The Pioneer Woodsman as He Is Related to Lumbering in the Northwest

An interesting article appeared in one of the numbers of "Country Life in America," on the subject of breeding skunks for profit. From their pelts is made and sold a fine quality of fur, known, to the purchaser, at least, as stone martin. The nearest approach to a natural farm of these animals that I have ever known was that existing at Sandy Owen's cabin, and immediately adjacent to it. These little animals were numerous in the Norway grove in which we were camped.

My son and I slept in a small "A" tent which at night was closed. On one occasion I was awakened by feeling something moving across my feet on the blankets, covering us. I spoke quietly to my son, requesting him to be careful not to move, for something was in the tent, and probably, that something was a skunk. With the gentlest of motions, I moved just sufficiently to let the animal know that I was aware of its presence in the tent. Immediately the animal retreated off of my legs, while we remained quiet for some time in the tent. Then a match was struck and with it a candle lighted, when a small hole was discovered at the foot of the tent where evidently the animal had nosed its way in, and through which it had retreated. In the morning when my son and I arose, unmistakable evidence was discovered, near where our heads had lain, that his skunkship had visited us during the night.

Mr. and Mrs. Owens left their cabin to visit another settler, several miles distant, leaving the key with the cook, and telling him that he could use it if he had occasion to do so. Coming in one evening from a cruise, the cook went to the cabin to make and bake some bread in Mrs. Owen's stove. A small hole had been cut in the door, to admit the Owens' cat. On entering, Easthagen saw a skunk sitting in the middle of the floor. The animal retreated under the bed, while the cook kindled a fire in the stove and began mixing the dough for the bread. He baked the bread and cooked the evening meal for three persons, considerately tossing some bits of bread and meat near to where the skunk was concealed. Our party ate supper outside the door a short distance from the cabin. The animal remained in the cabin that night and until after breakfast, a portion of which latter the cook fed to it, when taking the broom, he, by easy and gentle stages, pushed the skunk toward the door, removing the animal without accident.

The state of Minnesota has some excellent laws to prevent the destruction of game animals by the pothunter. Notwithstanding this fact, a greater or less number of market hunters have been able to subsist by killing unlawful game and selling the meat to the lumber camps at about five cents per pound. Many men interested in the ownership of timber lands, have been aware of this fact and have been desirous of preventing the unlawful killing of moose and deer. Some lumbermen, also, have refused to buy the meat from these market hunters. It has not been safe, however, for such people to offer evidence against these hunters. There have been two principal reasons that have deterred them from so doing. One is, that the informant's personal safety would have become endangered, and the other reason is, that his timber would have been in danger of being set on fire. It rests, therefore, with the game wardens, to ferret out and prosecute to the best of their ability, all offenders against the game law.

In the latter part of the season of 1905, my son and I, accompanied by James O'Neill, a frontiersman and trusty employee, made a canoe trip from Winton down the chain of lakes on the boundary line between Minnesota and Canada, as far as Lake La Croix. We camped at night and traveled by day, being always in Minnesota. We saw racks in Minnesota made by the Indians, on which to smoke the meat of the moose they had killed. We counted twenty-one moose hides hung up to dry. The moose had doubtless been killed as they came to the lakes to get away from flies and mosquitoes. All these animals were unlawfully killed.

A more pleasant sight than the one just related was once accorded us while working in this same country. We were quietly pushing our canoes up a sluggish stream that had found its bed in a spruce swamp. There, in many places, pond lilies were growing, their wide leaves resting on the surface of the water. The roots of the lilies are much relished as a food by the moose. We have seen the moose standing out in the bays of the lakes, and in the almost currentless streams, where the water was up to the animal's flanks, or where its body was half immersed, and poking its head deep below the surface in search of the succulent roots of the lilies. On this day, a mother moose and her twin calves had come to this stream to feed. She was in the act of reaching down under the water for a lily root, as we pushed our canoes quietly over the surface of the water into her very presence. The first to observe us was one of the young calves not more than two days old, that rose to its feet, close by on the shore. The mother looked toward her calf before she saw us; then, without undue haste, waded ashore. At this moment the second calf arose, shook itself, then, with the other twin, joined its mother. The three moved off into the spruce swamp as we sat quietly in our canoes, enjoying to the fullest this most unusual opportunity of the experienced woodsman, accustomed as he is to surprises. Our only regret on this occasion was, that we had no camera with us.

CHAPTER XXII.

White Pine—What of Our Future Supply?

It is claimed that where Dartmouth College is, in the town of Hanover, New Hampshire, on the bank of the Connecticut River, there once stood a white pine tree two hundred and seventy feet in height. That is said to have been the tallest white pine of which there is a record.

Of the thirty-seven species of pine that grow in the United States, the white pine is the best. Nature was lavish in distributing this beautiful and useful tree on American soil, for it has been found growing in twenty-four states of the Union.

The following quotation is from Bulletin 99 of the Forest Service of the United States:

"White pine occurred originally in commercial quantities in Connecticut, Delaware, Georgia, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, Tennessee, Vermont, Virginia, West Virginia, and Wisconsin. The cut has probably exceeded that of any other species. Several timber trees have a wider commercial range, and at the present time two yield more lumber yearly—Douglas fir and longleaf pine—but white pine was the leader in the market for two hundred and fifty years. Though to-day the original forests of this species are mere fragments of what they once were, the second growth in small regions is meeting heavy demand. In Massachusetts, for example, the cut in 1908 was two hundred and thirty-eight million feet, and practically all of it was second growth. It is not improbable that a similar cut can be made every year in the future from the natural growth of white pine in that state. It might be shown by a simple calculation that if one-tenth of the original white pine region were kept in well-protected second growth, like that in Massachusetts, it would yield annual crops, successfully for all time, as large as the white pine cut in the United States in 1908. To do this would require the growth of only twenty-five cubic feet of wood per acre each year, and good white pine growth will easily double that amount. The supply of white pine lumber need never fail in this country, provided a moderate area is kept producing as a result of proper care.

"During the past thirty years the largest cut of white pine has come from the Lake States, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Minnesota."

It is shown in the government's reports that forty-eight per cent of the total lumber output of the United States in 1908 was pine. If something near this ratio is to be maintained, it must be by planting and growing the trees. Under the present system of taxation, neither individuals nor corporations will undertake the work. The investment, at the shortest, is one of thirty years before returns may be looked for, while twice that time is better business. Owners of pine forests are obliged now, and have been in past years, to cut their timber lands clean because of excessive taxation. To encourage the planting and cultivation of new pine forests, it would be better to levy no tax upon the individual's or corporation's young trees until the time that the timber has grown to a size fit to be marketed, and then only on that portion which is cut into lumber. Even with this encouragement it is an enterprise that belongs largely to the state, and from it must emanate the aggressive movement upon land belonging to the state.

On the subject of "Reforestation with White Pine," Prof. E. G. Cheyney, Director of the College of Forestry in the University of Minnesota, states: "Like everything else, a tree does better on good soil, but the pine tree has the faculty of growing well on soil too poor for any other crop.... On the best quality of soil the white pine tree has produced 100 M feet per acre in Europe. On the third quality soil it makes from 40 to 60 M feet. Our forest soils are, on the whole, of better quality than those devoted to forests in Europe.

"The Forest Experiment Station at Cloquet, under the control of the College of Forestry, is now studying this reforestation policy, and the State Forest Service is looking after the forest fires and expects to begin the reforestation of our State Forests this spring.

"There are now two National Forests in Minnesota aggregating about 1,300,000 acres and only 50,000 acres of State Forest. These State Forests should be increased to at least 3,000,000 acres."

CHAPTER XXIII.

Retrospect—Meed of Praise

It is hoped that the foregoing pages have thrown some light upon the peculiar occupation of the pioneer woodsman as he is related to lumbering in the Northwest. There has been no attempt to do more than to give a plain recital of some of the events that have occurred in the experiences of one man while pioneering in this special field of the great timber and lumbering industry of the Northwest. Another, engaged in the same pursuit, might easily relate his personal experiences of equal or greater scope than have been herein portrayed, for not all has been said that might be of the woodsman's secluded life.

The occupation of this type of man is fast being eliminated, and soon his place will be known no more. In fact, the time has already arrived when there is no longer any primeval forest in the Northwest into which he may enter and separate himself from others of his own race. Railroads have been built in many directions into these vast forests, and the fine, stately pine trees have been cut down and sent out over the lines of these railroads. Men and their families have come from various states and from foreign countries, and are still coming to make for themselves homes on the lands now denuded of their once majestic forest trees towering high, and overshadowing all the earth beneath with their green branches and waving plumage.

The neigh of the horse, the low of the cow or the ox, and the laugh or song of the child is now heard where twenty years ago in summer time, stalked fearlessly the moose and the deer, where roamed the bear at will, unmolested, safe from the crack of the white man's rifle.

The schoolhouse springs into existence, where a year ago were stumps and trees. The faithful teacher, fresh from one of the normal schools or colleges of the state, comes into the settlement to train the minds and to help mould the characters of the future farmers, mechanics, statesmen, or financiers; of the doctors, lawyers, judges; or honored wives and mothers. From this ever increasing supply of the newly-born Northwest, are coming and will continue to come, some of the most valued accretions of good citizens to the commonwealth of Minnesota.

Farms are yielding their first crops to the sturdy husbandman. Pleasant, comfortable homes meet the eye of the tourist from the city in summer as he motors over the fairly good roads of the northern frontier. He enters little towns carved out of the woods, and finds, now living happily, friends whom he had known in the city, who are ready to welcome him. He camps by the roadside on the shore of a lake, or on the bank of the Mississippi whose waters flowed on unobstructed in the earlier days herein recorded, but now are harnessed for the better service of man. Here he brings his family and friends to fish and to lunch, or, better still, to prepare their fish just caught for the meal, by the open camp fire. He continues his journey through this unbroken wilderness of less than a generation ago, over improving roads, to the very source of the Mississippi River that is within five minutes' walk of Lake Itasca. Here is a refreshing bit of natural pine forest, owned and preserved by the state of Minnesota, where he and his friends may find shelter for the night, and for a longer period if desired.

In concluding this subject, I am actuated by a desire to manifest my appreciation of the fine manhood possessed by many men whom I have known, the best part of whose lives has been spent similarly to my own, in the extensive forests that once beautified and adorned the great Northwest.

The occupation is one which demands many of the highest attributes of man. He must be skillful enough as a surveyor to always know which description of land he is on, and where he is on that description. He must be a good judge of timber, able to discern the difference between a sound tree and a defective one, as well as to estimate closely the quantity and quality of lumber, reckoned in feet, board measure, each tree will likely produce when sawed at the mill. He must examine the contour of the country where the timber is, and make calculations how the timber is to be gotten out, either by water or by rail, and estimate how much money per thousand feet it will cost, to bring the logs to market. The value of the standing pine or other timber in the woods is dependent on all of these conditions, which must be reckoned in arriving at an estimate of the desirability of each tract of timber as an investment for himself, or for whomsoever he may represent.

Possessing these qualifications, he must also be honest; he must be industrious; he must be courageous. He must gain the other side of rivers that have no bridges over them, and he must cross lakes on which there are no boats. He must find shelter when he has no tent, and make moccasins when his shoes are worn and no longer of service, and new ones are not to be obtained; he must be indefatigable, for he will often be tempted to leave some work half finished rather than overcome the physical obstacles that lay between him and the completion of his task.

On the character of this man and on his faithfulness, his honesty, his conscientiousness, and on the correctness of his knowledge concerning the quality, quantity, and situation as to marketing the timber he examines, depends the value of the investments. Hundreds of thousands of dollars are invested on the word of this man, after he has disappeared into the wilderness and emerged with his report of what he has seen. The requisitions of manhood for this work are of a very high degree, and, when such a man is found, he is entitled to all of the esteem that is ever accorded to an honest, faithful, conscientious cashier, banker, or administrator of a large estate.

Is he required to furnish an illustrious example to prove the worthiness of his chosen occupation, let him cite to the inquirer the early manhood days of George Washington, who penetrated the forests from his home in Virginia, traveling through a country where savages roamed, pushing his course westward to the Ohio River in his search for valuable tracts of land for investment, and surveying lands for others than himself.

His occupation is an honorable one, and those who pursue it with an honest purpose, are accorded a high place in the esteem of those whom they serve, and with whom they associate.

The Pines

"We sleep in the sleep of ages, the bleak, barbarian pines;The gray moss drapes us like sages, and closer we lock our lines,And deeper we clutch through the gelid gloom where never a sunbeam shines.Wind of the East, Wind of the West, wandering to and fro,Chant your songs in our topmost boughs, that the sons of men may knowThe peerless pine was the first to come, and the pine will be last to go!We spring from the gloom of the canyon's womb; in the valley's lap we lie;From the white foam-fringe, where the breakers cringe, to the peaks that tusk the sky,We climb, and we peer in the crag-locked mere that gleams like a golden eye.Gain to the verge of the hog-back ridge where the vision ranges free;Pines and pines and the shadow of pines as far as the eye can see;A steadfast legion of stalwart knights in dominant empery.Sun, moon and stars give answer; shall we not staunchly standEven as now, forever, wards of the wilder strand,Sentinels of the stillness, lords of the last, lone land?"