The Portland daily press., 1869-04-19
Miscellany.
The Maine woods-A Parsons Vacation.


The Rev. W. H. II. Murray, in his "Ad-
ventures in the Adirondacks," noticed in an
other column, thus discourses of the cruel
havoc wrought by lumbermen in the woods
of Maine:
Go where you will, in Maine, the lumber
men have been before you; and the lumber
men are the curse aud scourge of the wilder
ness. Wherever the axe sounds, the pride
and beauty of the forest disappear. A lum-
Der district is the most dreary and dismal re-
gion the eye OF man ever beheld The noun
tains are not merely shorn OF trees, but from
base to summit fires, kindled by accident or
malicious purpose, have swept their sides,
leaving the backened rocks exposed to the
eye, and here and there a few unsightly
trunks leaning in all directions from which
all the branches and green foliage have
been burnt away. The streams and
trout pools are choked with saw
dust, and filled with slabs and logs
The rivers are blockaded with "booms ana
lodged timber, stamped all over the ends with
the owners "mark," Every eligible sue ior
a camp has been appropriated; ara Dones,
cffal, horse manure, and all the deDlls OF a
deserted lumbermen's village is streWn
around. offensive both to eye and nose. The
hills and shores are Uttered with rotten
wood. in all stages of decompesition emit
ting damp, mouldy odor, and sending forth
countless millions of flies, gnats, and mosqui-
toes to prey upon you. Now, no number of
deer, no quantity of trout, can entice me to
such a locality. He who tancies it. can 90;
not /. In the Adirondack Wilderness YOU
escape this There the lumbermen has never
been. No axe has sounded along its noun
tain sides, or echoed across its peaceful wa
ters. The forest stands, as it has Stood from
the beginning of time, in all its majesty OF
growth, in all the beauty of its unshorn foi-
age. No fires have blackened the hills; no
logs obstruct the rivers; no sawdust taints
and colors its crystal waters. The promon-
tories which slrctch themselves half across
its lakes, the islands which hang as il sus-
pended in their waveless and translucent
depths, have never been marred by the pres
ence of men careless of all but gain.
Mr.. Murray thinks congregations would do
we'll to send their ministers into the woods
every summer. He says:
When the good dominic came back swarth
and tough as an Indian, elasticity in his step.
fire in his eye, depth and ceaIness in his
reinvigorated voice, wouldn't there b. some
preaching! And what texts he would have
from which to talk to the little folks i'm the
Sabbath School. How their bright eyes would
open and enlarge as he narrated his adven-
lures, and told them how his good Father
feeds the fish that swim, and clothes the mink
and beaver with their warm and sheeny fur.
The preacher sees God in the original there,
and often translates him better from his un-
written works than from his written word.
He will get more instructive spiritual ma
terial from such trip than from all the Sab
bath School festivals and pastoral tea par
ties" with which the poor, smiling creature
was ever tormented. 1t is astonishing how
much loving, spiritually people can
bore their minister. Ii had spite against
any clerical brother, and felt wicked enough
to indulge it, would get his Sabbath School
superintendent, a female city missionary, and
several "local visitors" with an age-,t OF some
Western college thrown in for variety, and
set them all on him.