144 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
[Peb. ±t, lQ&± 
A Walk Down South.— XVII. 
It was the great storm which did so much damage 
through floods that had come in my way at Taylor's. 
When we went down to the men's cabin on Friday night, 
we had to run for it, the rain was coming so fast. On 
Saturday morning it was pouring faster yet — the mud 
lying deep and the brooks bank full. The great ridge 
behind the house, to the west, and the one on yon side, to 
the east, were whiskered with cloud streamers. . It was 
cold and dismal. But in the sheet-iron stove in the 
men's cabin was a hot fire, and by it Walter and I hovered 
most of the day — the women folks were ironing at the 
kitchen, and didn't want us around them. 
Walter told of the boys' sports down at New Castle, 
county seat of Craig; chief of all was rocking niggers. 
The white boys, he said, would start around about 9 
o'clock at night with their pockets full of rocks. When 
they met a band of negro lads they ordered them home 
and then the negroes ran for it, the rocks flying after. 
In this fashion are the young negroes kept from growing 
too pert. It sometimes happens that revolvers are drawn 
and many "shoots" exchanged, but seldom is any one 
hit. Of course, arrests are made at times, and white boys 
spend as high as thirty days in jail for their sport. 
While we were talking, sparks fell around us, and 
looking up we saw that the iron stove pipe had set fire 
to the house wall. Flames were climbing the hemlock 
boards in rapid fashion. We ran to the house, seized 
six-quart pails, ran to the flooded brook and then back 
to the house. The fire was soon out. A hole two feet 
across had been burned in the wall. 
Harmon rode to New Castle, twelve miles away, on 
this day, horseback, in spite of the pouring rain. It was 
late when he came back, drenched through. He went 
after groceries. 
As on the previous day, dinner was late, but I did 
not mind it so much. I learned that it was usual to eat 
two meals a day when no one was working — it saved 
lots of trouble. I judge that one could easily. get used 
to that way of living. Before I came away I rather 
liked the idea of not having to bother to eat three times 
a day. What was the use of stirring around when one 
might so easily sit still? In such weather it was de- 
lightful just to sit by the fireplace and turn one's white 
cheek to the fire and give the red cheek a chance to 
cool off. The fire felt good to me, but it was plain 
that I was a long ways south of the Adirondacks. The 
fingers of the women folks were drawn with the cold, and 
the boys stuck their hands fairly in the flames every 
time they returned to the fireplace from as far as the 
door. 
We went to the sleeping cabin as usual on Saturday 
night. But because the fire seemed more cheerful in the 
sheet-iron stove, and because the .air seemed different, we 
did not go right to bed. To the music of French harps 
and bones there was jigging and dancing, the like of 
which one might travel a long ways and not see. 
In the morning I was awakened by squeals and snorts. 
Opening my eyes I saw my breath go like a cloud of 
steam. The weather had changed for bitter cold. The 
boys were fighting for the bed clothes in good-natured 
fashion. We were up at last, dressed in record time and 
ran to the kitchen. The boys roared, because the women 
didn't have a fire built. One was soon started. 
When I washed at the brookside, my hair froze and 
I had to thaw it out at the fire before I could comb it. 
The mud was frozen as hard as planks, and the over- 
flowing streams were shrinking till the ice along banks 
cracked of its own weight, yet Charlie ran the hundred 
yards from the dormitory to the kitchen with his shoes 
and stockings in his hands. 
It was not the numbing cold of the dismal rainstorm 
— everybody jumped around lively instead of hanging 
over the fire. Some cut while others carried in oak bil- 
lets for the fire. It was done in fast time. 
The day was passed quietly. Two of the boys went 
courting, and one did not come back till long after dark. 
He was Harmon. 
"Let's go rock him," Walter suggested, but Charlie 
objected. Harmon, Charlie said, would throw rocks back, 
whereas the sport of rocking required that the one who is 
stoned must get scared*and run. 
While we sat at the fireplace, first one and then an- 
other would stand up and hold his heels to the fire. It 
is the characteristic of the open fire that one's heels get 
cold on a cold day before one. Roy Tucker was a 
visitor that night. Small of his age, his eyes looked like 
cutting edges, for his eyelids were half-closed. He spoke 
but little, and that was chisel-like. He remained all 
night, and in the morning Walter lanced a. boil on the 
lad's neck ; he did it as roughly as possible, squeezing 
the wound, "just to make him holler," but there wasn't a 
sound came. 
On Monday Walter, Roy and I went hunting. I had 
gone perhaps a mile along the ridges when I saw smoke 
way down in a hollow. They had become cold and 
lighted a fire to warm by. It took a couple of hours to 
get away from the pine-knot blaze. The country was 
covered with scrub oak and scattering bull pine. We 
saw a couple of pheasants, but shot nothing. To climb 
the high ridge to where the deer and other game was 
did not seem worth while, so we came back by the road 
past the little log schoolhouse, where the pupils were out 
on their noon recess, teetering, some of them on an 
eight-inch, twenty-foot oak log, splitting firewood, play- 
ing tag and eating snacks. 
That night I was out at the spring when a tall figure 
glided up the path past me. opened the cabin door and 
entered. I heard no, sound. Following, I saw a six-foot 
man, black and gray whiskered, wearing a broad-brimmed 
black hat aslant on his large head. He stuck two long- 
fingered bony hands into the fire flames and turned them 
over in the -warmth. He drew a pound package of coffee 
from his pocket and dropped it into the lap of the oldest 
girl ; the younger one sat on his left knee. 
"Get some pine knots — this fire's 'most out," he said. 
"There ain't none." 
"Why not?" was the demand, with a black-eyed glance 
at eacli of the boys' faces. 
"The weather's been tolable bad," said Mrs. Taylor. 
"Well, fix it up them," and in five minutes the "shift- 
less blaze" was feeding on a dry split board and the heat 
began to hunt the cold instead of the cold running the 
heat up the chimney Colonel Taylor believes in big 
fires on cold nights, and biscuit that cool soft instead of 
hard — and knows the reason why when he doesn't, have 
them. 
In the morning the sun was out; thick frost was on 
every limb, and the water in the runs rattled and rustled 
along in crispy fashion. The streams were low, so I 
started on. The road led back and forth across Barber's 
Creek. I crossed once on a pole steadied by a grape 
vine, again on a fallen tree; a third time on' an eight- 
inch log coated with ice. This last was a sticker, but I 
cut a ten-foot alpenstock and then put handsful of 
sand on the ice. I crossed, pack and all, in safety and 
dry, where another man had waded an hour before. Fif- 
teen minutes later I started over Red Brush Run on a 
pine scale or slab. It broke and I soused through quarter- 
inch ice into two feet of water. At no time on the trip 
have the short trousers shown to better advantage than 
then. My tight stockings did not freeze, but dried inside 
of five miles, where the legs of long trousers would have 
become like boards. 
Everywhere was evidence of the high water— roads 
washed out, and brooks in a tumult. At John's Creek — 
a forty-foot wide stream, the fences had suffered, and 
some drift was lodged along the bank. The road bed 
was beautiful. The water had frozen in the ground and 
then the ice ferns grew up to a height of five inches in 
places. For miles I walked along a road glistening and 
gleaming with the colors of the spectrum, crushing a 
thousand sparkles at every step. 
I came to a brook too wide to jump and too' deep to 
wade. Yet the only way of crossing was a three-inch 
pole used to swing a tilt-up brook gate on. When the 
water is high the gate floats horizontal, but goes down 
and closes the gap in low water. The hinges are forks of 
saplings. 
With my pack on my back and rifle in my hand, I 
started across. It was six feet above the water. I got 
one foot over the center fork hinge and then started to 
lift the other, but I swayed and had to go back with the 
foot. Time and again I tried, but each time I was set 
a-staggering. Then up drove two men and a handsome 
girl on horseback. They stopped to w,atch me. It was 
do or jump anyhow, apparently, and I did. I crossed in 
safety. But that was the worst five minutes I've had on 
the trip. 
As it came on dark, my road led into woods. I met a 
man driving in his work team — on horseback, of course— 
and he said that the next house was two miles away. I 
could go back a couple of hundred yards and stay for the 
night, but I preferred to go on. To turn back a yard is 
hard to do. With careful directions, I walked rapidly 
ahead; a schoolhouse on stilts was at one turn. It was 
a still-looking place — the door open, with blackness stick- 
ing out of every window. The rail fences, the sullen 
trees, the increasing noise made by my feet due to the 
air grown heavy with falling moisture, warned me to 
move on more rapidly. It was plumb dark when I came 
over the ridge and trotted down to the run, up which I 
must go. 
The big rain had flooded the stream, which washed 
out the road, leaving only cobbles and half-bowlders for 
a dozen rods. In the night the round sides found my 
feet, and I stumbled at every step. I came to a church 
suddenly, and there the road ended. But my directions 
were specific, "follow the run." So I crashed down the 
slope toward the water, and there was the road again. 
At last a light and the sound of an ax — Caldwell's 
He 'lowed I could stay there that night. I ate hot bsicuit, 
fried pork, "fruit," apple butter and other things, and 
then I sat down with the lower rim of my heels on the 
broad hearth stove. Who might I be? Where might I 
be going ? My pack was a source of wonder, too, espe- 
cially when I disclosed its depths while I searched for 
the needle and thread kit to darn a hole. It is best to let^ 
the contents of the pack leak out slowly, rather than* 
all at once. To the stranger my pack seems to be a 
constant source of wonder, a wonder that quickens the 
fancy and the curiosity. 
"Do you carry a house in there, too?" some ask. and 
my tent makes them laugh, crinkling their foreheads. 
Caldwell is the postmaster at Eakin (A-kin). Half a 
mile away is a summer resort, with water for external 
and internal use. I had stopped just in time. 
The night grew cold. It was moonlight, but a drift of 
haze was thickening over the face of the famous huntress 
— she was about to spread snow upon the ground as a 
special favor to her respectful and not too eager de- 
votees. Tame geese were feeding around outside with 
noisy gosip. Somehow it was a night that I remember 
more distinctly than many others. Perhaps because the 
motherly wife there spoke only with tears in her voice : 
"We buried our youngest son the 20th of last February. 
It has not been the same to me since then. It never will 
be the same again in this world," she explained. She 
looked at me, seemed fairly to watch my every move. 
Another son at the house wanted to' "go West" and 
grasp the opportunities there. Mrs. Caldwell seemed to 
think that I was a son who had started West. She acted 
for the mother far away, unobstrusively but distinctly. 
In the morning I wrote some letters, and after dinner 
noon) I walked a couple of hundred yards further up the 
run, then turned to the left to take "the ridge road." I 
crossed the main run at a saw mill, and then a side hill 
road went down into a hollow, across a stream, then up 
on the ridge. The green of laurels contrasted with the 
snowy ground and the bleak landscape as it must always 
do to Northern eyes. 
The ridge road is seven miles long. One's directions 
are simply keep to the back." They are easily followed. 
One walks on the backbone all the way. 
It was cloudy, windy and with whiffs of snow the day 
I was there. As the ridge increased in height, the val- 
leys seemed to sink. To the east there was range be- 
yond range of mountains, and John's Creek was hundreds 
of feet, perhaps a thousand, below, blue, still and cold. 
The yellow sunshine which sometimes came splashing 
through the clouds was colder still. One could fancy that 
ice snakes had left their trails in the snow in the woods 
across the valley and in the cleared bottoms, but it was 
only wagon roads leading from house to house, from the 
•chimneys of which blue smoke issued in unusual volume 
— it was a cold day for Virginians, but I sweat and 
whistled under my pack — and saw the sundogs stepping 
from peak to peak instead of the fireplace flickers. 
In one place on the ridge there were the hair, blood 
and scraps of a rabbit, fresh. Round about were cat 
tracks, and crow tracks. The cat was a large one, and a 
wild one, I guess. Three other hunters whom I saw had 
not been so successful. Their dog had run a deer off 
the mountain on the wrong side, so they didn't get a 
shot at it. With their thick overcoats and ear flaps they 
looked the picture of shivers. They felt of my sweater 
and of my knickerbockers. 
"Good law, strangeh," cne sa d, "ain't yp' mcs' froze?" 
The ridge is seven miles long. One log house is in a 
gap on the back, and two are out of sight down its: sides. 
It was a pleasing place. I wished it was longer when 
I turned down to Squire Huffman's. 
Raymond S. Spears. 
The Destruction of the Adirondack 
Forests. 
Editor Forest and Stream; 
Much valuable space in the Forest and Stream has 
been devoted recently to the proposal, made by our For- 
est, Fish and Game Commission, to turn the lumbermen 
loose in the State forests of the Adirondacks; but for 
the love of our good, green wilderness— rthe wilderness 
as God made it — let all the facts be brought out. I beg 
the reader to consider this quotation from the last report 
of the Commission '(pp. 20-21): 
'The annual output of the Adirondack forests show no 
diminution, the product for 1900 being largely in excess 
of the previous year, although not quite equal to that of 
1898. Aside from the State holdings, there are now 
about 700,000 acres of forest land in the Adirondack 
Park that have not been lumbered, or from which a 
second cutting of spruce can now be obtained. 
1 "Each year recently the soft wood timber on 80,000 
acres or more is cut and removed by the lumbermen or 
pulp wood operators. This would indicate that, if the 
present rate of cutting continues, these industries will 
exhaust their supply of raw material in ten or twelve 
years, after which they will have to depend on the State 
forests or Canadian intports for a further continuance of 
their business. At present the Empire State leads all 
others by far in the number of its pulp mills and amount 
of product; but if it expects to hold its supremacy in 
this industry, it must make some prompt and intelligent 
provision for a future supply." 
"It"— the Empire State— "must make some prompt" 
provision for the supply of these pulp mills and lumber- 
men. Those paragraphs were written by Mr. William F. 
Fox, Superintendent of Forests. Is it the duty of this 
Superintendent of Forests to promote the manufacturing 
interests of the State, or is it to preserve the forests for 
the people? The question answers itself. Mr. Fox has 
abandoned his duty to become the advocate of the pulp 
and lumber interests. 
But that is not all. Further down on page 21 he re- 
vamps and prints, at the expense of the State, the old 
threat of the lumbermen and pulp operators. He says, 
speaking of the exhaustion of the New York and New 
England supply of pulp wood : 
"Our people then will not only have to go to Canada 
for their raw material, but will have to take their mills 
and workmen with them. The millions invested through- 
out New York in the great manufacturing plants belong- 
ing to the lumber, pulp and paper business will be non- 
productive, and these industries will be paralyzed." 
This Superintendent of Forests, who is paid to preserve 
the forests, tells us that, at the end of twelve years, these 
lumbermen " will have to depend on the State forests" or 
Canada, and that we "must make. some prompt" provi- 
sion for them or they will take their mills and their men 
off to Canada. It never occurs to him to say that the 
lumbermen ought to apply "scientific, conservative for- 
estry" to their own lands. 
Following this, under the subhead, "Industrial Statis- 
tics," Mr. Fox tells how many millions of dollars these 
lumbermen pay out every year in wages. It seems an 
impressive statement -to him. The 9,382 pulp mill em- 
ployes received, he says, $3040,478 in one year. He 
does^ not mention the fact that this pay roll includes the 
presidents, secretaries, superintendents, etc., who receive 
thousands of dollars a year each, but without enlarging 
on the way that increases the average income of an 
employe, it will be found, by simple division, that this 
average is $6.23 per week for each man during the 
year. The men who work for the pulp mills are, on the 
year's average, compelled to support themselves and rear 
tamilies on $6.23 a week! But the saw mill statement is 
still worse, for the 8,617 men employed in saw mills re- 
ceived $1,846,930, or 71 cents a day for a year of 300 
working days. 
The Superintendent of Forests wrote his report to tell 
us that we "must" open our forests if the Empire State 
is "to hold its supremacy" in the industries which pay 
$6.23 a week, and 71 cents a day on the average to 
employes. 
Unfortunately there is more to be said about this report 
On page 25 it speaks of 14-inch trees as "matured timber." 
Governor Odell in his message advocated the cutting of 
10-inch trees, but take the report at its word. Is a spruce 
tree 14 inches in diameter mature? On page 16 of Bulle- 
tin 30, U. S. Department of Agriculture, it appears that 
on a scientific survey of Township 40, in the Adirondacks 
(Hamilton county), there were found, on good spruce 
land, 24.23 trees per acre above ten inches in diameter, 
and that the average size of these was 14.2 inches. The 
maximum size was 35 inches in diameter. And that is not 
all. On page 31 of Bulletin 30, is a table which shows 
that a spruce increases its diameter .126 of an inch in a 
year, when it is 10 inches in diameter, and .1725 of an 
inch when it is 18 inches in diameter. In the face of 
such facts the Commission cail a 14-inch tree mature. 
The report of the Commission says of the spruce of 14 
inches in diameter and upward, that "its removal would 
inflict no injury to the timber, or impair the protective 
functions of these woodlands." Let the reader familiar 
with the Adirondacks recall the picture of a good spruce 
stand, or look at the reproduced photograph at the top 
of plate III. in Bulletin 30. The fact is that to cut out 
the spruce trees of 14 inches in diameter and more (not 
to mention all down to 10), would open up wide holes 
in the solid green forest. For it is a well-known fact 
that in felling, dividing and skidding these trees, at least 
three small trees would be ruined for every one turned 
