Cedar bark

“ Even now one can hardly enter a Nootka house without seeing one or more of the women twilling mats and baskets with strips of softened cedar bark or twining the cedar-bark strands into cordage and bags, or threading a rush mat with the long needles of polished spiræa. In the old days, there was always in the house a great clatter of breaking up the raw, yellow cedar bark with the corrugated bark beaters of bone of whale, and of loosening up the hard strips of red cedar bark into fibrous masses with the half-moon shredders. The women could work up the bark into almost any degree of fineness ”

“ The largest specimens are about 150 feet high, and seven feet in diameter. The bark is brown, of a singularly rich tone very attractive to artists, and the foliage is tinted with a warmer yellow than that of any other evergreen in the woods. Casting your eye over the general forest from some ridge-top, the color alone of its spiry summits is sufficient to identify it in any company.
INCENSE CEDAR IN ITS PRIME.
In youth, say up to the age of seventy or eighty years, no other tree forms so strictly tapered a cone from top to bottom. ”

“ I love a spray of white cedar, especially the spicy, sweet inside bark, or a pine needle, or the tender, sweet, juicy end of a spike of timothy grass drawn slowly from its close-fitting sheath, or a twig of the birch that tastes like wintergreen.
I think this no strange or unusual instinct, for I have seen many other people doing it, especially farmers around here, who go through the fields nipping the new oats, testing the red-top, or chewing a bit of sassafras bark. ”

“ The seeds are angular, with a wedge-shaped wing.
The trees do not produce cones until they are from twenty-five to thirty years old; but they may be a century old before producing either male or female flowers.
The trunk is covered with thick, rough, deeply fissured bark. On the branches the bark is smooth, and peels off in thin flakes. The Cedar, in its native habitat, produces admirable timber, but that of trees grown in our own country is described by Loudon as "reddish-white, light and spongy, easily worked, but very apt to shrink and warp, and by no means durable." ”

“ This tissue is sometimes formed of little twisted cords of the silk grass knoted at their ends and interwoven as discribed of the bark. this kind is more esteemed and last much longer than those of bark. they also form them of flags and rushes which are woarn in a similar manner. the women as well as the men sometimes cover themselves from the rain by a mat woarn over the sholders. they also cover their heads from the rain sometimes with a common water cup or basket made of the cedar bark and beargrass. these people seldom mark their skins by puncturing and introducing a colouring matter. ”

“ Some of the women were employed in beating and preparing the inner rind of the cedar bark, to which they gave the appearance of flax. Others were spinning with a distaff and spindle. One of them was weaving a robe of it, intermixed with stripes of the sea-otter skin, on a frame of adequate contrivance that was placed against the side of the house. The men were fishing on the river with drag-nets between {269}two canoes. These nets are forced by poles to the bottom, the current driving them before it ”

“ We all agreed with him.
“I have no doubt about being able to do it,” said Martin; “but we must fix on some place where the white birch trees are abundant, that we may have a good selection of bark. Much depends on its perfect condition, and many of the trees we have passed are of insufficient size or have holes in the bark, which would render them useless for our purpose.”
We trudged on therefore, eagerly looking out for a spot which would answer all our requirements. Before long we found one with some cedar trees in the neighbourhood, and some young spruce firs not far off. ”

“ The nature of this tree is not to elevate its trunk, or the part between the root and the first branches; for the largest Cedars which we saw did not in the height of their trunks exceed six or seven feet. From this low but enormously thick body, prodigious branches rise, spreading as they rise, and forming by the disposition of their boughs and leaves which point upward, a sort of wheel which appears to be the work of art. The bark of the cedar, except at the trunk, is smooth and shining, of a brown colour. ”

“ The bark is thin and exhibits cedar’s characteristic stringiness. It is shed in thin strips.
The wood is moderately light, and is strong and stiff. It is probably the hardest of the cedars, and the grain is so regular that high polish is possible. Under favorable circumstances trees grow with fair rapidity, but when conditions are unfavorable, as on high mountains where summers are short and winters severe, growth is remarkably slow, and twenty years or more may be required for one inch increase in trunk diameter. The wood of such trees is hard, dense, and strong. ”

“ Where butterflies dream of the life to come,
She left clinging round the smooth and dark _55
Edge of the odorous cedar bark. ”

“ Altho the majority of the nests found were on cedar trunks, one was on a Jeffrey pine, and at least five were on silver firs. In the latter cases the trees were dead and rotting, for it was only on dead trees that the bark had become loosened and separated enough from the trunk to afford the narrow sheltered spaces sought by the creepers for nesting sites. But the huge living cedar trunks furnished the ideal situations. ”

“ It literally never rots. The most striking characteristic of the cedars is their almost incredible vitality. The oldest of all are gnarled and twisted, but they have the rough strength of muscle-bound giants. Each year new [172] cones rise above the broad, green branches, and the balsamic juice flows fresh from every break in the bark. In the words of the Psalmist, they still bring forth fruit in old age, and are full of sap and green. “There is not, and never has been, a rotten cedar. The wood is incorruptible. ”

“ The pieces of bark, which had been sewed together, were fitted neatly over this frame, and wattap was wrapped over and over the gunwale and passed through bark and ribs. Next to the bark, and held in place by the ribs, strips of cedar, shaved as thin as the blade of a knife, were placed to form sheathing. The last process was the gumming of the seams to make them water-tight. The gum, softened by heat, was applied, and the seams carefully gone over with a live coal held in a split stick, while, with the thumb of the other hand, the canoe maker pressed in the sticky substance. ”

“ Sometimes strips of the inner layer of basswood bark are used for this purpose. When the frame of the canoe is complete, remove it, and lay the pieces of birch-bark, cut to the pattern and partially sewed together, within the pegged-out space. Allow a little for seams and fitting. Now lay the frame upon the covering, turn the latter up and fit it smoothly, as a dress is fitted to the manikin. An awl is used for making holes, and the dried cedar roots for sewing the 54 bark. Turn the upper edges inward over the rim and sew them closely over and over. ”

“ Formerly they built houses of planks split out of cedar with no better implement than a stone axe and wedge. An axeman can split enough in two or three days to build himself a cabin. This tree is nearly allied to the arbor vitce, which it resembles in foliage, having its leaves in flat sprays that look as if they had been pressed. On the under side of the spray is a cluster of small cones. The bark is thin, and peels off in long strips which are used by the Indians to make matting, and a kind of cloth used for mantles to shed the rain. ”

“ In the trees above mentioned, if it is only a narrow circular strip of bark that is removed, no injurious effects will be perceptible; but in the case of the weaker trees, as well as those which grow in a thin soil, the same operation, if performed even on one side only, will be sure to kill them. The removal of the top,3209 in 525the pitch-tree, the cedar, and the cypress is productive of a similar result; for if it is either cut off or destroyed by fire, the tree will not survive: the same is the case, too, if they are bitten by the teeth of animals. ”

“ Its bark, as well as the seed pods, contains a large percentage of tannin. It multiplies from seed and is a secondary tree throughout the subtropical zone.
Red Cedar, Cedrela brasiliensis, A. Juss.—30 metres in height by O·75 metre in diameter, and sometimes more. Furnishes very fine light timber of a nice colour and easy to work. Much used for joinery work. One of the best stock trees in the subtropical zone, where it should be used for reafforestation in the existing woods, and afforestation throughout the subtropical region. To be sown in rows as far as possible and with seeds in layers. ”

“ Ships they have none, but do prettily imitate ours in their Birchen-pinnaces, their Canows are made of Birch, they shape them with flat Ribbs of white Cedar, and cover them with large sheets of Birch-bark, sowing them through with strong threds of Spruse-Roots or white Cedar, and pitch them with a mixture of Turpentine and the hard rosen that is dryed with the Air on the out-side of the Bark of Firr-Trees. ”

“ They seem to leap and spring into the air, often leaning and curving upward from the very root, sometimes in forms that would be almost grotesque were it not for the never-failing rightness of free-swinging poise and perfect balance. The tints of the stem give a precious lesson in colour. The white of the bark is here silvery-white and there milk-white, and sometimes shows the faintest tinge of rosy flush. Where the bark has not yet peeled, the stem is clouded and banded with delicate grey, and with the silver-green of lichen. ”

“ The bark is light yellowish-grey, translucent, horny, shrivelled, knotted and partially annulated. Very frequently a keel-shaped ridge occurs, running like a shrunken sinew through the principal root; it has no connexion with the wood, but originates in a one-sided development of the liber-tissue. The bark encloses a pure, white woody column about as thick as itself. After the root has been macerated in water the bark is easily peeled off, and the peculiar structure of the wood can then be studied. ”

“ The galls are pounded and boiled, and into the infusion thus made the stuffs about to be dyed are dipped,'"
"I should think," said Clara, "that people would plant oak trees everywhere, when they are so useful. Is anything done with the bark?"
"Yes," said her governess; "the bark, which is very rough, is valuable for tanning leather and for medicine. The element which has the effect of turning raw hide or skin into leather is called tannin; it is also found in the bark of some other trees and in tropical plants." ”

“ Most of the cedars are crowded so closely that their growth has been very irregular. Sometimes two branches from different trees nib against each other until the bark is broken; then the exuding sap cements them together, and in the course of years they grow into each other so that you cannot tell where one tree ends and the other begins. ”

“ The bark is commonly taken from the bodies of the trees of a foot or foot and half diameter; the bark being so thin, when the trees are younger, as to lose all its qualities very soon. I here inquired for the different sorts of cassia-tree of which I had been told, but was now informed that there was only one sort, and that the difference they mentioned was occasioned entirely by the soil and situation in which the trees grow; that those which grow in a rocky dry soil have red shoots, and their bark is of superior quality to that of trees which grow in moist clay, whose shoots are green. ”

“ The wood makes excellent fuel, and is much used for that purpose in some of the large cities of America. The bark, too, is excellent for tanning—almost equal to that of the oak.
The “red birch” is still another species, which takes its name from the reddish hue of its bark. This is equal in size to the canoe-birch, often growing seventy feet high, with a trunk of nearly three feet diameter. Its branches are long, slender, and pendulous; and it is from the twigs of this species that most of the “birch-brooms” used in America are made. ”

“ In order to detach the valuable inner bark, longitudinal and transverse incisions are made as high as can be reached on the stem. The tree is then felled, and the peeling completed. In most cases, but especially if previously beaten, the bark separates easily from the wood. In many localities it has to be dried by a fire made on the floor of a hut, the bark being placed on hurdles above,—a most imperfect arrangement. In Southern Peru and Bolivia however, according to Weddell, even the thickest Calisaya bark is dried in the sun without requiring the aid of the fire. ”

“ Usually it stands out separate and independent, clinging by slight joints to the rocks, living chiefly on snow and thin air and maintaining sound health on this diet for 2000 years or more. Every feature or every gesture it makes expresses steadfast, dogged endurance. The bark is of a bright cinnamon color and is handsomely braided and reticulated on thrifty trees, flaking off in thin, shining ribbons that are sometimes used by the Indians for tent matting. ”

“ The bark looks shriveled and withered, the twigs seem dry when cut, and resist the knife; when thawed by the fire, or on the return of spring weather, the bark seems loose, and the inner bark, instead of being greenish-white, becomes brown, and the whole tree looks as though it was dead. In old trees, large portions of the bark start from the stem and large limbs, and hang loosely for awhile and then fall off. The buds alone retain their vitality, and upon the return of spring they sometimes succeed in establishing the necessary connection with the soil, and restore the circulation of the sap ”