The woods were as fresh and full of vegetable life as a lichen in wet weather, and contained many interesting plants; but unless t...hey are of white pine, they are treated with as little respect here as a mildew, and in the other case they are only the more quickly cut down.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Midway the lake we took on board two manly-looking middle-aged men.... I talked with one of them, telling him that I had come all ...this distance partly to see where the white pine, the Eastern stuff of which our houses are built, grew, but that on this and a previous excursion into another part of Maine I had found it a scarce tree; and I asked him where I must look for it. With a smile, he answered that he could hardly tell me.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Think how stood the white pine tree on the shore of the Chesuncook, its branches soughing with the four winds, and every individua...l needle trembling in the sunlight,--think how it stands with it now,--sold, perchance, to the New England Friction-Match Company!LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
They are light and shapely vessels, calculated for rapid and rocky streams, and to be carried over long portages on men's shoulder...s, from twenty to thirty feet long, and only four or four and a half wide, sharp at both ends like a canoe, though broadest forward on the bottom, and reaching seven or eight feet over the water, in order that they may slip over rocks as gently as possible. They are made very slight, only two boards to a side, commonly secured to a few light maple or other hard-wood knees, but inward are of the clearest and widest white pine stuff, of which there is a great waste on account of their form, for the bottom is left perfectly flat, not only from side to side, but from end to end. Sometimes they become "hogging" even, after long use, and the boatmen then turn them over and straighten them by a weight at each end. They told us that one wore out in two years, or often in a single trip, and sold for from fourteen to sixteen dollars.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The forests are held cheap after the white pine has been culled out; and the explorers and hunters pray for rain only to clear the... atmosphere of smoke.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
It is surprising on stepping ashore anywhere into this unbroken wilderness to see so often, at least within a few rods of the rive...r, the marks of an axe, made by lumberers who have either camped here or driven logs past in previous springs. You will see perchance where, going on the same errand that you do, they have cut large chips from a tall white pine stump for their fire.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
His white head hung out like a carpet bag and his crotch turned blue as a blood blister,... and Godfather death, as it is written, put a finger on his back for the big blackout, the big no.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Some spring the white man came, built him a house, and made a clearing here, letting in the sun, dried up a farm, piled up the old... gray stones in fences, cut down the pines around his dwelling, planted orchard seeds brought from the old country, and persuaded the civil apple-tree to blossom next to the wild pine and the juniper, shedding its perfume in the wilderness. Their old stocks still remain.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
On the thirty-first day of March, one hundred and forty-two years before this, probably about this time in the afternoon, there we...re hurriedly paddling down this part of the river, between the pine woods which then fringed these banks, two white women and a boy, who had left an island at the mouth of the Contoocook before daybreak. They were lightly clad for the season, in the English fashion, and handled their paddles unskillfully, but with nervous energy and determination, and at the bottom of their canoe lay the still bleeding scalps of ten of the aborigines. They were Hannah Dustan, and her nurse, Mary Neff,... and an English boy, named Samuel Lennardson, escaping from captivity among the Indians. On the 15th of March previous, Hannah Dustan had been compelled to rise from childbed, and half dressed, with one foot bare, accompanied by her nurse, commence an uncertain march, in still inclement weather, through the snow and the wilderness. She had seen her seven elder children flee with their father, but knew not of their fate. She had seen her infant's brains dashed out against an apple tree, and had left her own and her neighbors' dwellings in ashes. When she reached the wigwam of her captor, situated on an island in the Merrimack, more than twenty miles above where we now are, she had been told that she and her nurse were soon to be taken to a distant Indian settlement, and there made to run the gauntlet naked.... Having determined to attempt her escape, she instructed the boy to inquire of one of the men, how he should dispatch an enemy in the quickest manner, and take his scalp. "Strike 'em there," said he, placing his finger on his temple, and he also showed him how to take off the scalp. On the morning of the 31st she arose before daybreak, and awoke her nurse and the boy, and taking the Indians' tomahawks, they killed them all in their sleep, excepting one favorite boy, and one squaw who fled wounded with him to the woods. The English boy struck the Indian who had given him the information, on the temple, as he had been directed. They then collected all the provision they could find, and took their master's tomahawk and gun, and scuttling all the canoes but one, commenced their flight to Haverhill, distant about sixty miles by the river. But after having proceeded a short distance, fearing that her story would not be believed if she should escape to tell it, they returned to the silent wigwam, and taking off the scalps of the dead, put them into a bag as proofs of what they had done, and then, retracing their steps to the shore in the twilight, recommenced their voyage.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »