The Portland daily press., 1894-04-02
THEARooSTOoK LINE.
A Trip Along Names Newest Railroad
Busy Times in Houlton-PrOsperity of
Aroostook-The Pileated Wood-pecker.

! lppCCloi correspondence VI oiiO L iOoo'J
| Presque Isle, March 80, 1894.
| A ride over the new Bangor & ARGOS
| took railroad to Houlton presents many
surprises to the average novice, no mat
| ter how much he has read and heard O.
the locality traversed. After leaving
the old Bangor & Piscataquis RAILROAD
at Milo junction the train plunges into
the wilderness-into the "bad lands
and rushes through and past many :
"hagus," which being interpreted from
hole" Whether quite worthy of the
name or not, certain it is that it would
be all over forever with the average man
if he were dropped alone into the midst
of the vast swamps of scrub cedar and
hackmetack that the new railroad has
bridged to the lasting benefit of the
whole State
From Milo junction almost to Houlton,
or at least until one leaves the woods
near Houlton, the habitations that one
sees could almost be counted upon the
fingers. But one doesn't pass through a
forest. 1t IS hardly worthy the name OF
forest. 1t is a typical Maine wilderness
of swanps and bogs and small growth
of cedar, hackmetack and birches. 1t is
interesting to watch for the deserted
log houses that nestle in the edge of the
woods along the railroad and are num-
bered by scores. They were the homes
of the laborers last fall, who built the
road, but now no ruin centuries old,
could be lonelier. Some of.them are as
much as so feet long and 20 feet wide;
others hardly ten feet square. They are
all scarcely more than seven or eight
feet high. AS the train rushes along
(for it does rush as swiftly and smoothly
as the Maine CentraD one catches a
glimpse of an occasional big hemlock
tree, with the outer bark scratched off
for 20 or 30 feet from the ground. The
bright reddish brown of the inner bark
stands forth wildly. Perhaps one pas
senger will suggest that it was hedge
hogs claws that removed that bark. A
little boy ventures the assertion that
there must be bears den in the top of
the tree, for bears always scratch the
bark off the trees that way" But one
passenger knows that it was
The Iron Beak
of the most powerful bird of the north
ern forests that knocked that bark off
WiUu lbs IdbUlluS DioWS do IL IL uau Uoeu
chaff. The pileated woodpecker, known
as the "black woodcock," is as large as
a crow, and as black, with the exception
that its head is as big as an eagles, his
eye as fiercely yellow, and his flaming
top knot as big and red as any chanti-
cleer's. He is the king of all northern
woodpeckers and there is only one larger
on the continent-the great ivory billed
woodpecker of the Southern swamps that
kills whole acres of great trees by knock
ing the bark off in the same way, in it's
search for insectiverous food.
There is list of more than dozen
stations from Milo Junction to Houluon,
but the most of them are only stations
-solidly built, brand new little stations
in the middle of tiny clearings in the
wilderness, across which one could
easily shoot a deer-a feat which has
dou btless been accomplished in all of
them.
Schoodic clearing has two little old
log houses West Sebois is simply
station, so is Norcross. Grindstone is
station and great pile of cedar tele-
graph poles and railroad ties Stacey
vile has house or two, and Sherman
has quite large frame house, just fin
ished, an old hut of square logs and
tiny new orchard. At Island Falls, the
smokestack of the new tannery and a
cluster of houses are visible through a
tunnel in the woods, "a short distance
from the station.