16 
THE MAINE WOODS. 
smoking. Our trail lay through the midst of it, and was 
wellnigh blotted out. The trees lay at full length, four 
or five feet deep, and crossing each other in all directions, 
all black as charcoal, but perfectly sound within, still 
good for fuel or for timber; soon they would be cut into 
lengths and burnt again. Here were thousands of cords, 
enough to keep the poor of Boston and New York amply 
warm for a winter, which only cumbered the ground and 
were in the settler’s way. And the whole of that solid 
and interminable forest is doomed to be gradually de¬ 
voured thus by fire, like shavings, and no man be warmed 
by it. At Crocker’s log-hut, at the mouth of Salmon 
River, seven miles from the Point, one of the party com¬ 
menced distributing a store of small cent picture-books 
among the children, to teach them to read, and also 
newspapers, more or less recent, among the parents, than 
which nothing can be more acceptable to a backwoods 
people. It was really an important item in our outfit, 
and, at times, the only currency that would circulate. I 
walked through Salmon River with my shoes on, it being 
low water, but not without wetting my feet. A few miles 
farther we came to “ Marm Howard’s,” at the end of an 
extensive clearing, where there were two or three log- 
huts in sight at once, one on the opposite side of the 
river, and a few graves, even surrounded by a wooden 
paling, where already the rude forefathers of a hamlet 
lie, and a thousand years hence, perchance, some poet 
will write his “ Elegy in a Country Churchyard.” The 
“ Village Hampdens,” the “ mute, inglorious Miltons,” 
and Cromwells, “ guiltless of” their “ country’s blood,” 
were yet unborn. 
“ Perchance in this wild spot there will be laid 
Some heart once pregnant with celestial fire; 
