It appears that I saw about a dozen plants which had accompanied man as far into the woods as Chesuncook, and had naturalized them...selves there, in 1853. Plants begin thus early to spring by the side of a logging-path,--a mere vista through the woods, which can only be used in the winter, on account of the stumps and fallen trees,--which are at length are the roadside plants in old settlements. The pioneers of such are planted in part by the first cattle, which cannot be summered in the woods.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
I have often wished since that I was with them. They search for timber over a given section, climbing hills and often high trees t...o look off; explore the streams by which it is to be driven, and the like; spend five or six weeks in the woods, they two alone, a hundred miles or more from any town, roaming about, and sleeping on the ground where night overtakes them, depending chiefly on the provisions they carry with them, though they do not decline what game they come across.... It is a solitary and adventurous life, and comes nearest to that of the trapper of the West, perhaps. They work ever with a gun as well as an axe, let their beards grow, and live without neighbors, not on an open plain, but far within a wilderness.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The afternoon's tragedy, and my share in it, as it affected the innocence, destroyed the pleasure of my adventure. It is true, I c...ame as near as is possible to come to being a hunter and miss it, myself; and as it is, I think that I could spend a year in the woods, fishing and hunting just enough to sustain myself, with satisfaction. This would be next to living like a philosopher on the fruits of the earth which you had raised, which also attracts me. But this hunting of the moose merely for the satisfaction of killing him,--not even for the sake of his hide,--without making any extraordinary exertion or running any risk yourself, is too much like going out by night to some wood-side pasture and shooting your neighbor's horses.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
We certainly leave the handsomest paint and clapboards behind in the woods, when we strip off the bark and poison ourselves with w...hite-lead in the towns. We get but half the spoils of the forest.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Usually the scenery about them is drear and savage enough; and the logger's camp is as completely in the woods as a fungus at the ...foot of a pine in a swamp; no outlook but to the sky overhead; no more clearing than is made by cutting down the trees of which it is built, and those which are necessary for fuel.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
You can much sooner dry you by such a fire as you can make in the woods than in anybody's kitchen, the fireplace is so much larger..., and wood so much more abundant.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The Indian said that he had got his money by hunting, mostly high up the West Branch of the Penobscot, and toward the head of the ...St. John; he had hunted there from a boy, and knew all about that region. His game had been beaver, otter, black cat (or fisher), sable, moose, etc. Loup-cervier (or Canada lynx) were plenty yet in burnt grounds. For food in the woods, he uses partridges, ducks, dried moose-meat, hedgehog, etc. Loons, too, were good, only "bile 'em good." He told us at some length how he had suffered from starvation when a mere lad, being overtaken by winter when hunting with two grown Indians in the northern part of Maine, and obliged to leave their canoe on account of ice.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
No doubt, the short distance to which you can see in the woods, and the general twilight, would at length react on the inhabitants..., and make them savages. The lakes also reveal the mountains, and give ample scope and range to our thought.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
It is an agreeable change to cross a lake, after you have been shut up in the woods, not only on account of the greater expanse of... water, but also of sky. It is one of the surprises which Nature has in store for the traveler in the forest. To look down, in this case, over eighteen miles of water, was liberating and civilizing even.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »