KTAADN. 
19 
and dripping with resin, fresh and moist, and redolent of 
swampy odors, with that sort of vigor and perennialness 
even about them that toadstools suggest.* The logger's 
fare consists of tea, molasses, flour, pork (sometimes beef), 
and beans. A great proportion of the beans raised in 
Massachusetts find their market here. On expeditions 
it is only hard bread and pork, often raw, slice upon 
slice, with tea or water, as the case may be. 
The primitive wood is always and everywhere damp 
and mossy, so that I travelled constantly with the im¬ 
pression that I was in a swamp; and only when it was 
remarked that this or that tract, judging from the qual¬ 
ity of the timber on it, would make a profitable clearing, 
was I reminded, that if the sun were let in it would 
make a dry field, like the few I had seen, at once. The 
best shod for the most part travel with wet feet. If the 
ground was so wet and spongy at this, the dryest part 
of a dry season, what must it be in the spring ? The 
woods hereabouts abounded in beech, and yellow birch, 
of which last there were some very large specimens ; 
also spruce, cedar, fir, and hemlock; but we saw only 
the stumps of the white pine here, some of them of 
great size, these having been already culled out, being 
the only tree much sought after, even as low down as 
this. Only a little spruce and hemlock beside had been 
* Springer, in his “Forest Life” (1851), says that they first re¬ 
move the leaves and turf from the spot where they intend to build a 
camp, for fear of fire; also, that “ the spruce-tree is generally select¬ 
ed for camp-building, it being light, straight, and quite free from 
sap ”; that “ the roof is finally covered with the boughs of the fir, 
spruce, and hemlock, so that when the snow falls upon the whole, the 
warmth of the camp is preserved in the coldest weather”; and that 
they make the log seat before the fire, called the “Deacon’s Seat,” 
of a spruce or fir split in halves, with three or four stout limbs left 
on one side for legs, which are not likely to get loose. 
