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THERE were two stately
trees which stood near the center of the place. In view of their
antiquity it seemed almost wrong to cut them. One was an elm which stood
on the fiat of the Ecorse. The other was what we called a swamp white
oak. It stood in a little hollow at the west end of the ridge (where we
lived) about twenty rods north of the elm. They appeared as though they
were about the same age. They were nearly the same size. They were five
or six feet through at the butt.
Father often said that
the tree recorded within itself a true record of its own age. After a
tree was cut down, I have known him frequently to count the grains or
yearly rings and from them extract a register by which he learned how
many years old it was.
How my mind reaches back
forty years and views again that venerable old oak and elm. Trees whose
history and lives began before the first settlement of America. How
familiar still their appearance to me, as they stood with their arms
stretched out bidding me the most graceful salutations. They seemed
almost like friends, at least there was some companionship about them,
their forms were very familiar to me.
On the west side of the
elm, just above the ground and running up about six feet, there was a
huge knot which grew out of the side of the tree. It was large enough to
stand upon, when upon it, but there was not room enough for us to stand
upon it and chop. We had to build a scaffold around the tree, up even
with the top of the knot, to stand upon. In that way we were able to cut
the great tree down. It was a hard job and was attended with danger.
When the tree started we had to get down very quickly and run back to a
place of safety, for the tree was very angry in the last throes of its
dissolution. It broke other trees down, tore other trees to pieces,
broke off their limbs, bent other small ones down with it as it went,
and held their tops to the earth. Other trees went nearly down with it
but were fortunate enough to break its hold and gained again their
equilibrium with such swiftness that their limbs which had been nearly
broken off, yet, which they retained until they straightened, then their
stopping so suddenly, the reaction caused the fractured and dry limbs to
break loose, and they flew back of where we had been chopping. They flew
like missiles of death through the air, and the scaffold upon which we
stood but a minute before was smashed into slivers. In the mean time we
were looking out for our own safety.
No man, unless he has
experienced it himself, can have an adequate idea of the danger and
labor of clearing a farm in heavy, timbered land. Then he knows
something of the anxieties and hardships of a life in the woods: the
walking, the chopping and sweating, the running and the dodging like
Indians behind trees. He trusts to their protection to save him from
falling trees and flying limbs, although he is often lacerated and
bruised, jammed and torn by them. I knew a man and a boy in our town who
were killed by falling limbs. Sometimes he is cut by the ax and is
obliged to go home, over logs, between stumps and through brush, leaving
a bloody trail behind him.
Father's farm was rescued
from the wilderness and consecrated to the plow and husbandry through
sweat and blood. We ofttimes encountered perils and were weary from
labor, often times hungry and thirsty, often suffered from cold and
heat, frequently destitute of comfortable apparel and condemned to toil
as the universal doom of humanity—thus earning our bread by the sweat of
our brows.
Father and I labored some
years in sight of the great elm stump. It appeared like a giant, with a
great hump on his back, overlooking the surrounding stumps. It was about
eight feet high. But it was doomed to decay, and entirely disappeared
long years ago.
The oak tree was more
fortunate and escaped the fatal ax, a number of years after all the
timber around it had been chopped and cleared away. On account of its
greatness, and its having so nice a body, father let it stand as monarch
of the clearing. But few came into our clearing without seeing his
majesty's presence. His roots were immense. They had been centuries
creeping and feeling their way along, extracting life from mother earth
to sustain their gigantic body. The acorn, from which that oak grew,
must have been planted long before, and the tree which grew from it have
been dressed many times in its summer robe of green, and it was,
doubtless, flourishing when the "Mayflower" left the English Channel.
When she was slowly making her way from billow to billow, through the
then almost unknown sea, bearing some of the most brave and liberty-
loving men and women the world, at that time, could produce; when the
hearts of the Pilgrim Fathers were beating high with hopes of liberty
and escape from tyranny, when their breath came low and short for fear
of what might await them; when they landed on the American shore—yes!
when that little band of pilgrims were kneeling on Plymouth Rock, and
offering up thanksgiving and praise to the Almighty, who had brought
them safely o'er the trackless deep, that oak was quietly standing,
gathering strength to make it what it was when we came to Michigan.
There it had stood, ever since the days of yore, spreading its boughs
over the generations of men who have long since passed away. Around it
had been the Indian's camping and hunting ground. When we came to plow
and work the ground near it I found some of their stone arrows which had
been worked out very beautifully. Their edges and points showed very
plainly where they had been chipped off in making. We also found stone
hatchets, the bits of which were about two and a half inches broad and
worked to an edge. They were about six inches long. The pole or head was
round. From their appearance they must have been held in the hand using
the arm for a helve. For an encounter with bruin or any other enemy, it
is possible they bound a withe around the pole and used that as a
handle. Much ingenuity and skill must have been required to work out
their implements when they had nothing better with which to do it than
other Stones.
I often picked up the
arrows and hatchets and saved them as relics of past ages, knowing that
they had been in other hands long years before. I have some of them now
(1875). The stones from which they were made must have been brought from
some distance as there were few other stones found in this part of the
country.
If that oak could have
talked, what a wild, wild story it might have told, not only of lost
arrows and hatchets, but also of their owners, about whom the world has
little knowledge. It might have told also of the hundreds of years it
had stood there and showered down its acorns upon the earth, enough in
one season to have planted a forest of its own kind; how often its
acorns had been gathered by the Indian youth, and devoured by the wild
beasts of the forest; how many times its leaves had been changed by the
autumn frosts from a green to a beautiful golden hue; how the cold wind
swept them off and they flew down in huddled races to the ground,
carpeted and cushioned the earth, protected the roots and enriched the
soil. How, after it had been shorn of its leaves, its life current had
been sent back through the pores of its body to its roots and congealed
by the cold freezing frosts of winter; how the wind sighed and moaned
through its branches while it cracked and snapped with the frost. But
there was to be an end to its existence. The remorseless ax was laid at
its roots and there is nothing left of it, unless it be a few old oak
rails. There are some moss-covered rails on the place yet that were made
at an early day. How my thoughts go back and linger round that oak whose
branches gave shelter to the deer, furnished them with food, protected
the Indian and his home the place where I, so long afterward, advanced
to manhood.
It is no wonder that
Boston men are so careful in protecting their trees. With their usual
care and foresight they have guarded the celebrated elm on Boston
common. Thousands of the American people from every State in the Union,
even from the Pacific coast, visit the beautiful city of Boston but are
not satisfied until they visit the ancient elm, read its history, as far
as known, from the iron plate, and gaze with admiration on the wonderful
tree and the fence that surrounds it.
The full history of that
tree is not known, but it reaches back prior to the settlement of
Boston. It was a good sized tree in 1656. "A map of Boston made in 1722
showed the tree as one of the principal objects." That tree is a sacred
relic of the past. Its branches waved over the heads of honored colonial
ancestors.
Trees are our most
beautiful and best antiquities. "It was a beautiful thought," says
Ruskin, when God thought of making a tree and giving it a life so long."
Another says: "What vicissitudes mark its life, almost tender with
suggestion. Trees are the Methuselahs of nature. The famous Etna
chestnut is a thousand years old. There is a cypress tree in Mexico,
over forty feet in diameter, whose zones record nearly three thousand
years. The baobab trees of the Green Cape are fully four thousand years
old. The great dragon tree at Ortova, Teneriffe (recently said to be
dying), is said to be five thousand years old— a life that runs parallel
to almost the entire period of human chronology." No doubt some of those
trees will last as long as time. Is it any wonder that I claim some
companionship to trees, since I passed so many years of my youth among
them? Trees often prevented sharp eves from seeing me, secreted me and
helped me to luck, which was very gratifying to me. Trees, when it
rained and the wind was piercing, have often protected, sheltered and
kept me dry and comfortable for hours.
I frequently when at some
distance from home, hunting, and night coming on, began traveling, as I
supposed, toward home. I often came to tracks in the snow which, at
first, I thought were made by some one else, but, upon a more particular
examination, would find that they were my own tracks. Then I would know
that I had been circling round and round, that the "wigwam was lost" and
I had the gloomy prospect of remaining in the woods all night—"out of
humanity's reach." Then I would trust to the trees, look at them, take
their directions and start again in a new course. This would seem wrong
to me, but I always came out right. Trees never deceived, but showed me
the way home.
When I have been in the
woods, hungry, trees furnished me food. When thirsty, they often
supplied me with drink. When cold and almost freezing, trees have warmed
and made me comfortable. Trees furnished most of the material for
father's "bark-covered house," which sheltered us for more than two
years.
If trees have done so
much for one, surely all humanity have derived great good from them. The
earth itself is adorned and beautified by trees. |
