CHE BUNCO OK. 
Ill 
small grove of slender sapling white-pines, the only col¬ 
lection of pines that I saw on this voyage. Here and 
there, however, was a full-grown, tall, and slender, but 
defective one, what lumbermen call a konchus tree, 
which they ascertain with their axes, or by the knots. 
I did not learn whether this w r ord was Indian or Eng¬ 
lish. It reminded me of the Greek Koyxrj , a conch or 
shell, and I amused myself with fancying that it might 
signify the dead sound which the trees yield when 
struck. All the rest of the pines had been driven off. 
How far men go for the material of their houses! 
The inhabitants of the most civilized cities, in all ages, 
send into far, primitive forests, beyond the bounds of 
their civilization, where the moose and bear and savage 
dwell, for their pine-boards for ordinary use. And, on 
the other hand, the savage soon receives from cities, iron 
arrow-points, hatchets, and guns, to point his savageness 
with. 
The solid and well-defined fir-tops, like sharp and 
regular spear-heads, black against the sky, gave a pecu¬ 
liar, dark, and sombre look to the forest. The spruce- 
tops have a similar, but more ragged outline, — their 
shafts also merely feathered below. The firs were 
somewhat oftener regular and dense pyramids. I was 
struck by this universal spiring upward of the forest 
evergreens. The tendency is to slender, spiring tops, 
while they are narrower below. Not only the spruce 
and fir, but even the arbor-vitae and white-pine, unlike 
the soft, spreading second-growth, of which I saw none, 
all spire upwards, lifting a dense spear-head of cones to 
the light and air, at any rate, while their branches strag¬ 
gle after as they may; as Indians lift the ball over the 
heads of the crowd in their desperate game. In this 
