"I have worked in the forests among this timber several years,"
says Springer, "have cut many hundreds of trees, and seen many
thousands, but I never found one larger than one I felled on a
little stream which empties into Jackson Lake, near the head of
Baskahegan stream, in eastern Maine. This was a pumpkin pine,
(a variety of the white pine.) Its trunk was as straight and
handsomely grown as a moulded candle, and measured six feet in
diameter four feet from the ground, without the aid of spur
roots. It was about nine rods in length, or one hundred and
forty-four feet, about sixty-five feet of which was free of
limbs, and retained its diameter remarkably well. I was employed
about one hour and a quarter in felling it. The afternoon was
beautiful; everything was calm, and to me the circumstances
were deeply interesting. After chopping an hour or so, the
mighty giant, the growth of centuries, which had withstood the
hurricane, and raised itself in peerless majesty above all
around, began to tremble under the strokes of a mere insect, as
I might appear in comparison with it. My heart palpitated as I
occasionally raised my eye to its pinnacle to catch the first
indications of its fall. It came down at length with a crash,
which seemed to shake a hundred acres, whilst the loud echo rang
through the forest, dying away amongst the distant hills. It had
a hollow in the butt about the size of a barrel, and the surface
of the stump was sufficiently spacious to allow a yoke of oxen
to stand upon it. It made five logs, and loaded a six-ox team
three times. The butt-log was so large, that the stream did not
float it in the spring; and when the drive was taken down, we
were obliged to leave it behind, much to our regret and loss. At
the boom, that log would have been worth fifty dollars."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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