258 Forestry Quarterly. 



roads have been made, the trees being thrown in the most con- 

 venient place for peeling. Such areas are locally called "slash- 

 ings," and greatly increase the work and cost of swamping, due 

 to the brush and undergrowth being pinned down beneath the 

 large logs and tops. 



The main roads are cut to a width of one rod. The buck 

 swamper goes ahead selecting and blazing out the best route for 

 the roads, the swampers following and removing all trees and 

 bushes of whatever size, all stumps, and as many of the large 

 stones as is necessary. The buck swamper sees to it that the 

 swampers clear out around each individual log so that the team 

 may get at it easily, the side roads of course in this case being 

 narrower than the main roads. In case the swampers cannot 

 break or move the large rocks, two men are sent with drill and 

 dynamite to blow them to pieces. Anything approaching a smooth 

 road is of course impracticable in these mountains, but a great 

 deal of care and expense is put upon them in order to reduce to a 

 minimum the danger of injury to the horses. It takes ten men, 

 on the average, a little over three days to swamp out one-quarter 

 of a mile. Taking these men's wages at the rate of $1.70 apiece 

 per day, and their board at 60 cents per day, we find that it costs 

 nearly $300 per mile of road one rod wide. This figure agrees 

 closely with Mr. Dickson's experience that swamping costs nearly 

 one dollar per square rod. 



For each skidding road — two teams hauling on one road — there 

 is one road man with axe and grub-hoe, whose duty it is to bridge 

 or corduroy all boggy places, to remove any stones or stumps left 

 by the swampers, and generally to keep in repair the roads as they 

 are worn by hauling. For, besides the very large rainfall there 

 are, as a result of it, upon the sides of the mountains in- 

 numerable springs, and this water, in many cases flowing directly 

 down or across the skidding road, makes constant repairing and 

 bridging necessary. In most cases corduroying does not have to 

 be resorted to. Usually the soil is quite compact, and it is only 

 necessary to "bridge" the boggy places — that is, to lay cross pieces 

 in the mud, say about 1^ feet apart, so that the horses may step 

 between them, the logs sliding over the top, and thus being pre- 

 vented from plowing the hole deeper. 



Taking the operations of swamping, roading, blasting and re- 



