Very Occasionally We Would Come Upon A Log Shanty, That Most Picturesque
Of Human Habitations; The Walls Formed Of Large Logs, With The Interstices
Filled Up With Clay, And The Roof Of Rudely Sawn Boards, Projecting One Or
Two Feet, And Kept In Their Places By Logs Placed Upon Them.
Windows and
doors there were none, but, where a door was not, I generally saw four
or five shoeless, ragged urchins, whose light tangled hair and general
aspect were sufficient to denote their nationality.
Sometimes these cabins
would be surrounded by a little patch of cleared land, prolific in Indian
corn and pumpkins; the brilliant orange of the latter contrasting with the
charred stumps among which they grew; but more frequently the lumberer
supported himself solely by his axe. These dwellings are suggestive, for
they are erected by the pioneers of civilization; and if the future
progress of America be equal in rapidity to its past, in another fifty
years the forests will have been converted into lumber and firewood - rich
and populous cities will have replaced the cabins and shanties - and the
children of the urchins who gazed vacantly upon the cars will have
asserted their claims to a voice in the councils of the nation.
The rays of the sun never penetrate the forest, and evening was deepening
the gloom of the artificial twilight, when gradually we became enveloped
in a glare, redder, fiercer, than that of moonlight; and looking a head I
saw the forest on fire, and that we were rushing into the flames. "Close
the windows, there's a fire a-head," said the conductor; and after obeying
this commonplace direction, many of the passengers returned to the
slumbers which had been so unseasonably disturbed. On, on we rushed - the
flames encircled us round - we were enveloped in clouds of stifling smoke -
crack, crash went the trees - a blazing stem fell across the line - the
fender of the engine pushed it aside - the flames hissed like tongues of
fire, and then, leaping like serpents, would rush up to the top of the
largest tree, and it would blaze like a pine-knot, There seemed no egress;
but in a few minutes the raging, roaring conflagration was left behind. A
forest on fire from a distance looks very much like 'Punch's' picture of a
naval review; a near view is the height of sublimity.
The dangers of the cars, to my inexperience, seemed by no means over with
the escape from being roasted alive. A few miles from Cleveland they
rushed down a steep incline, apparently into Lake Erie; but in reality
upon a platform supported on piles, so narrow that the edges of the cars
hung over it, so that I saw nothing but water. A gale was blowing, and
drove the surf upon the platform, and the spray against the windows,
giving such a feeling of insecurity, that for a moment I wished myself in
one of our "'coon sentry-boxes." The cars were very full after leaving
Cleveland, but I contrived to sleep soundly till awakened by the intense
cold which attends dawn.
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