Dismounting, we fastened our horses to a couple of saplings, and I was introduced to the interior of Cranberry Lodge, which was tenanted only by the “hired man,” who, in the absence of Mr. B., reigned supreme in the clearing.  The dwelling I found no less primitive in internal than in its external appearance.  Three persons, moderately doubled up and squeezed, could find room in the interior, which was furnished with a bench for the safe-keeping of sundry pots, pans, and other culinary necessaries, and with a shelf on which some blankets were laid, constituting my companion’s bedstead and bed, when he slept in Cranberry Lodge.  Beneath the “bunk” a small hole scooped in the sand stood in lieu of a cellar, and contained a stock of provisions of Mr. B.’s own cooking.

Such a backwoodish dwelling as Cranberry Lodge, existing in the year 1858, within seventy miles of New York, requires some explanation.  Its foundation is—­pies!  Cape Cod, the great emporium of the cranberry-trade, has been running short for the last few years; in other words, its supply is unequal to the demand.  The heavy Britishers have awakened to the fact, since 1851, that, of all condiments and delicacies, cranberry-sauce and cranberry-pie are best in their way; and John Bull takes many a barrel clean out of our market now.  It so happened that in the Pines of New Jersey cranberries superior to those of Cape Cod have grown unheeded for centuries,—­grew red and purple and white and pink when Columbus was unthought of, as well as when Washington passed through the Pines,—­and for sixty or seventy years have furnished a certain class of gypsies—­of whom more anon—­with merchandise which sold well in the neighboring villages and cities.  No one thought of cultivating cranberries; no one, but the gypsies aforesaid, of gathering them for sale.  But it came to pass that a certain farmer of Hanover was, like many another, unsuccessful during several years.  As a last resource, he purchased of the owner of the Big House a cranberry-bog,—­that is to say, one of the many marshy spots which are interspersed in the forest,—­for which he paid five dollars the acre.  There were a little more than one hundred acres in the bog.  At a cost of some six hundred dollars Mr. F. fenced in his bog, and spent three months in watching the cranberries as they ripened, to protect them from depredation.  To his intense astonishment, he found, in October, that the yield was between two and three hundred bushels to the acre, and that his land and fencing were paid for, with a balance left over for next year.  In consequence of this success, a little mania for cranberry-farming seized upon the denizens of the Pines, and bogs acquired a value they had never borne before.  This was in 1857.  Early in 1858, one of these plots of land, with an adjoining piece of forest, was rented by Mr. B., who, like a right-down Yankee, determined to cultivate it himself.  So, with the aid of one hired man, a clearing was made in his forest-patch,