{"id":"01KG6YH2EHPPNEB8TXFKC6D8Y8","cid":"bafkreidzsgbgxpmqkmauht7taw5j7eexgr5ewrnvhylxifw3pamhwjppwq","type":"chunk","properties":{"end_line":3781,"extracted_at":"2026-01-30T07:57:45.581Z","extracted_by":"structure-extraction-lambda","label":"Chunk 1","source_file":"01KG6YDD8GKW0DRD5H2MY1NRZ7","start_line":3714,"text":"THE TARTARUS OF MAIDS\r\n\r\nIt lies not far from Woedolor Mountain in New England. Turning to the\r\neast, right out from among bright farms and sunny meadows, nodding in\r\nearly June with odorous grasses, you enter ascendingly among bleak\r\nhills. These gradually close in upon a dusky pass, which, from the\r\nviolent Gulf Stream of air unceasingly driving between its cloven walls\r\nof haggard rock, as well as from the tradition of a crazy spinster's\r\nhut having long ago stood somewhere hereabout, is called the Mad Maid's\r\nBellows'-pipe.\r\n\r\nWinding along at the bottom of the gorge is a dangerously narrow\r\nwheel-road, occupying the bed of a former torrent. Following this road\r\nto its highest point, you stand as within a Dantean gateway. From\r\nthe steepness of the walls here, their strangely ebon hue, and the\r\nsudden contraction of the gorge, this particular point is called the\r\nBlack Notch. The ravine now expandingly descends into a great, purple,\r\nhopper-shaped hollow, far sunk among many Plutonian, shaggy-wooded\r\nmountains. By the country people this hollow is called the Devil's\r\nDungeon. Sounds of torrents fall on all sides upon the ear. These rapid\r\nwaters unite at last in one turbid, brick-colored stream, boiling\r\nthrough a flume among enormous boulders. They call this strange-colored\r\ntorrent Blood River. Gaining a dark precipice it wheels suddenly to\r\nthe west, and makes one maniac spring of sixty feet into the arms of a\r\nstunted wood of gray-haired pines, between which it thence eddies on\r\nits further way down to the invisible lowlands.\r\n\r\nConspicuously crowning a rocky bluff high to one side, at the\r\ncataract's verge, is the ruin of an old saw-mill, built in those\r\nprimitive times when vast pines and hemlocks superabounded throughout\r\nthe neighboring region. The black-mossed bulk of those immense,\r\nrough-hewn, and spike-knotted logs, here and there tumbled all\r\ntogether, in long abandonment and decay, or left in solitary, perilous\r\nprojection over the cataract's gloomy brink, impart to this rude wooden\r\nruin not only much of the aspect of one of rough-quarried stone, but\r\nalso a sort of feudal, Rhineland, and Thurmberg look, derived from the\r\npinnacled wildness of the neighborhood scenery.\r\n\r\nNot far from the bottom of the Dungeon stands a large whitewashed\r\nbuilding, relieved, like some great white sepulchre, against the\r\nsullen background of mountain-side firs, and other hardy evergreens,\r\ninaccessibly rising in grim terraces for some two thousand feet.\r\n\r\nThe building is a paper-mill.\r\n\r\nHaving embarked on a large scale in the seedsman's business (so\r\nextensively and broadcast, indeed, that at length my seeds were\r\ndistributed through all the Eastern and Northern States, and even fell\r\ninto the far soil of Missouri and the Carolinas), the demand for paper\r\nat my place became so great, that the expenditure soon amounted to a\r\nmost important item in the general account. It need hardly be hinted\r\nhow paper comes into use with seedsmen, as envelopes. These are mostly\r\nmade of yellowish paper, folded square; and when filled, are all but\r\nflat, and being stamped, and superscribed with the nature of the seeds\r\ncontained, assume not a little the appearance of business letters\r\nready for the mail. Of these small envelopes I used an incredible\r\nquantity--several hundred of thousands in a year. For a time I had\r\npurchased my paper from the wholesale dealers in a neighboring town.\r\nFor economy's sake, and partly for the adventure of the trip, I now\r\nresolved to cross the mountains, some sixty miles, and order my future\r\npaper at the Devil's Dungeon paper-mill.\r\n\r\nThe sleighing being uncommonly fine toward the end of January, and\r\npromising to hold so for no small period, in spite of the bitter cold\r\nI started one gray Friday noon in my pung, well fitted with buffalo\r\nand wolf robes; and, spending one night on the road, next noon came in\r\nsight of Woedolor Mountain.\r\n\r","title":"Chunk 1"},"relationships":[{"peer":"01KG6YGBGPB2V2V7FC8XKF7R8H","peer_type":"segment","predicate":"in"},{"peer":"01KG6YDD8GKW0DRD5H2MY1NRZ7","peer_type":"file","predicate":"extractedFrom"},{"peer":"01KG6YCG626JN4FCG8QK17CQCF","peer_type":"collection","predicate":"collection"},{"peer":"01KG6YH2EHXPPGFEP95GNSQZGP","peer_type":"chunk","predicate":"next"}],"ver":2,"created_at":"2026-01-30T07:57:49.393Z","ts":"2026-01-30T07:57:54.749Z","edited_by":{"method":"manual","user_id":"01KFF0H3YRP9ZSM033AM0QJ47H"}}