ll this distance partly to see
where the white-pine, the Eastern stuff of which our houses are built,
grew, but that on this and a previous excursion into another part of
Maine I had found it a scarce tree; and I asked him where I must look
for it. With a smile, he answered, that he could hardly tell
me. However, he said that he had found enough to employ two teams the
next winter in a place where there was thought to be none left. What
was considered a "tip-top" tree now was not looked at twenty years
ago, when he first went into the business; but they succeeded very
well now with what was considered quite inferior timber then. The
explorer used to cut into a tree higher and higher up, to see if it
was false-hearted, and if there was a rotten heart as big as his arm,
he let it alone; but now they cut such a tree, and sawed it all around
the rot, and it made the very best of boards, for in such a case they
were never shaky.

One connected with lumbering operations at Bangor told me that the
largest pine belonging to his firm, cut the previous winter, "scaled"
in the woods four thousand five hundred feet, and was worth ninety
dollars in the log at the Bangor boom in Oldtown. They cut a road
three and a half miles long for this tree alone. He thought that the
principal locality for the white-pine that came down the Penobscot now
was at the head of the East Branch and the Allegash, about Webster
Stream and Eagle and Chamberlain Lakes. Much timber has been stolen
from the public lands. (Pray, what kind of forest-warden is the Public
itself?) I heard of one man who, having discovered some particularly
fine trees just within the boundaries of the public lands, and not
daring to employ an accomplice, cut them down, and by means of block
and tackle, without cattle, tumbled them into a stream, and so
succeeded in getting off with them without the least assistance.
Surely, stealing pine-trees in this way is not so mean as robbing
hen-roosts.

We reached Monson that night, and the next day rode to Bangor, all the
way in the rain again, varying our route a little. Some of the taverns
on this road, which were particularly dirty, were plainly in a
transition state from the camp to the house.

* * * * *

The next forenoon we went to Oldtown. One slender old Indian on the
Oldtown shore, who recognized my companion, was full of mirth and
gestures, like a Frenchman. A Catholic priest crossed to the island in