762 HOW LUMBERING IS CARRIED ON. [Appjl 



operations in the woods by the lumbermen from whose hands it first 

 comes may prove interesting. The latter are a race of men peculiar 

 to Canada, Maine, and the Tar West, and it is in the depth of 

 winter that their work in the woods is carried on, felling the huge 

 pines which have been previously marked by persons sent out to 

 explore the various timber limits leased by the millowners from 

 Government, preparatory to making them into square timber or saw 

 logs. Five kinds of hands are necessary for the woods — the fore- 

 man, the hewer, the liner, the scorer, the road-cutter, and the cook. 

 An ordinary shanty crew of two gangs of timber makers, sufficient 

 to set out a raft of 80,000 feet of timber, would consist of a fore- 

 man, two hewers, two liners, four scorers, four road-cutters, one cook, 

 and a teamster and crutchman. The provisions for a shanty are 

 generally taken up in the previous spring, before sleighing breaks 

 lip, as the majority of the timber districts are inaccessible to 

 waggons. The shanty is a rudely built log cabin, with bunks or 

 sleeping places ranged round in tiers, with a huge raised hearth in the 

 centre that throws out an immense heat from the logs that roar and 

 crackle on it, and whose smoke escapes through an opening in the 

 roof a little smaller than the hearth below. 



Before commencing to make the square timber, the men are 

 divided by the foreman into separate groups, each gang consisting 

 of one hewer, one liner, and two scorers ; the road-cutters, who have 

 to clear a way to the stream or river, and cut out the uuderbrusb, 

 are independent of the timber makers, and their number depends on 

 the description of the country worked, as they have to clear roads 

 to the timber made. The duty of the foreman is to search for the 

 locality of the timber, and to point it out to the liners ; to select 

 the main road to the river by the shortest and most level route ; 

 to locate the site for the shanty in the fall ; to see that each man 

 is daily at his work, tliat the necessary amount of timber is made, 

 and that it is sound and wholesome to suit the market. A return 

 of the quantity cut is given in by the liner every week to the fore- 

 man. The teamster and crutchman next come into use, the latter 

 so called from the description of sleigh he uses, which is merely the 

 crutch of a birch tree fashioned into a sleigh. The stick of timber 

 is chained on this, and drawn by the team to the rollway, which 

 consists of a large space sixty or more feet square, cleared free from 

 trees and brush. In this is laid a large tree which has been felled, 

 and the bark taken off the upper side, to allow the timber to slide 

 over it easily, on which from twenty to thirty sticks of timber are 

 drawn and laid across so as to remain nicely balanced, with the end 

 of the stick some few feet up. This is for the purpose of allowing 

 the teamsters to drive up to the rollway, back their sleighs under. 



