FOREST LIFE

AND

FOREST TREES:

COMPRISING

WINTER CAMP-LIFE AMONG THE
LOGGERS, AND WILD-WOOD
ADVENTURE.

WITH

DESCRIPTIONS OF LUMBERING OPERATIONS ON
THE VARIOUS RIVERS OF MAINE AND
NEW BRUNSWICK.

BY JOHN S. SPRINGER.

NEW YORK:
HARPER & BROTHERS, PUBLISHERS,
82 CLIFF STREET.

1851.

Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year one thousand eight hundred and fifty-one, by

Harper & Brothers,

in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the Southern District of New York.

PREFACE.

The writer of the following pages was reared among the Pine forests of Maine, and has spent several of the most pleasant years of his life in active participation in many of the scenes here delineated.

The incidents he has related are real, and in no case is the truth sacrificed to fancy or embellishment.

When the author commenced writing, his motive was to indulge somewhat in pleasant reminiscences of the past, and to live over again that portion of his life which, in general, was so pleasantly spent among the wild mountains, forests, lakes, and rivers of Maine. It was during this retrospective exercise with his pen that the idea of writing a book, embracing his own experience and observations during the time in which he participated in the lumberman's life, suggested itself.

Recollecting that, while the life, habits, and adventures of many classes of men had engaged the attention of the reading community, and that, among the multitude of narratives issued from the press, nothing of interest or importance had been put forth exemplifying the life and adventures of a very large class of persons known as lumbermen, he naturally became possessed with a desire to entertain others with some relation of what appeared to him to afford sufficient material for a book of some interest, and chiefly because the matter it might embrace had never been presented in a connected detail.

Suggesting the substance of what has already been said to several intelligent lumbermen, an interest was at once awakened in their feelings upon the subject, accompanied with an urgent request that the plan should be prosecuted, and that a work should be prepared which might make their pursuits, adventures, and hardships more generally known. To many of these friends the author is also indebted for some assistance in furnishing statistical matter.

In incorporating the somewhat lengthy notice of Forest Trees, forming the first part of this volume, the author has ventured to make his own taste and feelings the criterion by which he has been guided in his selections and observations for the reader, and although they may not hold a strict relation to the narrative, he hopes that they may not be deemed inappropriate or uninteresting.

This volume makes no pretensions to literary merit; sooner would it, indeed, claim kindred with the wild and uncultivated scenes of which it is but a simple relation.

In justice to the gentlemen whom he has quoted in arranging the statistical portion of this volume, as well as to himself, the author would state that the material was procured some four years ago. The statement of this fact may account for any discrepancy which may appear from more recent accounts of the lumbering interests, should they be found to vary from the representations here made.

The Author.

PART I.
TREES OF AMERICA.

PART II.
THE PINE-TREE, OR FOREST LIFE.

PART III.
RIVER LIFE.

CONTENTS.

PART I.

TREES OF AMERICA.

PART II.

THE PINE-TREE, OR FOREST LIFE.