LETTERS FROM ALABAMA. 
291 
I saw a Long-leafed Pine fired in this manner 
one dajj and a fine sight it was. The light was 
applied to the flowing resin, which was in a flame 
in a moment, the fire running upward with in- 
creasing rapidity, till in a brief time the whole of 
one side of the tree to a height of fifty feet was in 
a blaze; the forked flickering tongues of flame 
catching and licking^ with greedy fierceness as if 
they demanded more aliment for their insatiable 
throats. 
After an hour or two, the turpentine that lay in 
the bark and that had accumulated on the exterior 
was devoured by the fire, and the wood being too 
hard to be readily penetrated, the flame had gra- 
dually gone out, leaving a blackened stick with a 
glowing point here and there. But now came the 
grandest part of the spectacle. The interior of the 
trunk was decayed, and the fire had found its way 
through some broken branch into the hollow, where, 
speedily consuming the half-rotten wood of the 
centre, it made its way to the summit, from which 
a volume of flame fiercely shot for many yards a 
perpendicular pyre. It was a tall chimney in a 
blaze ; the interior, seen through openings here and 
there (I mean, after some hours had elapsed), was 
like a furnace, while the roaring of the flame from 
the top was like the surging of the sea upon the 
shore. 
The planter at whose house I lodge being lately 
in want of some tar, manufactured it in the following 
manner. A number of the boughs and knots of 
these two species of Pine were gathered from the 
swamp, and built up into a stack in the yard* A 
few grooves had been first made in the hard ground 
of the site, all converging into one principal channel^ 
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