History of Coos County, New Hampshire, Part 14

Author: Merrill, Georgia Drew
Publication date: 1888
Publisher: Syracuse [N.Y.] : W. A. Fergusson
Number of Pages: 1194

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Beaver .- There are many beaver meadows all along the Connecticut val- ley and on the tributary streams. In 1858, while upon the eastern boundary

*The mention of the moose brings to mind the famous anecdote of Thomas Jefferson and the great French naturalist, Buffon. Mr. Jefferson, in his "Notes on Virginia," pointed out some errors in the published works of M. Buffon, and, when afterwards the gentlemen met in Paris, Buffon presented Mr. Jefferson a copy of his Natural History with this remark: "When Mr. Jef- ferson will do me the pleasure to read this, he will acknowledge that I am not in error." Mr. Jefferson, still unconvinced, determined to demonstrate to Buffon that the Virginia deer was not the red deer of Europe, nor the American moose the Lapland reindeer. He engaged Gen. Sullivan to obtain for him a New Hampshire moose that he might have the stuffed skin and skeleton sent to Paris, with the horns of a Virginia deer which he had procured. Gen. Sullivan raised a company of twenty men and captured a moose near the White Mountains. The cost of the hunt, the taxi- dermist's bill, and the prepaid freight to Paris was $200, which the triumphant Jefferson cheer- fully paid.

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of our state, in the apex of the triangle made by the boundary range and the mountains on the New Hampshire line, in a little glen only sixty rods from the iron post in the northern wilderness that marks at once the terri- tory of Canada, of New Hampshire, and of Maine, I came upon a secluded pond inhabited by a family of beaver. Marks of recent work were plenty: a few trees, six inches or more in diameter, cut down by their teeth, and chips therefrom, fresh and green, smooth-cut as by a carpenter's gouge, were scattered about. This was doubtless the last family of beaver in C'oos, and I learned a few years later that they had all been trapped and destroyed. Lancaster was formerly a favorite haunt of the beaver, where they were trapped in great quantities. From the manuscript of Major Weeks I copy a description of the location of these animals, together with some hints as to their habits

" About two miles southwest of the town centre is a large tract of alluvial land called . Martin meadow' (the meadows in the present school district No. 2), from an early hunter whose name was Martin. He caught an immense number of beaver from Beaver brook, which mean- ders through the meadow. Beaver dams on this brook can yet be traced, in one instance for about fifty rods in length and near five feet in height. There are others of less extent, yet all exhibiting extraordinary skill and ingenuity, superior to some bipeds who attempt the erection of dams. The banks of this brook are perforated in hundreds of places, which show the former residences of bank beaver, a kind smaller than those wonderful architects who build dams and erect houses several feet in diameter, with a layer of poles through the middle which divides them into two stories, in one of which their food for winter, consisting of bark and small poles, cut about two feet in length, is deposited, while the other. covered with leaves, is their resting-place during the inclement season. The entrance to both kinds of habitation is always below low-water mark, from which point they ascend through a subterranean passage, often several rods long, to their dark yet comfortable abode.

The Beaver brook here referred to, from the clearing up of the land around its sources, has much shrunk in volume, and now flows sluggishly through the low meadows known to their owners as the bog. It enters the Connecticut near the "brick school-house," near which was the resi- dence of Edwards Bucknam, a follower of "Governor Page," the first set- tler of the town.

Wolves were frequent in the Cohos country at the time of its settle- ment, and did not entirely disappear until within the last thirty years. Old residents of Lancaster have informed me that they frequently heard, thirty- five years ago, the howl of the wolf from the woods east of the village, not more than half a mile distant. The last wolf captured in that town was about 1840, and by Mr. Edward Spaulding, then an old man and one

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of the first white persons in town. He had set a trap on the northern slope of Mount Pleasant. near his farm house, and south of the village, and repairing to it found therein a large gray wolf. The animal, by its strug- gles, was in danger of freeing himself, when Mr. Spaulding attacked him with a stake which he carried, and succeeded in disabling and finally kill- ing him. I well remember, as a child, the sight of the skin as shown in the village, and the wondering interest with which I listened to the story of the battle between the old man with his club and the gaunt monster of the forests.

As exhibiting the numbers and ferocity of these dread animals during the earlier settlement of the Cohos country, I give the following incident told me by my mother, who had it from her great-grandfather, John Mann, the first settler of Orford, in the Lower Cohos, who came to that town in 1765, commencing his first house and clearing on the Connecticut interval. a little west of where the present homestead stands, on the broad main street running through that pleasant village :--

Mr. Mann was engaged in clearing, and had in his employ a stalwart negro, who is remembered by tradition as especially powerful and fearless. Wolves abounded, and were exceedingly fierce: indeed, it was the custom to leave the woods where choppers were engaged, each day before sun- down On the occasion referred to, the sun going down behind the hills on the west side of the Connecticut, and the shadows beginning to darken the recesses of the forest, grandfather shouldered his axe, telling the negro to fol- low him in his return to the house and security. The man was engaged on a giant tree, and hesitated, saying that he meant to lay that low before leaving Telling him that it was unsafe to remain, and bidding him follow, Mr. Mann started for home, expecting the black to obey him. Arrived there, he discovered that he was alone, but momentarily expected the arrival of the other. Night came, but not the negro, and a great noise of wolves was heard in the woods he had left. It would have been death to return in the darkness alone, and through the hours of that long night. amid the howls from the forest, he waited, powerless to help or save. With the morning light he hastened to the spot where he left the man the day before, to find seven wolves lying dead, a bloody axe, and the ghastly relics of the daring fellow who had remained at his work too long. He had been attacked by a ravenous pack. selling his life after a terrific struggle. I have never seen this incident in print, but I heard it in my childhood, and recently. it was again told me, as it came from the aged pioneer who told it to his great- grandchild in her girlhood.

Deer abounded, but are now rare. They were finally driven away by chasing them with dogs; nor will they be plenty in the deep woods that yet remain, if this practice is continued. Dogs follow them on the crust. as the wolves used to pursue and exterminate them; and the more limited

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forest area, and the increased number of hunters in later years, have accomplished what the wolves failed to do-driven the deer absolutely from broad areas of our county. It is believed that where deer still remain, hunting with firearms alone will not depopulate or drive them away, but they fly from the lands when dogs are put upon their trail.

Deer formerly existed in vast numbers in the pine forests of Jefferson, Carroll, Whitefield, Dalton, and the southern part of Lancaster. This abun- dance was largely due to an agreement among the people of those towns to keep dogs off the deer, and many dogs were killed that they might not chase them. Another reason for the plentiful supply, aside from their natural fecundity and increase when in a manner protected, was because they fled from hunters and hounds used for their capture around Littleton and in the adjacent forests of Vermont. One hunter in Lancaster took forty deer in one season; and Mr. James B. Weeks, one year, without effort or chase, shot fifteen from his farm on the southern slope of Mount Prospect.

The black bear was very common, and indeed is now frequently taken in Coös. A summer rarely passes wherein one or more are not captured on the slopes of the Pilot range and Starr King, not more than four or five miles from Lancaster village. The animal lives on roots and weeds, with occasional variations of diet, comprising berries, green corn, or a fat sheep from the outlying flock. He enjoys the wild turnip and other indigenous roots, digging them with one claw as neatly as a man would run his fore- finger around them in mellow ground ;-- briefly, the food of the bear is whatever a hog eats, with mutton extra. They seldom attack men, unless in defence of their young.

Partridges, or ruffled grouse, were once, and until quite recently, very plenty; just now, however, they are rare. This scarcity is attributable to the large increase of the red fox, who preys upon him with devastating effect. Reynard is not now poisoned as formerly, and hence has largely multiplied. His pelts abound in the country stores, and his tracks, after a light snow, trace a labyrinth over every field and hillside. Partridges have disappeared before him.

The Wild Pigeon, once also very plenty, is now comparatively rare. Thirty years ago every buckwheat field, in the fall, swarmed with pigeons. They had regular roosts, from which they swarmed down on the fields. An old device was, to have a "pigeon-bed " for a decoy, with a net so arranged as to be thrown over the bed at will, when the birds had alighted. I have the experience of a present citizen of Lancaster, who informs me that when a boy he caught forty dozen pigeons one autumn, from a bed on his father's farm on Mount Prospect.

Salmon ceased in Cohos about 1808. Up to that time they came up the Connecticut at least as far as Stewartstown, forty-five miles north of Lan- caster, there being a notable place there known as the "Salmon hole."

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They abounded in Lancaster. and ascended the Ammonoosuc as far as the Fabyan place in the White Mountains. Mr. Edward Spaulding, of Lancaster, used to say that the early settlers relied as much on catching and salting down an annual barrel of salmon, as later farmers did upon salting down the yearly supply of pork. In the great eddy at the head of the Fifteen-Mile falls, in Dalton, near the mouth of John's river, the loca- tion of Captain John Stark's capture by the Indians, was a famous salmon hole, where the noble fish apparently rested, in the somewhat cooler water discharged by the smaller stream, after the ascent of the falls. Here people resorted from all the region round about, as they did to Namoskeag, and for a similar purpose. At the mouth of Isreal's river in Lancaster was a similar salmon hole.

The first dam across the Connecticut in Massachusetts was built about the end of the last century; but these early dams, lower and equipped with "aprons," did not offer the obstacles to the ascent of the stream by these vigorous fish which was presented by their successors; and so the salmon, in lessened numbers, continued to return from the sea, until higher dams impeded their progress.

· Recent efforts to re-stock the Connecticut and some of its tributaries with this fish have been only moderately successful, and can never be of practical avail until generous fish-ways are constructed at all the obstruct ing dams.

There is little absolute certainty that shad were once common to our waters, although at Littleton, in Grafton county, there is a record, in 1792, of the election of "Inspectors of salmon and shad," leaving the presump- tion that shad were then known there. If so, they doubtless came higher up the streams.

Trout, the natural and delicious fish of New England, once peopled in crowded abundance every stream of our hills and every pond of our valleys. They have in some places disappeared before the voracious pickerel; but the sawdust of the lumberman is more fatal to them than the hunger of this destroyer, or the arts of the angler. The day has passed when the local bard could truthfully record, that

" In the silent hollows The red trout groweth prime For the miller and the miller's son To angle when they 've time;"

for then, lulled, almost, by the drowsy monotone of the grist-mills, the trout slumbered in each alder-shaded pool of all our streams.

Wherever there is a saw-mill the dust clogs the stream, and the trout disappear from below it. For trout to propagate and multiply, clear water is essential, with a reasonably large reach of still, deep water for a winter retreat. Obstacles removed, they suddenly reappear, and rapidly multiply.

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A few years ago an old dam on the Otter brook in Lancaster was down, and free egress given to the waters of the stream; sawdust also ceased. A gentleman, Hon. James W. Weeks, going his rounds on the meadow below, saw, in a shallow pool in the grass, several trout. Procuring a handful of shingles, by sticking them down he cut off their retreat, and, by gradually advancing them, worked the fish upon the dry land, when he took eighteen fine trout, half filling a Shaker pail, and weighing about one pound apiece. These fish had come down through the broken dam on the first opportunity, and, in the absence of obstructions and the fatal sawdust, had multiplied and thriven. If the day ever comes when our streams are pure, they will again be filled with this delicious fish.

The great area open to sportsmen is of course one of the attractions for the ever increasing tide of summer travel, so-called, to the highlands of Coös, and, in addition to the strictly pleasure or health-giving resorts, it is a factor in the argument that brings to us the annual hegira from the cities, enriching our immediate markets, and adding very largly to the revenues of the state. The great caravansaries at the Crawford Notch, at Fabyan's, at Twin Mountain, at the Glen, are well know, and receive the annual pilgrimage of thousands; the charming location of Lancaster in the Connecticut valley, the sunny slopes of Jefferson hill, and the "long white street" that always recalls to me the Alba Longa of Macaulay's muse,-

" The home of King Amulius, of the great sylvan line,

Who reigned in Alba Longa, on the throne of Aventine, -"

as it glistens in the sun along the northern slope of the Bethlehem hills, attract other thousands, while every sunny meadow or breezy hillside has its cottage for the reception of invalids, of pleasure-seekers, of tourists, and of sportsmen.

A good-natured rivalry exists between some of these towns, relative to their desirability of location, as offering greater inducements to the guest, height above the fogs being a desideratum. Such was for years the kindly contest between Jefferson and Bethlehem, respectively championed by that most generous and public-spirited citizen among the men of the moun- tains, Hon. Nathan R. Perkins, and our ever genial friend, Hon. John G. Sinclair, who, like a new Ponce de Leon, has invaded Florida in his search for the new fountain of perpetual youth, that bursts from plethorie pockets, incidental to owners of orange groves and Floridian lands. The big sur- veyor's level, always ready for duty in Nathan's front porch, persistently shot over Bethlehem street, just saluting the crest of Mount Agassiz in its rear, while John was always ready to demonstrate, both by plane trigonometry and alleged plainer common-sense, that Bethlehem sat high above her rival in the sanhedrim of the hills.

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There comes to me remembrance of a day, when a crowded train of Democratic delegates from the Gibraltar of the party in New Hampshire was speeding on to a congressional convention at Woodsville. Sinclair, as was usual on such occasions, was the life of the party, and joke and repar- tee flew briskly around. Bent on the pre-eminence of Bethlehem, he assailed Perkins and asserted its greater elevation. Facts and figures were hurled promiscuously between them, each asserting the superior altitude of his town. Neither receded, and the crowd, enjoying the fun. gathered closer, when "John," who had been for a few minutes perusing a railroad cir- cular inviting mountain travel, which chance threw in his way, exclaimed in jubilant exultation, "This settles it; hear this!" as he proceeded to read therefrom: " On the route toward the Androscoggin, and eight miles below Bethlehem, lies the pleasant village of Jefferson." "Eight miles! Nate, do you hear that? Will you give it up now?" The crowd roared, and the altercation ended. but we much doubt if to this day Councillor Perkins admits Jefferson to be eight miles, or eight feet, below its mountain rival.

The demands of summer travel bring increased railroad facilities. No- where are finer trains run, than, during the season, into the lake and mountain region of New Hampshire. The home market is exhausted of supplies to sustain this grand incursion, and it is altogether within the bounds of reason to estimate that a sum varying from five to eight mil- lion dollars per annum is expended within our state limits upon the lines of conveyance, the hotels and boarding houses, and the necessaries essen- tial to the comfort and enjoyment of these welcome visitors. So large an expenditure of course involves large permanent investments, requiring the support and protection of legislative enactment. So large a revenue should be fostered by every proper means, as ensuring to the state and its people increased prosperity. with attendant benefits.

As the abundance of game and fish in our woods and waters is an important factor, inducing the tide of travel toward us, with its consequent augmentation of our revenues, it follows that it is a matter of imperative public policy, as well as of personal inclination, to protect our forests from destruction, and the fish and game therein from wanton waste; and in this aspect we may here properly refer to the denudation of our woods now progressing. Incident to the consideration of the annual cut from lumbering operations, and the almost countless cords of wood used for local and locomotive fuel, to supply the charcoal kilns of New Zealand, and also to the protection of the area wherein game may thrive and fish multiply, arises the vital question of the preservation of our timber supply from spoilation, with the attendant disasters of barren lands, irregular water supply, failure of springs, and disastrous freshets.

That the wise consideration of this question is beset with difficulties that accumulate as investigation progresses is perhaps evident. The rights

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of the individual to the products of the soil, natural and cultivated, that is absolutely his, can be suspended only by an overreaching public necessity, that perhaps is not now present. It would seem that some system, appeal- ing at once to the good judgment and self-interest of land and timber owners, may be evolved by discussion, whereby less waste may transpire in cutting, while propagation by tree-planting, that may not again make verdant the exact areas desolated, may induce new plantations, that in their turn will restore to us the climatic, healthful, and financial advan- tages of which we are being so rapidly deprived, and add to the game- producing area of the state.

The relation to, and the effect of, sylvan sports upon a people are well known, both as developing character and affording recreation, with the consequent increased capacity for mental and physical labor.

To range the woods, to climb the mountain, to ply the oar-all these, a love for which is transmitted from our Saxon, Norman, or Celtic progeni- tors, is to reinvigorate brain and body, relaxed from prolonged application. To ply the chase or throw the fly is to call out new and exhilarating desires, to kindle new interests, and open new channels of thought or investiga- tion, while communion with nature is always ennobling, always elevating, and always welcome. Devoted, as too many of our people are, to seden- tary pursuits, the active exercise of out-door life is essential alike to lon- gevity and to the healthful action of mind and body. It follows, then, that the greater the reasonable interest that can be awakened in healthful out- door sports and exercise, the higher we rise above the worries and the fatigues of life, and the greater our capacities at once for enjoyment and usefulness.

The food supply of a people is an economic and political problem, affect- ing not only their increased prosperity as a resultant of cheap food, but their character, through the nature of the food assimilated and the exertion requisite for its procurement. Hence the necessity of legislation, and also the wisdom thereof, to properly protect fish and game, both that cheap and healthful food may be within the reach of the poor, whose enjoyment of the bounty of nature is as keen as that of the more prosperous, and that they may also have the recreation attendant upon its procurement, as well as to offer additional inducement for pleasure-seekers, tourists, and sports- men to visit the state.

As, in a republic whose laws are properly conceived and administered, all legislation is based upon the consent of the people, and enacted for their benefit, it again follows that the game laws should not restrict but rather properly extend their privileges. There are certain inalienable and natural rights, the exercise of which, although apparently trivial, involves the gravest political questions as to the status of the citizen; and among these the game laws may be given a place of prominence.

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THE TIMBER INTERESTS OF NORTHERN COOS.

Decended from Saxon, Norman, or Celtic ancestors, whose vocation lay largely in the chase, and whose sustenance was once wholly derivable from wood and stream, occupying a territory two centuries ago a primeval wilderness, the hunting-grounds of aborigines, coming to us as a people by conquest and adverse occupation rather than by feudal tenure or pur- chase, we claim the forests and the waters of our state to be free to her people, who are all tenants in common, to enjoy the invigorating breezes of her hills, to capture the game of her forests and the fish of her waters.

As society advances from the ruder state, the people, in consideration of the greater advantages received from organized government and the rule of rational law, surrender certain inherent and natural personal rights for the greater benefits thus received, but they adhere perhaps with increased tenacity to those rights not surrendered and still remaining.

Hence legislation relative to the fish and game within our limits should be for their protection and increase, that the people, instead of curtailment in the exercise of the natural right to their capture, may receive more abundant return; that food may be more cheap and more plenty; that the exhilarating pleasures of hunting and fishing may be more generally and more keenly enjoyed; and that our list of attractions for invalids, tourists, and sportsmen may be augmented.

The true province of legislation on this subject I take to be to increase and multiply the products of our woods and waters, protecting during the months essential to that increase, to the end that all the people may share properly in these added benefits.

CHAPTER XIV.

THE TIMBER INTERESTS OF NORTHERN COÖS.

BY ALBERT BARKER.

Spruce Belt-Hard Wood Timber-The Sugar Maple-Other Woods-Resources and Manu- facture-Opportunities for Investment.

u P TO and during the first quarter of the present century. all build- ings were supposed to require large timbers for frames, and eight and ten inch hewed and sawn timber was the least that it was deemed safe to use for posts and beams. The new departure, by using balloon frames, resulted in the discovery that spruce was preferable to pine

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for covering-boards, and the scarcity of pine soon brought spruce lumber into use for finishing. The prospective demand for spruce lumber was foreseen by Josiah Little, of Portland, then president of the Atlantic & St. Lawrence R. R. Co., and about 1844 he purchased the water-power at Berlin Falls, and turned the direction of the railroad up the Androscoggin river. Soon after, large lumber mills were built at Berlin, and the busi- ness of cutting and manufacturing spruce was inaugurated for the first time in Northern Coös. The entire "black growth " of that part of the county north of the railroad. was substantially spruce. The little pine originally growing in the valley of the Androscoggin, mostly in Errol, had been previously cut and floated down the river by Maine lumbermen. The head waters of that river being in Maine, the comparatively little pine manufactured at Berlin came from that state.

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History of Coos County, New Hampshire, Part 14

Author: Merrill, Georgia Drew Publication date: 1888 Publisher: Syracuse [N.Y.] : W. A. Fergusson Number of Pages: 1194

Author: Merrill, Georgia Drew
Publication date: 1888
Publisher: Syracuse [N.Y.] : W. A. Fergusson
Number of Pages: 1194