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
One of my neighbors related, in substance, the following incidents: "A
short time since," said he, "while passing along the shores of the
Mattawamkeag River in the winter, my attention was suddenly attracted
by a distant howling and screaming--a noise which might remind one of
the screeching of forty pair of old cart-wheels (to use the figure of
an old hunter in describing the distant howling of a pack of wolves).
Presently there came dashing from the forest upon the ice, a short
distance from me, a timid deer, closely pursued by a hungry pack of
infuriated wolves. I stood and observed them. The order of pursuit was
in single file, until they came quite near their prey, when they
suddenly branched off to the right and left, forming two lines; the
foremost gradually closed in upon the poor deer, until he was
completely surrounded, when, springing upon their victim, they
instantly bore him to the ice, and in an incredibly short space of
time devoured him, leaving the bones only; after which they galloped
into the forest and disappeared." On the same river a pack of these
prowling marauders were seen just at night, trailing along down river
on the ice. A family living in a log house near by happened to have
some poison, with which they saturated some bits of meat, and then
threw them out upon the ice. Next morning early the meat was missing,
and, on making a short search in the vicinity, six wolves were found
"dead as hammers," all within sight of each other. Every one of them
had dug a hole down through the snow into the frozen earth, in which
they had thrust their noses, either for water to quench the burning
thirst produced by the poison, or to snuff some antidote to the fatal
drug. A bounty was obtained, on each, of ten dollars, besides their
hides, making a fair job of it, as well as ridding the neighborhood of
an annoying enemy. The following account of a wolf-chase will interest
the reader:
"During the winter of 1844, being engaged in the northern part of
Maine, I had much leisure to devote to the wild sports of a new
country. To none of these was I more passionately addicted than that
of skating. The deep and sequestered lakes of this northern state,
frozen by intense cold, present a wide field to the lovers of this
pastime. Often would I bind on my rusty skates, and glide away up the
glittering river, and wind each mazy streamlet that flowed on toward
the parent ocean, and feel my very pulse bound with joyous exercise.
It was during one of these excursions that I met with an adventure
which, even at this period of my life, I remember with wonder and
astonishment.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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