It was a hard job and was
attended with danger. When the tree started we had to get down very
quickly and run back to a place of safety, for the tree was very angry in
the last throes of its dissolution. It broke other trees down, tore other
trees to pieces, broke off their limbs, bent other small ones down with
it as it went, and held their tops to the earth. Other trees went nearly
down with it but were fortunate enough to break its hold and gained again
their equilibrium with such swiftness that their limbs which had been
nearly broken off, yet, which they retained until they straightened, then
their stopping so suddenly, the reaction caused the fractured and dry
limbs to break loose, and they flew back of where we had been chopping.
They flew like missiles of death through the air, and the scaffold upon
which we stood but a minute before was smashed into slivers. In the mean
time we were looking out for our own safety.
No man, unless he has experienced it himself, can have an adequate idea
of the danger and labor of clearing a farm in heavy, timbered land. Then
he knows something of the anxieties and hardships of a life in the
woods: the walking, the chopping and sweating, the running and the
dodging like Indians behind trees.
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