But All These Are As Yet Mere Spots, Making No Visible Scar In The
Distance And Leaving The Grand Stretches Of The Forest As Wild As They
Were Before The Discovery Of The Continent.
For many years the axe
has been busy around the shores of the Sound and ships have been
falling in perpetual storm like flakes of snow.
The best of the
timber has been cut for a distance of eight or ten miles from the
water and to a much greater distance along the streams deep enough to
float the logs. Railroads, too, have been built to fetch in the logs
from the best bodies of timber otherwise inaccessible except at great
cost. None of the ground, however, has been completely denuded. Most
of the young trees have been left, together with the hemlocks and
other trees undesirable in kind or in some way defective, so that the
neighboring trees appear to have closed over the gaps make by the
removal of the larger and better ones, maintaining the general
continuity of the forest and leaving no sign on the sylvan sea, at
least as seen from a distance.
In felling the trees they cut them off usually at a height of six to
twelve feet above the ground, so as to avoid cutting through the
swollen base, where the diameter is so much greater. In order to
reach this height the chopper cuts a notch about two inches wide and
three or four deep and drives a board into it, on which he stands
while at work.
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