Cordwood

“ The wood is hard, heavy, and strong, and checks badly in seasoning. The medullary rays are broad and conspicuous, the wood dark brown in color, the sapwood lighter. This oak is very high in ash contents, more than one per cent of the dry weight of wood going to ashes when burned. The tree reaches its best development in the lower Mississippi valley, and in eastern Texas. Comparatively few uses for it have been found. Cordwood cutters find it valuable where it abounds in sufficient quantity, and it has been burned for charcoal for iron foundries and blacksmith shops. ”

“ When an extra good quality of rock is wanted, as for export, a few layers of cordwood are put down and the sun-dried rock put on that. Then, when ready to ship, the wood is fired, and after the rock is cool, it is broken and loaded with forks, when most of the dirt sloughs off, leaving the rock almost perfectly clean. ”

“ I should answer this by calling attention to the immense area of land in Maury, Lawrence, Lewis and Hickman counties, known as “The Barrens,” which are gradually being denuded of their timber for cordwood that is shipped to Mt. Pleasant for use in drying the phosphate rock. There are at least 250,000 acres of this land, which is now readily purchasable at $3 per acre, with the cord wood on it. The wood alone will yield in value more than this price, thus leaving the land clear. ”

“ Geargey looked over his shoulder with a delighted grin on his weatherbeaten features. 'I tell 'ee, Sam,' he said to the old gardener, confidentially, 'it's my belief that thik ther boy'ull be able one o' these vine days to paint rale picturs.'
CHAPTER III. PERNICIOUS LITERATURE. When winter came, Hiram Winthrop had less to do and more time to follow the bidding of his own fancy. True, there was cordwood to split in abundance; and splitting cordwood is no child's play along the frozen shores of Lake Ontario. ”

“ The importance of this oak lies in its fuel value. It rates above white oak in theoretical tests, but it is heavier in ash, and in practice it hardly measures up to white oak. It grows slowly and is destined to disappear as a source of fuel supply. Reproduction has nearly ceased in most parts of its range, due largely to the perseverance of hogs in eating the acorns. Cordwood cutters have stripped the last tree from large areas where much once grew. This oak never forms forests. The trees seldom grow as close together as apple trees in an orchard. ”

“ The air was still, the sky as pellucid as crystal, and where a crag projected boldly from the forests, the growths of balsam fir extending almost to the brink, it seemed as if the myriad fibres of the summit-line of foliage might be counted, so finely drawn, so individual, was each against the azure. Below the boughs the road swept along the crest of the crag and thence curved inward, and one surveying the scene from the windows of a bungalow at no great distance could look straight beyond the point of the precipice and into the heart of the sunset, still aflare about the west. ”

“ On the other side of the road he noted how the timber had been cut away; a cornfield was yellowing in the sun, and at the summit of the slant he perceived, lazily adrift in the air, a whorl of smoke that issued from the crooked and dilapidated stick-and-clay chimney of a little log cabin, almost invisible, embowered amongst the boughs of an ample orchard of thrifty apple trees. Nearer at hand these gave way to peach trees planted in regular avenues and great numbers. ”

“ No! Protective resemblance! That was what it was, and that was what Ginger’s inevitable corduroy was; it was the color of the dust, the blinding, stifling dust of this parched land of summer; protective resemblance; dust; corduroy.
“Señor, we are here! We are arrive’ at home, Señor! Do you not weesh to get down?” It was Estrada, dismounted, standing beside him, and they were just below the veranda of the old adobe at Dos Pozos. ”

“ The name of Earlswood, significant to modern ears only of the great idiot asylum there, derives from them. Place-names down [Pg 173] in these levels ending in “wood” recall the dense forests that once overspread Holmesdale: Ewood, Norwood, Charlwood, Hartswood, Hookwood—vast glades of oak and beech, where the hogs roamed and the prototypes of Gyrth, the swineherd, tended them, in the consideration of the Norman lords of little more value than the pigs they herded. The scattered “leys”—Horley, Crawley, Kennersley, and the like—allude to the clearings or pastures amid the forest. ”

“ He made a swift detour about the lively Springs, picked up Tony’s Trail and followed it into the heat of the afternoon, made an early camp at Willow Creek and was off again in the morning dew, headed, the long way round, for home. Past Shovel Handle Creek, through Strawberry Valley, gay as a garden with little flowers of yellow and magenta and hearty pink, up and up, and up again, unceasingly, to the summit of Marble Peak. [151] He loosened his cinch, lighted his pipe, granted himself a half hour for gazing. ”

“ Around me lay the prostrate trunks of venerable oaks, once the towering and magnificent lords of the forest, and a number of wood-cutters were hacking and hewing at another gigantic tree, just tottering to its fall.
Alas! for old Sherwood Forest: it had fallen into the possession of a noble agriculturist; a modern utilitarian, who had no feeling for poetry or forest scenery. In a little while and this glorious woodland will be laid low; its green glades be turned into sheep-walks; its legendary bowers supplanted by turnip-fields; and "Merrie Sherwood" will exist but in ballad and tradition. ”

“ And when at evening the valley is deeply shadowed, the light seems to linger in benediction on the same cornfield, where the great oak-tree, no longer silhouetted darkly against a golden dawn, shines faintly, with a radiance borrowed from the west, against the pearl-blue curtain of the waning day. Except during the early morning or at dusk, the cornfield does not stand out conspicuously in the landscape. ”

“ He did no work that afternoon, although the corn was "suffering." He sat after dinner smoking his pipe on the porch of his log cabin, while he moodily watched the big shadow of the mountain creeping silently over the wooded valley as the sun got on the down grade. Deep glooms began to lurk among the ravines of the great ridge opposite. The shimmering blue summits in the distance were purpling. A redbird, alert, crested, and with a brilliant eye, perched idly on the vines about the porch, having relinquished for the day the job of teaching a small, stubby imitation of himself to fly. ”

“ In the orchard on the steep grassy hill behind the house the children climbed a cherry tree, and Dick brought me greenleafed branches hanging with ripe sweet cherries. After lunch we walked up the road to see the view from the top of the hill. There is a sort of Colony at Croton, and every other house is inhabited by someone one knows, or who knows the other. All work-worn journalists, artists and Bohemians generally, who come there with their children for a rest. The houses have no gardens, the grass grows long and the rose bushes are weed tangled. ”

“ Then we climb to the right for a hundred feet until we reach a little shelf, along which we pass, walking with great care, for it is narrow; thus we pass around the fall. Here the gorge widens into a spacious, sky-roofed chamber. In the farther end is a beautiful grove of cottonwoods, and between us and the cotton-woods the little stream widens out into three clear lakelets with bottoms of smooth rock. Beyond the cottonwoods the brook tumbles in a series of white, shining cascades from heights that seem immeasurable. ”

“ Sitting there on the dull-hued plain, with the Cordillerras rising so abruptly a few miles back, the buildings looked very tiny and insignificant. Across the stream from the shaft-house, the shops, and the quarters of the men is a square, fortress-like two story residence of rough gray stone.... The narrow-gauge railroad track runs from it down toward the canyon like thin black threads.
As we flew over the buildings, a trim white figure appeared on the roof of the residence, and waved a slender arm. I knew that it must be Ellen, and I felt oddly excited at the thought of seeing her again. ”

“ The groves of timber are more scattering, and the country more level and open. Except the ash, maple, alder, and willow of the river-bottoms, there is little forest; but the isolated trees of pine, fir, and oak which beautify the plains, are of the handsomest proportions.
Corvallis, about a dozen miles above Albany, on the west side of the river, is about the same age with it. Its first proprietor was Mr. Avery, who still resides there. It is the first town of consequence on the west side of the Wallamet, and the only one excepting Eugene. ”

“ A sort of hand-bridge led back to the Redhurst Road, opposite Ashenfold; further on there were only Redhurst and Fordham locks.
A considerable tract of copse had been felled the year before; and this spring the place of the underwood was supplied by the young sprouting oak-shoots and by myriads of primroses and anemones, ivy, lichen and moss, and all the beauties of woodlands in the spring. It was a lovely day, warm and sunny, with a sky the colour of the speedwells that were still hiding in the hedges. ”

“ Behind the Post where the hills climb toward the Cottonwood Creek divide, there is a little canon which at sunset is especially inviting. It hastens twilight by at least an hour during midsummer, and in autumn it leads up a stairway of shadow to the great spectacle of the day—the day's departure from the hills. ”

“ A lateral spur was in the immediate foreground, high, steep, and heavily wooded, the monotony of the deep, restful green of its slopes broken here and there by vertical lines of gleaming white, betokening the trunks of the beech-trees amidst the dark preponderance of walnut and pine; more than one hung, all bleached and leafless, head downward, half uprooted, for thus the wind, past this long time, left trace of its fury. A stream—a native mountaineer, wild and free and strong—took its way down the gorge between the spur and the mountain from which it shot forth. ”

“ The track across the upland would lead to Stonycross, but of this more anon; we must return to the woodland.
The better-known enclosures are those of Mark Ash, Knightwood, and Rhinefield. These are all crossed by practicable roads, and, though full of fine trees and great beauty, seem to have lost something of the indefinable wild-wood charm that haunts the lonelier spots. The excursionist who likes to see something definite will visit the “King of the Forest” and the noted Knightwood Oak, which has had to be fenced round to preserve it from the attentions of its admirers. ”

“ From the western coastal hill area the mountains rise abruptly in parallel ranges lying in a general north and south direction, and they subside only in the foothills west of the great level bottom land bordering the Rio Grande de Cagayan. The Cordillera Central is as fair and about as varied a mountain country as the tropic sun shines on. It has mountains up which one may climb from tropic forest jungles into open, pine-forested parks, and up again into the dense tropic forest, with its drapery of vines, its varied hanging orchids, and its graceful, lilting fern trees. ”

“ Another thing Cordelia saw: an opening into another cave, a chamber beyond this. Tryon saw that she had discovered it, and he bade her to come with him and look.
He did not offer to lay a hand upon her. She followed him, and soon entered another apartment, not so large as the first, but much like it. Here was more furniture, and here was a bed, seemingly clean and freshly made.
“My dear lady, here you will tarry until to-morrow. You will here be safe. No harm can possibly come to you. You shall have plenty to eat; yonder bed is sweet and clean; and you may rest in it without dread.” ”

“ The deep bay had filled with sand and cottonwood timber sprouted upon it. Left to itself a century and the cottonwoods on the sandbar would have grown to great trees, and been thrown to earth by the stronger arms and more powerful growth of oak, ash, and sycamore. Another century and the oak, ash, and sycamore would have bowed to the woodman's axe. ”

“ From afar the forests appear to rim the slopes and spurs of the Cordillera with a seemingly impenetrable mass of blackness, reaching towards and often running up into the snow-line; as you approach the colour assumes its true hue, a deep dense green, a green that seems to have the quality of absorbing light, so that, as you gaze upon the expanse of foliage stretching back into the distances, fold beyond fold, where the valleys and mountain-sides close in behind each other, an impression of gloom and mystery lays hold upon your mind. ”

“ A forest is in all mythologies a sacred place; as the oaks among the Druids, and the grove of Egeria, and even in more familiar and common life, as "Barnsdale wood" and "Sherwood." Had Robin Hood no Sherwood to resort to, it would be difficult to invest his story with the charms it has got. It is always the tale that is untold, the deeds done, and the life lived in the unexplored scenery of the wood, that charm us and make us children again, to read his ballads and hear of the greenwood tree. ”

“ Nothing can be more bleak and dreary than the appearance of the whole Cordillera of Catorce: a few narrow mule-paths, or the white bed of a torrent indistinctly traced upon the surface, alone break the monotonous colouring of the mass; and the town, though placed at an immense height, is invisible from below, being completely hidden by the brow of the mountain: not a tree, not a blade of grass is to be seen in its vicinity ”