Produced by Geoffrey Cowling
[Updater's note: this etext refers to "Autocrat of the Breakfast Table",by Oliver Wendell Holmes, and "A Girl of the Limberlost", by GeneStratton-Porter. Both books are in the Project Gutenberg collection.]
A book about Limberlost Cabin
by
Gene Stratton-Porter
To
Neltje Degraff Doubleday
"All diamonded with panes of quaint device,
Innumerable of stains, and splendid dyes,
As are the Tiger Moth's deep damask wings."
To me the Limberlost is a word with which to conjure; a spotwherein to revel. The swamp lies in north-eastern Indiana,nearly one hundred miles south of the Michigan line and tenwest of the Ohio. In its day it covered a large area. WhenI arrived; there were miles of unbroken forest, lakes providedwith boats for navigation, streams of running water, the roadsaround the edges corduroy, made by felling and sinking large treesin the muck. Then the Winter Swamp had all the lacy exquisitebeauty of such locations when snow and frost draped, while fromMay until October it was practically tropical jungle. From it Ihave sent to scientists flowers and vines not then classifiedand illustrated in our botanies.
It was a piece of forethought to work unceasingly at that time,for soon commerce attacked the swamp and began its usual process ofdevastation. Canadian lumbermen came seeking tall straighttimber for ship masts and tough heavy trees for beams. GrandRapids followed and stripped the forest of hard wood for finefurniture, and through my experience with the lumber men "Freckles"'story was written. Afterward hoop and stave men and local millstook the best of the soft wood. Then a ditch, in reality a canal,was dredged across the north end through, my best territory, andthat carried the water to the Wabash River until oil men couldenter the swamp. From that time the wealth they drew to thesurface constantly materialized in macadamized roads, cosy homes,and big farms of unsurpassed richness, suitable for growing onions,celery, sugar beets, corn and potatoes, as repeatedly has beenexplained in everything I have written of the place. Now, theLimberlost exists only in ragged spots and patches, but so richwas it in the beginning that there is yet a wealth of work fora lifetime remaining to me in these, and river thickets. I askno better hunting grounds for birds, moths, and flowers. Thefine roads are a convenience, and settled farms a protection,to be taken into