As the stricken eagle is poetically described as supplying the feather for the arrow by which itself was hurt to death, the trees furnish forth the thing to rend them.

Upon the side of the curly maple, aristocrat of the sugar bush, grows sometimes a vast wart.
This wart has neither rhyme nor reason.

It has no grain defined.

It is twisted, convoluted, a solid, tough and heavy mass, and hard, almost, as iron.

It is sawed away from the trunk with much travail, and is seasoned well, and from it is fashioned a great head, into which is set a hickory handle, and the thing will crush a rock if need be.
This is the maul proper.
There is another maul, or mace, made from a cut of heavy iron-wood, a foot in length and half a foot in thickness, with the hickory handle set midway between iron bands, sprung on by the country blacksmith.
This is sometimes called the beetle.
The beetle is a monster hammer, the maul a monster mace.