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Show THE BEAR-TRAP. 41 The trap was in a place rather bare of thick stems, between young pines, and made of large logs, in such a manner that a young bear might be taken alive in it. It consisted of two round stems lying flat on the ground, between which two others, which are supported by a prop, are made to fit, and fall down when the prop is touched (See the figure), a is the base on which the two logs, b, rest; c, the two suspended logs, which fall as soon as the bear touches the bait, fixed in e, at the lower end of the rack/. The pole a, a, which is set in the rack/, rests in front on the prop g, and supports in h, by means of a withe, the logs c, c, c, c. When the bear touches the bait, the rack / moves, the pole a, a, becomes free, and lets the logs c, c, c, c, fall, which catch or kill the animal. The whole is covered with green fir boughs when the trap is set, and all the parts must have their bark on. The bear caught here, some days before, was about a year old, so that there was room for him between the logs; and as he was not large, and had entered the trap in front and not from the side, his life was prolonged a little. He was shot in the trap, and his head used as a bait; we took the head away with us, and the owner of the trap substituted a piece of the animal's lungs in its stead. After a hasty sketch had been made of the bear-trap, we set out on our return ; I very much regretted leaving the magnificent wilderness. On the way we found a fine viburnum, with large reddish leaves, and the Oxalis acetosella, which grew in abundance among the moss and decaying trunks of trees. The loud hammering of the woodpeckers resounded in this forest, and we shot the great spotted woodpecker of this country, which very much resembles our Picus major ; for dinner we had bear's flesh, which we thought resembled mutton. When I returned to the house of Sachs, I found the hunters, whom I had hired, in no little confusion. One of them, in particular, after receiving his wages for the first day, had remained in the public-house the whole night and the following morning. Stretched at length on a table, he had slept off the effects of his drunken fit, talked big, and found here a willing audience, a number of drinkers of whisky being collected in this place. Brandy drinking is far more common among the lower classes in America than with us ; and here, on the Pokono, this bad habit was peculiarly prevalent among the country people. Not far from Tobihanna Creek there was a small wooden house, ten or twelve feet square, with a little iron stove (see the view of the Tobihanna Bridge), in which a school was kept. The stalls for cattle, swine, and sheep, are, for the most part, cages, the bars of which being pretty wide apart, the cold winter wind blows freely through them; nay, many of them had half fallen to pieces. The swine, which ran about in great numbers, had a triangular yoke round their necks to hinder them from getting through the fences. In all this part of the country, garden vegetables are raised in beds, or rather boxes, filled with mould, elevated on four posts. The seeds are sown in these boxes, and the young plants not transplanted till they have acquired a certain growth, otherwise they would be destroyed by the insects. Maple sugar is not made here, because the tree does not grow in sufficient abundance. The I |