Henry W. Shoemaker

Black Forest Souvenirs Collected in Pennsylvania Henry W. Shoemaker

EXPLANATORY PREFACE. The writer of these lines has always felt the thrill of the words Black Forest. As a small boy he used to gaze at the bold outlines of the Allegheny Mountains, on the opposite side of the broad valley from the old fashioned home where he spent most of his time, which formed the southern boundary of the vast regions of hemlock, spruce and pine. All kinds of visions flashed through his mind, dreams of strang places, of people, of Indians, of outlaws, of witches, ghosts lumbermen, wild beasts and birds, ... All that must inhabit this wilderness for more definite information he took to inquiring of the old peoplc and strangers how the Rlack Forest really looked, how big it was and who lived there. The general replies were that it as a vast domain of enormous trees, mostly evergreens, that it was sixty miles from east to west, and forty miles from north to south, that hunters, lumbermen and some farmers lived in it, aIso many bears and deer, a few panther, and that until a few years pre-iody there had been wolves, elks and countless flock of wild pigeons. As the result of this information a great longing arose in him to visit the Ulaek Forest, to see it with actual vision, rather than with the eye of faith.........