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
"I immediately acted on this plan. The wolves, having regained their
feet, sprang directly toward me. The race was renewed for twenty yards
up the stream; they were already close on my back, when I glided round
and dashed past my pursuers. A fierce growl greeted my evolution, and
the wolves slipped upon their haunches and sailed onward, presenting a
perfect picture of helplessness and baffled rage. Thus I gained nearly
a hundred yards each turning. This was repeated two or three times,
every moment the wolves getting more excited and baffled, until,
coming opposite the house, a couple of stag-hounds, aroused by the
noise, bayed furiously from their kennels. The wolves, taking the
hint, stopped in their mad career, and after a moment's consideration
turned and fled. I watched them till their dusky forms disappeared
over a neighboring hill; then, taking off my skates, I wended my way
to the house, with feelings better to be imagined than described."
Such annoyances from these migrating beasts, in the vicinity of
logging births as above-named, are of recent date. Up to 1840 I had
been much in the wild forests of the northeastern part of Maine,
clearing wild land during the summer and logging in the winter, and up
to this time had never seen a satisfactory evidence of their presence.
But since this period they have often been seen, and in such numbers
and of such size as to render them objects of dread.
Every department of labor among the loggers, and in fact, to extend
the observation, every department of life, is characterized more or
less by adventure and peril. Our men get badly cut sometimes, and
then, in the absence of a surgeon, are put upon their own resources to
stanch blood and dress wounds.
I recollect an instance in which a man in one of the neighboring
crews, while at work, received the whole bit of an ax into the
muscular portion of his thigh, by an accidental blow from an
associate. It was indeed a gaping wound. A wound of such an alarming
character, in the absence of suitable medical aid, is deemed a serious
matter, and not without just cause. In this instance use was made of
handkerchiefs to swathe up the wound, so as to stanch the flowing
blood, while they bore him to the camp upon a litter. He was laid upon
the deacon seat, and the wound was sewed up by one of the crew with a
common sewing-needle. It did well, and in the course of a few weeks he
was able to resume his labors.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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