t^iere' have been some 
gseat fortunes and many comfortable livings made in 
cranberries. Cranberry bogs have recently been worth 
g.s high as $1,000 an acre, and one concern cleared over 
$ifX);000 from a year's business, and yet this important 
njdustry do£s very little to settle the country, as the es- 
tabhshed bogs are entirely deserted for three-fourths of 
the year. - .' ' . 
Dilring the picking .season men; women' and children. 
Itakans and natives, gather at the bogs, even from so 
far away as New Bedford. Some ca-.mp iipon the ground 
and ?r.th*s walk miles to and from their work daily It 
is a siiort 'season of three or four weeks, [requenlly inter- 
rupted by strikes at the large bogs , .and .changes at the. 
jjtiialf diiey; "but th« pay is good foi- picking-, white the 
screening employs a limited number of people far into 
the Avinter. The biggest profits were made when cran- 
berries were .^25 a barrel, but the .price has siendily de- 
creased to. $5 or' $6, and -a bog must be planted and tended 
fgr four years before it begins. to yield. One ol the in- 
terior settlers had a bog of an acre whii'h yielded 105 
barrels one season,, and Avhich he finally sold for $t,ooo. 
tie said it was not unsuual for families living near the bog 
t9. earn $400 and more during the picking and screening 
season, and his own sons had started in life that way. 
But there arc many accidents Avhich may befall the 
.cranberry crop, and as greater capital ' is now required 
the available bog laud is coming under the control of a 
few' large owners, who are prepared to put money into the 
business. What with combinations of owners and labor- 
saving machinery, the old settlers see in c-anberry pick- 
ing a fading opportunity .-md believe that the future of 
the Plymouth Woods will depend upon the summer vis- 
itor and his demand for milk, eggs, berries, ice and service. 
. Yet this summer visitor is wonderfully slow in coming. 
It is not because the distances are so great,- but rather be- 
cause the roads are so poor, that this is so. The bic.vcle 
is effectually shut out of the sandy wood roads, and the 
automobile has not yet made the attempt. A cottager 
living near the center of the woods says that nine horses 
are worked to their full capacity in keeping his establi.sh- 
ment in .tottch with the outside world. 
There haive been people who have sought absolute se- 
clusion and a simple life, who have hidden their cottages 
in thick woods by the side of a poiid, but they have been 
few. The .second summer cottage was built twenty years 
ago, and there has scarcely been one a year added since. 
Meanwhile the big landed proprietor has stepped in and 
is getting control of large tracts of land for game pre- 
serves. • • • * . 
The most notable of these are Eben D. Jordan, of Bos- 
ton and Robert B. Symington, the thread man. of New- 
ark, .N. J. Their estates arc adjoining, running south 
and west from Chiltonville, and together they hive fenced 
in nearly 5,000 acres. Their fences are about 8 feet high, 
of strong steel wire, with meshes small enough to prevent 
dogs or foxes from getting in, or hares or low-flying 
birds from getting out. 
Both men are great pheasant fanciers, while Mr. Jor- 
dan is also stocking his estate with deer and Belgian hares 
and thoroughbred horses. He is fortunate in possessing 
some of the best farming land in the township, as well as 
the so-called Cathedral Woods, a group of lofty, primeArjil 
pines, branchless to their top-i, and between whose trunks 
a perpetual twilight reigns. 
Donal S. Mackay. of Newark, is also a large owner in 
the same locality. David L. Webster, of Boston, has 400 
acres near Bunks and College ponds, and Albert S. Hath- 
away, of Wareham. has about 700 acres near Five-Mile 
Pond and Half- Way River. Edward C. Turner has 2,000 
acres, but it is mostly woodland and is asses.sed at less 
than 50 cents an acre. Lucy E. Tisdale, of Wareham, has 
1,400 acres, while James E. Keith, of Chicago, has 500 
acres near Grassy and Fearing ponds. Much of the 
woodland is assessed at only 25 cents an acre, and one 
parcel of 620 acres is valued at $roo or about 16 cents an 
acre. 
But figures are chilly things, and to get warmed up it 
is only necessary to strap on a knapsack and start on a 
tramp through the Plymouth Woods, from the northern 
to the southern extremity! The writer having recently 
acquired sea legs did this at a disadvantage, and was in 
addition handicanped by extreme hot weather. Pie did 
not make record-breaking time, but he saw the country 
and becanTe_ intimately acquainted with some parts of it. 
A side trip to Billington Sea was easily made, for it is 
only a mile and a half from Plymouth post office by 
good roads and parkways. They say that in 1621 Fran- 
cis Billingham, being lost in the woods, climbed a lofty 
tree and discovered this body of water, which he took 
for an arm of the sea. One of the best authorities, how- 
ever, thinks that the name sea was used in the German 
sense as Zuyder Zee. At the present day the banks are 
steep and thickly wooded, and only an occasional roof 
shows among the tree tops. 
Great South Pond, which boasts a colony of summer 
visitors, is also of easy access. Long Pond, on the other 
hand,' is in the center of the wooded district, so far off 
any traveled road that an unexpected visitor is almost 
unknown. Leaving Plymouth village by the training 
green, the road leads by a few scattered houses, a farm 
or two. some bits of pasture and straight into the woods. 
It is second, or twenty-second, growth oak, which after 
a few miles becomes mixed with pine, but either trees are 
high enough to furnish shade. There is a deserted house, 
a turn in the road, and then a long march along- the wire 
fencing of the Jordan and Symington estates. There was 
one chanberry bog, one brook, two or three houses and 
four well-dressed scarecrows in something like eight 
miles of 'walking. A young man with a stick, suspected 
of being a pond lily hunter, killed a puff adder, said to 
be a very poisonous snake. The pond lilv hunter began 
by criticising other pedestrians, but after learning that they 
had climbed all the Rocky Mountains he developed into 
quite a decent chap, who confessed that beside collecting 
pink pond lilies he was in the mayflower gathering busi- 
ne:ss. the cordage working business and the cranberry 
nicking business at different seasons through the year. 
Ht; said that in the cranberry season he sometimes walked 
seven miles to the bog and seven miles home again 
every day, and he still liked walking, excent for bull- 
dogs, and he carried a club for them. The lily hunter's 
road branched off, unfortunately, but the next morning 
he appeared again, having walked nine miles before 
breakfast time. 
Before reaching Long Pond the burned woods appear, 
a waste of , grim, black stumps, .with scrub oaks springing 
up around their stumps. Fine wood ashes mingled with 
the sand under foot, and occasionally with the air above— 
a God-forsaken country, as any one might easily believe- 
but, turning sharply to the right, there is the shade of 
a well-cleared grove, soon the glint of water, and on 
the shore of Little Long Pond the comfortable summer 
place of the Stearns family. 
Just beyond is L.(.ing Poml, set like a diamond jn 
white sand. There is a picturesque bridge across the 
connecting stream between the two ponds, and beside it 
' i.*}. the.^sii}.aUest post oifice in IMassachtisetts. At a liberal 
guess the Long- Pond post nftic.e is 18 inches in height, 
<U'ptli .:\Hcl breadth, .for it. is simply a letter box, at which 
every ont: acts as his own postmaster. When a man goes 
to town he takes the letters left for mailing, and when 
he leaves town for the lake he brings the mail for the 
community and leaves it in the box for each to help him- 
self. There are no regular liours or even days for col- 
lections' tit deliveries, but that matters little to people 
who have painted their cottages dark green and hidden 
them in the thickest foliage that .surrounds the pond. 
.Myron W. .Whitney, the singer, has a cottage near by; 
also Charles S. Davis, a lawyer, F. A. ITatch, Howard 
Davis. Mrs. Fessenden and a few others. 
Gallows Pond is close by, and between them at the 
turn of the road is the little one-story farm house which 
used to be the home of Branch Pierce, the famous hunter 
whom Daniel Webster was wont to visit. All the old 
settlers tell Webster stories, and the tree where he would 
hang his deer is still pointed out. They say also that 
Gallows Pond gets its name, not on accimt of the men. 
Imt the dter that were hung there. Gallows Pond, which 
is much smaller than Long Pond, has the same beauti- 
ful beach and two or three cottages on its northern bor 
der. In the same group is Halfway Pond, which is, on 
the whole, the most characteristic of the lot, with a more 
varied scenery and a wilder appearance. From the sad- 
dleback which separates them, both ponds can be seen, 
and a glance shows that Halfway Pond is at a mitch lower 
level. 
But the thoughts of the amateur explorer were turned 
toward luncheon, for the hour was late, and even a glass 
of milk would seem a feast. Soon an attractive little 
farmhouse was si.ghtcd, with three promising-looking 
cows grazing in the neighborhood. The house proved 
to be va'cant. except for -a colored boy who was gather- 
ing together some old iron, and explained the utter im- 
possibility Of getting milk there. Nearby was the fam- 
ily graveyard of the .King family, where lay William King, 
who was born in Revolutionary times. The post office 
of Raymond promised much, seeming like an oasis in 
the desert, but the best the genial official could do was 
birch beer oft" the ice and hardtack. 
Postmaster Raymond said that deer had come within 
half a mile of his house earlier in the season, but he 
thought there was small chance of getting them to wait 
to have their pictures taken. Mr. Raymond very nat- 
urally takes an interest in his post office and wants "to see 
it do well, and the primitive letter box which some of the 
sunimer folks at the other end Of the pond persist in 
using is a constant eyesore to him. 
Bloody Pond, whiich lies just east of the g-roup, is so 
named from a historic fight between the colonists under 
Capt. Church and some of King Philip's Indians. The 
pond i.s ijearly divided by two opposite points, which 
form an easy fqrding place. The settlers lay in ambush, 
and when the TncUans were wading across shot so many 
that the water became red with blood, or vice versa. It 
is a singular example of the loose history of the woods 
that the story is told both ways. Despite its sanguinary 
name, Blood}^ Pond is a very picttrresque body of water, 
and Walter Redding, of Quincy Point, is building a com- 
fortable cottage on the western point. 
In trudging back to Plalfway Pond, where he had 
planned to stay over night, the traveler fell in with a 
young man of the neighborhood, who discoursed upon 
the dangers of a great city like Boston. The young 
man had himself experienced those dangers, and finally, 
with divine help, had overcome them. In a frank, gen- 
erous way he tried to induce the wayward explorer to 
share the benefits of a consecrated life. The incident 
was one calculated to make a strong impression, illus- 
trating as it did the force religion gains over people 
whose lives are of necessity narrowed byi the monotony 
of the wilderness. 
Martin Van Buren Douglass lives on the bank of Half- 
way Pond, in-the house where he was born. He is road 
overseer, constable and the conservative man of the 
neighborhood, and with George G. Barker, of Boston, 
and Dean Briggs, of Harvard College, practically con- 
trols the water front of the pond. In past times the 
home of Martin Douglass has been a favorite resort of 
sportsmen, and his brother. Warren, now seventy-three 
years old, has been a noted nimrod. Each is an interest- 
ing man in his way, but W.arren is more typical of the 
old hunter, tall, lean, with a strong nose and an eagle's 
eyes. He has a notion of coming to Boston some day to 
see the street cars go under tlie ground. Mr. Barker, 
who has a very handsome estate, shares its comforts 
in the summer with a number of poor children from Bos- 
ton, for whom he has built and equipped a charming; 
home near the water's edge. The neighbors speak witii 
great enthusiasm of the good deeds of Mr. and Mrs. 
Barker and their son, who is going into the cranberry 
business quite extensively. 
Both south and west of the Long Pond group the 
country is wild and uninhabitable,- and the wood roads 
so confusing that it is considered dangerous for a stranger 
to go without a guide. At one time sheep ranged in 
these woods, being rounded up from time to time as cattle 
are on the Western prairies. The mutton was excellent, 
but the industrjr was unprofitable on account of the dogs 
of the neighborhood, whose attacks upon the sheep were 
unceasing. ... 
To Rocky Pofid. Big Sandy. Ezekiel's and* White 
Island the way is without the slightest sign of human 
life. W-iite Island Pond is one of the largest in the 
district, very irregular, surrounded by shady groves and 
white beaches. There is a summer camp here and near 
bv cranberry shanties: also a bridge over Red Brook. 
Then beyond is a wilder wilderness, where the only 
sign of life is -an occasional well-concealed blin-d for 
hunting wild fowl in the season. After repeatedly losing 
his way, but finally getting throu.gh to civilization, the 
traveler struck across to Bournedale and started north by 
Herring Pond, through the coast country. The bulldog 
trolley is quite common in this neighborhood. Usually 
a wire is stretched about 6 feet high from the house tp 
the barn, and from it is hung 3 short rope, to which the 
