Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly vol. 9.djvu/85



The writer was born to the avocation of a coal miner in 1822 ; and it seems to me at 85 years of age I must have an hereditary love of forests. My observation of forest growth began when I was too small to be trusted alone in a piece of natural forest yet remaining near my birthplace on the banks of the Tyne River, nine miles west of Newcastle.

In those woods there were shallow pits and caves in the sides of hills— evidences that surface coal seams had been opened and worked out and probably the best trees had been cut for props, just as they were being cut in the coal regions of which Pottsville and Pittsburg, Pennsylvania, were the centers when I reached the United States in 1840, in my eighteenth year. Trees were cut up rather than down in England at that date ; ropes, blocks and pulleys were used to throw the tree to the best advantage. It was cut below the surface of the ground, and, if a tan bark tree, cut when the sap was up, and peeled. No part was wasted, as even the small twigs were added to a small charcoal pit, provided to save the last chip.

Coal was mined and sold at Pittsburg in 1840 cheaper than wood could be cut. Small bodies of natural forest yet stood near the city. In these the newly arrived English youth could wander at will and see the varied autumn leaves fall, and hear and feel the spat of hickory nuts, walnuts and acorns falling in ripeness to the ground.

In Washington County the change from wood to coal fuel was beginning from the same reasons of economy. In early spring of 1842, hearing that the Great Western Iron Works of Brady's Bend of the Alleghany were starting up, I went