Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 70, No. 434, December, 1851

In the midst of the bustle and noise attending the operation, the little dog given by Esther to Carlota, which had that morning followed the Major, to whom it had speedily attached itself, began barking and howling dismally in a dark recess behind one of the great natural pillars before spoken of. As the noise continued, intermixed with piteous whinings, one of the men took a torch from the wall, and stepped forward into the darkness, to see what ailed the animal. Presently he cried out that "there was a man there."

My grandfather, who was next him, immediately followed, and five paces brought him to the spot. The soldier who held the torch was stooping, and holding it over a figure that lay on the ground on its back. In the unshaven, blood-stained countenance, my grandfather, at first, had some difficulty in recognising Lazaro the Jew. Some fiery splashes of pitch from the torch dropping at the moment on his bare throat, produced no movement, though, had he been living, they must have scorched him to the quick.

On the body was nothing but the shirt he wore the night of his flight from the hospital, but his legs were wrapt in a woman's dress. Across his breast, on her face, lay Esther, in her white under-garments – for the gown that wrapt the Jew's legs was hers. The glare of the torch was bright and red on the two prostrate figures, and on the staring appalled countenance of the man who held it – the group forming a glowing spot in the vast, sombre, vaulted space, where dim gleams of light were caught and repeated on projecting masses of rock, more and more faintly, till all was bounded by darkness.

Years afterwards my grandfather would sometimes complain of having been revisited, in dreams of the night, by that ghastly piece of Rembrandt painting.

The rest quickly flocked to the spot, and Esther was lifted and found to breathe, though the Jew was stiff and cold. Some diluted spirit, from the cellar of Bags, being poured down her throat she revived a little, when my grandfather caused two of the men to bear her carefully to his house; and the body of the Jew being wrapt in a piece of canvass, was placed on a mule and conveyed to the hospital for interment.

Medical aid restored Esther to consciousness, and she told how they came to be found in the cave.

Her father, on leaving the hospital, had fled by chance, as she thought, to this cave, for he did not reach it by the usual path, but climbed, in his delirious fear, up the face of the rock, and she had followed him as well as she could, keeping his white figure in sight. They had both lain exhausted in the cave till morning, when, finding that her father slept, she was on the point of leaving him to seek assistance. But, unhappily, before she could quit the place, Bags and his associates entered from their plundering expedition into the town, and, frightened at their drunken language, and recognising in Bags the man who had robbed her, she had crept back to her concealment. The party of marauders never quitted the cavern from the moment of establishing themselves in it. They spent the day in eating, drinking, singing songs, and sometimes quarrelling. Twice, at night, she ventured forth; but she always found one of them asleep across the entrance, so that she could not pass without waking him, and once one of them started up, and seemed about to pursue her – doubtless Bags, on the occasion when he thought he saw a ghost. Nevertheless, she had mustered courage twice to take some fragments of food that were lying near the fire, leaving each time a piece of money in payment; and she had also taken a lighted candle, the better to ascertain her father's situation. He had never spoken to her since the first night of their coming, and, during all those dark and weary hours, (for they were three nights and two days in the cavern,) she had remained by him listening to his incoherent mutterings and moans. The candle had showed her that he had lost much blood, from the wound in his forehead breaking out afresh, as well as from the other received in the hospital, though the latter was but a flesh wound. These she had bandaged with shreds of her dress, and had tried to give him some of the nourishment she had procured, but could force nothing on him except some water. Some hours, however – how long she did not know, but it was during the night – before Owen's party found her, the Jew had become sensible. He told her he was dying; and, unconscious of where he was, desired her to fetch a light. This she had procured in the same way as before, lighting the candle at the embers of the fire round which Bags and his friends reposed. Then the Jew, who seemed to imagine himself still in the hospital, bid her say whom, among those she knew in Gibraltar, she would wish to have charge of her when he was no more; and, on her mentioning Carlota, had desired her to take pen and paper and write his will as he should dictate it. Pen she had none, but she had a pencil and a scrap of paper in her pocket, and with these she wrote, leaning over to catch the whispered syllables that he with difficulty articulated.

From this paper it would appear that the Jew had some fatherly feelings for Esther concealed beneath his harsh deportment towards her. I can describe the will, for I have often seen it. It is written on a piece of crumpled writing-paper, about the size of a bank-note, very stained and dirty. It is written in Spanish; and in it the Jew entreats "the Señora, the wife of Sr. Don Flinder, English officer, to take charge of his orphan child, in requital whereof he leaves her the half of whatsoever property he dies possessed of, the other half to be disposed of for the benefit of his daughter." Then follows a second paragraph, inserted at Esther's own desire, to the effect that, should she not survive, the whole was to be inherited by the aforesaid Señora. It is dated "Abril 1781," and signed in a faint, straggling hand, quite different from the clear writing of the rest – "José Lazaro."

Esther would now have gone, at all hazards, to obtain assistance, but the Jew clutched her arm, and would not permit her to quit him. He breathed his last shortly after, and Esther remembered nothing more till she came to herself in the Major's house. The paper was found in her bosom.

Some days after this event my grandfather went with Owen into the town, during a temporary lull in the enemy's firing, to visit the house of Lazaro, in order to ascertain whether anything valuable was left that might be converted to Esther's benefit. They had some difficulty in finding the exact locality, owing to the utter destruction of all the landmarks. The place was a mass of ruins. Some provisions and goods had been left by the plunderers, but so mixed with rubbish, and overflowed with the contents of the casks of liquor and molasses, as to be of no value even in these times of dearth.

Owen, poking about among the wreck, observed an open space in the middle of one of the shattered walls, as if something had been built into it. With the assistance of my grandfather's cane, he succeeded in dislodging the surrounding masonry, already loosened by shot, and they discovered it to be a recess made in the thickness of the wall, and closed by a small iron door. At the bottom was lying a small box, also of iron, which they raised, not without difficulty, for its weight was extraordinary in proportion to its dimensions. This being conveyed to my grandfather's, and opened, was found to contain more than six hundred doubloons, (a sum in value about two thousand pounds,) and many bills of exchange and promissory notes, mostly those of officers. The latest was that of Von Dessel. These the Major, by Esther's desire, returned to the persons whose signatures they bore.

Esther never completely recovered from the effects of her sojourn in the cave, but remained always pale and of weak health. My grandfather took good care of her inheritance for her, and on leaving Gibraltar, at the conclusion of the siege, invested the whole of it safely for her benefit, placing her, at the same time, in the family of some respectable persons of her own religion. She afterwards married a wealthy Hebrew; and, in whatever part of the world the Major chanced to be serving, so long as she lived, valuable presents would constantly arrive from Gibraltar – mantillas and ornaments of jewellery for Carlota, and butts of delicious sherry for my grandfather. These, however, ceased with her death, about twenty years afterwards.

This is, I believe, the most connected and interesting episode to be found in the Major's note-book; and it is, I think, the last specimen I shall offer of these new "Tales of my Grandfather."

As a child I used to listen, with interest ever new, to the tale of the young Jewess, which the narrator had often heard from the lips of Carlota and her husband. St Michael's Cave took rank in my mind with those other subterranean abodes where Cassim, the brother of Ali Baba, who forgot the word "Open Sesame," was murdered by the Forty Thieves; where Aladdin was shut by the magician in the enchanted garden; and where Robinson Crusoe discovered the dying he-goat. And when, at the conclusion of the tale, the scrap of paper containing the Jew's will was produced from a certain desk, and carefully unfolded, I seemed to be connected by some awful and mysterious link with these departed actors in the scenes I had so breathlessly listened to.

LIFE AMONGST THE LOGGERS

Forest Life and Forest Trees. By John S. Springer. New York: Harper. London: Sampson Low. 1851.

The northern and elder States of the great American Union have ceased to be associated in our minds with those ideas of wild and romantic adventure which are inseparably connected with some of their younger brethren far west and south. There is nothing suggestive of romance in such names as New York, Maine, and Pennsylvania: cotton bales, keen traders and repudiated debts, drab coats, wooden clocks, and counterfeit nutmegs, compose the equivocal and unpoetical visions they conjure up to European imaginations. But drop we our eyes down the map to lawless Arkansas, feverish Louisiana, and debateable Texas, or westwards to the still newer State of California, and a host of stirring and picturesque associations throng upon our memory. Strange scenes and a motley array pass before us. Bands of hunters and trappers, scarce more civilised than the Indians with whom they war, or gentler than the buffalo which yields them sport and food; predatory armies, for Mexico bound, keen for spoil and regardless of right; caravans of adventurous gold-seekers braving the perilous passage of the Rocky Mountains; hardy squatters, axe in hand, hewing themselves a home in the heart of the wilderness; innumerable traits of courage and endurance – incredible sufferings and countless crimes – make up a picture-gallery unrivalled of its kind. In those districts, not a league of prairie, not a mountain or stream, not a bayou or barranca, but has derived recent and vivid interest from the animated sketches of Sealsfield, Ruxton, Wise, and a host of other graphic and vigorous delineators.

As if to vindicate the claims to interest of the northern American provinces, a Down-easter, Springer by name, who hails from the State of Maine, has exhibited, in a curious little volume, the adventurous side of life in his part of the Union. At a first glance, there would appear to be few created things whose history was likely to be less interesting than that of a Yankee pine-log. Get astride it with Springer, and paddle up the Penobscot, clearing rapids and other impediments as best you may on so unpromising a float – and, before reaching the place where it grew, you shall marvel at the skill and daring expended, and at the risks run to procure it. Springer, who was reared amongst the pine forests, which his axe afterwards helped to thin, is an enthusiastic woodsman, and feels "kinder jealous" that whilst the habits and adventures of many classes of his countrymen have occupied skilful writers and public attention, no chronicler should have been found for the deeds and perils of that numerous class to which he for some years belonged. To supply this deficiency, he himself, although more used to handle axe than goose-quill, has written a plain and unpretending account of scenes and incidents which he shared in and witnessed. The freshness of the subject, and the honest earnestness of the man, would atone for clumsier treatment than it has met with at his hands.

The second title of Mr Springer's book gives a clearer idea of its contents than the primary one. The volume comprises, says the title-page, "Winter camp-life, among the Loggers, and wild-wood adventure, with descriptions of lumbering operations on the various rivers of Maine and New Brunswick." It is divided into three parts; the first and shortest being a dissertation on forest trees, with particular reference to those of America; the second, entitled "The Pine Tree, or Forest Life," giving an account of wood-cutting operations; the third, "River Life," detailing the progress of the timber from the forest to the "boom," or depôt. The chief interest of the book begins with the second chapter of the second part, wherein is described the commencement of the labours of a gang of "loggers," or woodcutters. In the hunt after timber, as after certain animals, the first thing to be done is to mark the whereabout of your game preparatory to starting in its pursuit. On the eve of the chase the keeper reconnoitres the retreat of the wild-boar. Before a party of loggers proceed to establish a camp and pass the winter woodcutting, they send out scouts to ascertain where timber is plenty. Thirty years since, this was scarcely necessary – the pine, that forest king of the northern States, abounded on every side. Fifty years hence – so it is estimated by those best qualified to judge – the vast pine forests, through which the Penobscot flows, will be on the eve of extinction. Now is the intermediate stage. A man cannot, as he formerly could, step from his house to his day's work; but research and labour still command a rich timber harvest. Exploring expeditions may be made at any period of the year, but autumn is the favourite season. They consist generally of only two or three men, accustomed to the business, who, provided with the necessary provisions, with a coffee-pot and a blanket, axe, rifle, and ammunition, embark on skiff or bateau, and pole and paddle their way two hundred miles or more up the Penobscot or the St Croix, and their numerous tributaries. On reaching the district it is proposed to explore, the boat is hauled ashore and turned bottom upwards, the load of stores is divided amongst the party, and they strike into the forest, rousing, on their passage, the stately moose, the timid deer, the roaming black bear, and many an inferior denizen of the lonesome wilderness. They now begin "prospecting." Often the thickness of the forest and the uneven surface of the country prevent their obtaining a sufficiently extensive view, and compel them to climb trees in order to look around them.

"When an ascent is to be made, the spruce tree is generally selected, principally for the superior facilities which its numerous limbs afford the climber. To gain the first limbs of this tree, which are from twenty to forty feet from the ground, a smaller tree is undercut and lodged against it, clambering up which the top of the spruce is reached. Sometimes, when a very elevated position is desired, the spruce tree is lodged against the trunk of some lofty pine, up which we ascend to a height twice that of the surrounding forest. From such a tree-top, like a mariner at the mast-head upon the look-out for whales, (and indeed the pine is the whale of the forest,) large 'clumps' and 'veins' of pine are discovered, whose towering tops may be seen for miles around. Such views fill the bosom of timber-hunters with an intense interest. They are the object of his search – his treasure, his Eldorado; and they are beheld with peculiar and thrilling emotions. To detail the process more minutely, we should observe, that the man in the tree-top points out the direction in which the pines are seen; or, if hid from the view of those below by the surrounding foliage, he breaks a small limb, and throws it in the direction in which they appear, whilst a man at the base marks the direction indicated by the falling limb by means of a compass which he holds in his hand, the compass being quite as necessary in the wilderness as on the pathless ocean. In fair weather the sun serves as an important guide; and in cloudy weather the close observation of an experienced woodman will enable him to steer a tolerably correct course by the moss which grows on the trunks of most hardwood trees, the north sides of which are covered with a much larger share than the other portions of the trunk. This Indian compass, however, is not very convenient or safe, particularly in passing through swampy lands, which are of frequent occurrence."

Two reflections are suggested by the paragraph we have just copied. The substance of one of them is noted in the Preface. "This volume," says the modest and sensible Springer, "makes no pretensions to literary merit; sooner would it claim kindred with the wild and uncultivated scenes of which it is but a simple relation." The second reflection is, that our wood-cutter is an enthusiast in his craft; for wood-cutting in Maine is a craft, and no common log-chopping. To Springer, a towering grove of timber is as exciting a sight as is to the hunter that of a herd of antlered deer or shaggy buffalo. The pine especially is the object of his love and admiration. He abounds in anecdotes and arguments to prove its good qualities, and labours hard to establish its superiority to the oak. Reared amongst the noble pines of Maine, he says, even as a child, he could never hear, without feelings of jealousy, the oak extolled as monarch of the forest. Admitting it to excel in strength, he vaunts, upon the other hand, the superior grandeur and girth of the pine, its value in building, the breadth of its planks, their clearness, beauty, and freedom from knots, the numerous uses to which it is applicable, its excellence as fuel, its perfect adaptation to all the joiner's purposes. He extols in turn each of its varieties; the red pine, remarkable for its tall trunk, which sometimes rises eighty feet from the ground before putting out a limb; the pitch pine, inferior in size, but preferable to any other wood for generating steam in engines; the white pine, superior to all in value and dimensions. He tells us of pines, of which he has read or heard, of extraordinary grandeur and diameter: of one, two hundred and sixty-four feet long; and of another which, at three feet from the ground, was fifty-seven feet nine inches in circumference. These extraordinary specimens were cut some years ago. Trees of such dimensions are now rare.

"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."

The pine tracts ascertained, the quality of the trees examined, the distance the timber will have to be hauled duly calculated, and the ground inspected, through which logging roads must be cut, the exploring party retrace their steps to the place where they left their boat. Foot-sore with their forest roamings, they gladly look forward to the quick, gliding passage down stream. A grievous disappointment sometimes awaits them. In the fall of the year, the black bear is seized with a violent longing for pitch and resinous substances, and frequently strips fir trees of their bark for the sake of the exudations. Occasionally he stumbles over a timber-hunter's bateau, and tears it to pieces in the course of the rough process he employs to extract the tar from its planks. If it is injured beyond possibility of repair, the unlucky pioneers have to perform their homeward journey on foot, unless indeed they are so fortunate as to fall in with some Indian trapper, whose canoe they can charter for a portion of the way. Once at home, the next step is to obtain permits from the State or proprietors, securing, at a stipulated price of so much per thousand feet, the exclusive right to cut timber within certain bounds. Then comes haymaking – a most important part of the loggers' duty; for on nothing does the success of the wood-cutting campaign depend more than on the good working condition of the sturdy teams of oxen which drag the logs from the snow-covered forest to the river's brink. Hard by the forest extensive strips of meadow-land are commonly found, covered with a heavy growth of grass, and thither large bands of men repair to make and stalk the hay for the ensuing winter's consumption. The labour of haymaking in these upland meadows of Maine is rendered intolerably painful by the assaults of flies and mosquitoes, and especially by the insidious attacks of millions of midges, so small as to be scarcely perceptible to the naked eye, and which get between the clothes and the skin, causing a smarting and irritation so great as to impede the progress of the work. The torment of these insect attacks is hardly compensated by the pastimes and adventures incidental to the occupation. Now and then a shot is to be had at a stray deer; the streams swarm with beautiful trout and pickerel; skirmishes with black bears are of frequent occurrence. Mr Springer's volume abounds with stories of encounters with bears, wolves, and "Indian devils" – a formidable species of catamount, of which the Indians stand in particular dread. Although the bear rarely shows himself pugnacious unless assailed, his meddlesome, thievish propensities render him particularly obnoxious to the hay-makers and wood-cutters; and when they meet him, they never can abstain from the aggressive, however civilly Bruin may be disposed to pass them by.

"On one occasion," says Mr Springer, "two men, crossing a small lake in skiff, on their return from putting up hay, discovered a bear swimming from a point of land for the opposite shore. As usual in such cases, temptation silenced prudence – they changed their course, and gave chase. The craft being light, they gained fast upon the bear, who exerted himself to the utmost to gain the shore; but, finding himself an unequal match in the race, he turned upon his pursuers, and swam to meet them. One of the men, a short, thick-set, dare-devil fellow, seized an axe, and, the moment the bear came up, inflicted a blow upon his head. It seemed to make but a slight impression, and before it could be repeated the bear clambered into the boat. He instantly grappled the man who struck him, firmly setting his teeth in his thigh; then, settling back upon his haunches, he raised his victim in the air, and shook him as a dog would a wood-chuck. The man at the helm stood for a moment in amazement, without knowing how to act, and fearing that the bear might spring overboard and drown his companion; but, recollecting the effect of a blow upon the end of a bear's snout, he struck him with a short setting-pole. The bear dropped his victim into the bottom of the boat, sallied and fell overboard, and swam again for the shore. The man bled freely from the bite, and, as the wound proved too serious to allow a renewal of the encounter, they made for the shore. But one thing saved them from being upset: the water proved sufficiently shoal to admit of the bear's getting bottom, from which he sprang into the boat. Had the water been deep, the consequences might have been more serious."

From its first to its last stage, the logger's occupation is one of severe toil and frequent peril. When the pioneer's duty is accomplished, and when the hay is made, there is still hard work to be done before he can begin to level the forest giants. No kind of labour, Mr Springer assures us, tests a man's physical abilities and powers of endurance more than boating supplies up river. The wood-cutters come to a fall, and have to land their implements and provisions, and to carry them past it. Their boats, too, must be carried, and that over rocks and fallen trees, through thickets and pathless swamps. Then they come to rapids, up which they have to pole their heavy-laden bateaux. For this work, prodigious skill, nerve, and strength are requisite. Then come the long portages from lake to lake, and the danger of being swamped, when traversing these, by sudden gusts of wind lashing the lake, in a few minutes' time, into foaming waves, in which the deeply-loaded boats could not for a moment live.

"Our frail skiff was about eighteen feet long, and four feet across the top of the gunwale amidships, tapering to a point at either end, constructed of thin slips of pine boards, nailed to some half-dozen pair of slender knees, about two inches in diameter. On board were fifteen hundred pounds of provisions, with seven men, which pressed her into the water nearly to the gunwale; three inches from the position of a level, and she would fill with water."

In such an overburthened cockle-shell as this did Mr Springer once find himself in company with a drunken man, who was only withheld from capsizing the boat by the threat of having his skull split with a paddle; for an inordinate addiction to rum is the loggers' chief vice, a vice palliated by the hardship and exposure they endure. Drinking, however, is on the decline amongst them of late years, since "it has been fully demonstrated that men can endure the chilling hardships of river-driving quite as well, and indeed far better, without the stimulus of ardent spirits, and perform more and better-directed labour." Black pepper tea is drunk on cold nights when camping in the open air, and is found a warming and comfortable beverage. Both in drink and diet the loggers look more to strength than to delicacy. Salt pork, ship bread, and molasses, compose the staple of their consumption. The drippings from a slice of pork, roasted before the fire, are allowed to fall on the bread, which is then dignified by the name of buttered toast. Sometimes the salt pork is eaten raw, dipped in molasses, – a mixture unequalled for nastiness, we should imagine, excepting by that of oysters and brown sugar. "The recital may cause," says honest Springer in his comical English, "in delicate and pampered stomachs some qualms, yet we can assure the uninitiated that, from these gross samples, the hungry woodsman makes many a delicious meal." An assurance which gives us a most exalted idea of the appetite and digestion of the loggers of Maine.

Once in the forest with their stores, the woodmen carefully select a suitable spot, clear the ground, build their "camp" and "hovel," and commence their winter's work. The "camp" and "hovel" are two log-houses, the former being for the men, the latter for the oxen. In some respects the beasts are better treated than their masters, for their hovel is floored with small poles, a luxury unknown in the camp, where the men sleep on branches strewn upon the bare earth. "Having completed our winter residences, next in order comes the business of looking out and cutting the 'main' and some of the principal 'branch roads.' These roads, like the veins in the human body, ramify the wilderness to all the principal 'clumps' and 'groves' of pine embraced in the permit." Mr Springer expatiates on the graceful curves of the roads, whose inequalities soon become filled with snow, and their surface hard-beaten and glassy, polished by the sled and logs which are continually passing over it, whilst overhead the trees interlace their spreading branches. "Along this roadside, on the way to the landing, runs a serpentine path for the 'knight of the goad,' whose deviations are marked now outside this tree, then behind that 'windfall,' now again intercepting the main road, skipping along like a dog at one's side." The teamster, if he does his duty, works harder than any man in camp. Under a good teamster, the oxen receive care almost as tender as though they were race-horses with thousands depending on their health and condition. With proper attention and management, they should be in as good flesh in the spring as when they began hauling early in winter.