THE LANDLOOKER
Chapter XVI
In every direction the woods.Not an opening of any kind offered the mind a breathing place under the free sky.Sometimes the pine groves,--vast, solemn, grand, with the patrician aloofness of the truly great; sometimes the hardwood,--bright, mysterious, full of life; sometimes the swamps,--dark, dank, speaking with the voices of the shyer creatures; sometimes the spruce and balsam thickets,--aromatic, enticing.But never the clear, open sky.
And always the woods creatures, in startling abundance and tameness.
The solitary man with the packstraps across his forehead and shoulders had never seen so many of them.They withdrew silently before him as he advanced.They accompanied him on either side, watching him with intelligent, bright eyes.They followed him stealthily for a little distance, as though escorting him out of their own particular territory.Dozens of times a day the traveller glimpsed the flaunting white flags of deer.Often the creatures would take but a few hasty jumps, and then would wheel, the beautiful embodiments of the picture deer, to snort and paw the leaves.Hundreds of birds, of which he did not know the name, stooped to his inspection, whirred away at his approach, or went about their business with hardy indifference under his very eyes.
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partridge simulated a broken wing, fluttering painfully.Early one morning the traveller ran plump on a fat lolling bear, taking his ease from the new sun, and his meal from a panic stricken army of ants.As beseemed two innocent wayfarers they honored each other with a salute of surprise, and went their way.And all about and through, weaving, watching, moving like spirits, were the forest multitudes which the young man never saw, but which he divined, and of whose movements he sometimes caught for a single instant the faintest patter or rustle.It constituted the mystery of the forest, that great fascinating, lovable mystery which, once it steals into the heart of a man, has always a hearing and a longing when it makes its voice heard.
The young man's equipment was simple in the extreme.Attached to a heavy leather belt of cartridges hung a two-pound ax and a sheath knife.In his pocket reposed a compass, an air-tight tin of matches, and a map drawn on oiled paper of a district divided into sections.Some few of the sections were colored, which indicated that they belonged to private parties.All the rest was State or Government land.He carried in his hand a repeating rifle.The pack, if opened, would have been found to contain a woolen and a rubber blanket, fishing tackle, twenty pounds or so of flour, a package of tea, sugar, a slab of bacon carefully wrapped in oiled cloth, salt, a suit of underwear, and several extra pairs of thick stockings.To the outside of the pack had been strapped a frying pan, a tin pail, and a cup.
For more than a week Thorpe had journeyed through the forest without meeting a human being, or seeing any indications of man, excepting always the old blaze of the government survey.Many years before, officials had run careless lines through the country along the section-boundaries.At this time the blazes were so weather-beaten that Thorpe often found difficulty in deciphering the indications marked on them.These latter stated always the section, the township, and the range east or west by number.All Thorpe had to do was to find the same figures on his map.He knew just where he was.By means of his compass he could lay his course to any point that suited his convenience.
The map he had procured at the United States Land Office in Detroit.
He had set out with the scanty equipment just described for the purpose of "looking" a suitable bunch of pine in the northern peninsula, which, at that time, was practically untouched.Access to its interior could be obtained only on foot or by river.The South Shore Railroad was already engaged in pushing a way through the virgin forest, but it had as yet penetrated only as far as Seney;and after all, had been projected more with the idea of establishing a direct route to Duluth and the copper districts than to aid the lumber industry.Marquette, Menominee, and a few smaller places along the coast were lumbering near at home; but they shipped entirely by water.Although the rest of the peninsula also was finely wooded, a general impression obtained among the craft that it would prove too inaccessible for successful operation.
Furthermore, at that period, a great deal of talk was believed as to the inexhaustibility of Michigan pine.Men in a position to know what they were talking about stated dogmatically that the forests of the southern peninsula would be adequate for a great many years to come.Furthermore, the magnificent timber of the Saginaw, Muskegon, and Grand River valleys in the southern peninsula occupied entire attention.No one cared to bother about property at so great a distance from home.As a consequence, few as yet knew even the extent of the resources so far north.
Thorpe, however, with the far-sightedness of the born pioneer, had perceived that the exploitation of the upper country was an affair of a few years only.
The forests of southern Michigan were vast, but not limitless, and they had all passed into private ownership.The north, on the other hand, would not prove as inaccessible as it now seemed, for the carrying trade would some day realize that the entire waterway of the Great Lakes offered an unrivalled outlet.With that elementary discovery would begin a rush to the new country.Tiring of a profitless employment further south he resolved to anticipate it, and by acquiring his holdings before general attention should be turned that way, to obtain of the best.
