710 



AMERICAN FORESTRY 



It is interesting to compare the prices of spruce for a Alaine no longer could justly call herself the Pine Tree 

 series of years in order to observe the rise in value of State. So the lumbermen turned their attention to the 

 this wood. Boston and New York are the chief spruce hitherto despised spruce. It was not till 1845 that spruce 

 marketing points, and the wholesale prices quoted was cut and marketed and it was in 1861 that spruce first 



topped the pine in cut at Bangor 

 and probably in the whole State. 

 Since then, as the saying goes, 

 " spruce is king." 



As time has gone on newer 

 -systems of logging have been 

 introduced in other sections. 

 The logging railroad has largely 

 supplanted the river for trans- 

 [lorting logs. Steam skidders, 

 haulers, and cableways have 

 threatened the supremacy of ani- 

 mals in the woods. So the old- 

 time system of logging devel- 

 oped at the edge of the spruce 

 region now seems almost primi- 

 tive, yet it is still the accepted 

 method in that region, where it 

 has been carried to a high state 

 of efficiency. True, improve- 

 A LOGGIXG CAMP IX THE SPRUCE REGION ments have been mtroduced, 



The earliest camps were built of pine or spruce logs roofed with hand-split cedar shingles. Now camps are roofed SawS liavC QlSplaCeQ axeS tOT 

 with tar paper and are frequently made of hardwood logs or rough lumber. They are usually divided into three r n' 1 ff * f' K 



sections, a kitchen and dining-room, a bunk house and a barn. They are connected by covered passages called tCUing anO CUttUlg Up timDCr, 



'"* '^'^' horses have largely displaced 



in the foregoing table refer to one market or the other. 

 The English colonists came into contact with the 



cattle for hauling logs, and in some places steam log 

 haulers mounted on sleds and caterpillar tractors have 

 partly displaced horses. Great improvements have been 



spruce when settlements were made along the coast of 

 Maine. They started to cut and 

 export timber almost immedi- 

 ately, and here lumbering in 

 America as an organized indus- 

 try had its origin. It was in the 

 forests of the Saco and Andro- 

 scoggin river basins that snow- 

 logging and river driving were 

 first developed (the earliest or- 

 ganized method of cutting and 

 transporting large numbers of 

 logs to a distant mill). It was 

 here that the first saw mill in 

 America was operated (at York, 

 Maine, in 1623). Yet it was 

 white pine rather than spruce 

 which was sought. For more 

 than 200 years spruce was not 

 considered as a timber tree. As 

 time went on loggers exhausted 

 the pine lower down the streams 

 and moved further and furtlier 

 back, the pine becoming less and 

 less abundant and the spruce 

 more and more. Then, when 

 Maine and New York were 

 struggling for the title of leading state in lumber pro- made in streams to facilitate driving, dams have been 

 duction, and Bangor was the leading lumber mart of the erected to regulate the flow of water, rocks have been 

 world, it was suddenly discovered that the pine was gone, blasted out to widen and deepen difiicult channels, tele- 



A RED SPRUCE LOG JAM 



Log driving is a hazardous business. If a few logs become caught on an obstruction in a stream the rest behind 

 are apt to piie up and cause a jam. Formerly jams were broken by loosening the logs with cant-hooks and many 

 lives were lost at this hazardous work. Now they are generally blown up with dynamite. 



