Casualty on Blue Mountain
One method adopted by the early settlers in clearing up timber lands was by "jamming." This consisted in partially cutting through the trunks of a number of trees, and by felling some of the outside ones against the others, all would be brought down, and a considerable saving of labor effected. In a few months the interlaced limbs would be sufficiently dry, when fire would be applied, and usually nothing but the charred stumps and prostrate trunks would remain.
Other farmers would first cut the brushwood and small trees, while the larger ones were girdled and left standing. The latter, particularly the hemlocks and other evergreens, the foliage of which would remain green too long after girdling, were sometimes trimmed from the top downward. This method was adopted to save the labor of gathering the trunks into heads for hunting, a very laborious undertaking where the timber is large. When the limbs and brushwood had became thoroughly dried, and no rain had fallen for several days, the refuse was set on fire. If the result was "a good black burn, the ground was ready for planting. When the standing trunks began to decay, fire was again applied, and in a few years all was thus consumed. Sometimes, however, the burning was not good, when the fallow would be abandoned and allowed to be overrun with briers and other rubbish. These "fallow fires, gleaming in the spring time," are still a feature of Sullivan county.
Years ago, in the town of Liberty, there occurred an incident that is still fresh in the minds of the people residing in the locality. One of these abandoned fallows was on Blue mountain, near the residence of Nathan Stanton. This fallow had come to be a famous spot for blackberries, and the children were in the habit of visiting the place to fill their baskets and pails with the fruit. It was near the middle of August, and the day mild and pleasant, that the four children of Nathan Stanton went thither to gather berries. While there one of the trees toppled and fell, and, in its fall, struck against another, until a number of the immense trunks were brought to the ground. When the children heard the first sound of warning, they ran for a place of safety, only to be caught under the wide-spreading branches of the trunks that were falling all around them. Two of the three boys were killed outright, and the sister was injured badly. The children had gone forth happy and joyous, and before the hour set for their return, two had met a violent death, and a third was dangerously if not fatally injured, by a casualty so remarkable and unprecedented as to appear like a dispensation of Providence. The dead bodies were extricated, and taken to the house of mourning, where soon the neighbors gathered to witness the sad occasion of bereavement, and to bestow such aid and consolation as it was in their power to give. It was an affecting burial scene at the little rural grave-yard on Blue mountain, when the settlers assembled about the open graves of the Stanton children and participated in the last sad rites of their sepulture.
What added to the impressiveness of the occasion, was the superstitious awe with which the early settlers regarded the mysterious phenomenon which led to the children's death. Those trees had withstood the blasts of the previous winter and spring, and on a bright day in midsummer, when scarce a breath of air was stirring, they were laid prostrate. What unseen hand caused them to fall? What unknown agency in nature made those forest giants to quiver and reel and then come rushing headlong to the ground, when to mortals there seemed to be no cause? Is it result of some chemical change in the atmosphere, or are we to await a solution of the problem until the supernatural is unveiled to our understanding?
Though no one has yet explained away the mystery, it is a well-attested fact that trees do thus fall. When the sun is shining brightly, and all nature seems to repose in the beams of the morning; when not a zephyr fans the cheek and no unwonted sound disturbs the ear, lo! a monarch of the forest suddenly begins to tremble, and totter, and then falls crashing to the earth. Now, far away, a dull heavy roar will arise; and again nearer at hand, comes the rushing sound of the bushy top of some lofty pine, as one patriarch after another yields to its fate. It seems as if the direct agency of God produced these effects; and the hunter, untutored though he may be, as he beholds these evidences of the power and incomprehensibleness of the Infinite, breathes a silent prayer of adoration.
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