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 BrunswickSpringer, John S.
History
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
Springer, John S.
Lumbering -- Maine; Maine -- Description and travel; New Brunswick -- Description and travel; Trees
The reader will see in the cut a picturesque view of a section of this
beautiful water-fall, with its high ledges, overhung with a heavy
growth of cedar-trees. The country in the vicinity of the falls
"becomes more elevated, and lofty precipices of limestone and
calciferous slate rise on each bank of the river, while the country in
the rear is broken, hilly, and covered with an abundant mixed growth
of forest trees."
We next turn our attention to the "Mirimachi," one of the principal
rivers of the province, "which falls into the Gulf of St. Lawrence in
47° 10' north latitude, 64° 40' west longitude, forming at its estuary
a capacious bay, with several islands, and a ship channel for vessels
of seven hundred tons burden, and navigable upward of thirty miles
from the sea. Chatham, Douglass, and Newcastle are the principal
towns, situated on the banks of the river, about twenty-five miles
from its mouth. At these settlements upward of two hundred vessels
annually load with timber for Great Britain, &c. Seven miles above
Chatham the Mirimachi divides into two branches, one running southwest
and the other northwest. The southwest branch of the river contains
more water than the River Thames from London upward. The sea-coast of
Mirimachi is low, but inland the country rises in some places,
consisting of extensive and rich intervales, in others of a rugged,
rocky territory."
This river is particularly prominent, in the history of New Brunswick,
for the astonishing amount of ton timber which was formerly procured
from the territory bordering it, and as the scene of a bloody and
protracted riot on the part of the Irish population, chiefly
emigrants, who rose _en masse_, and attempted to drive the Americans,
who had flocked there in large numbers, from the country. Desperate
encounters took place from time to time between small parties, but the
Americans maintained their ground against fearful odds, and after the
lapse of a few months quiet and order again prevailed. But in a more
particular and impressive sense will the Mirimachi be remembered as
the scene of one of the "most terrible natural conflagrations of which
we have any record in the history of the world." The annexed
account[25] will be found deeply interesting.
[25] History of Nova Scotia and New Brunswick.
"The person who has never been out of Europe," and, we may add, out of
_our_ cities and older portions of country in the States, "can have
little conception of the fury and rapidity with which fires rage after
a continuation of hot seasons in North America and New Holland, when
the dry underwood and fallen leaves, in addition to the resinous
quality of the timber, afford combustible materials in the greatest
abundance. I have seen the side of a mountain thirty miles long
burning in New Holland, and illumining the sky for many miles; but the
following description by an eye-witness (Mr. Coony), of the great
Mirimachi fire, exceeds any thing of the kind that ever occurred."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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