34 A RAFT PILOT'S LOG 



The Valley Lumber Company 



The Dells Lumber Company 



The Sherman Lumber Company 

 Also Ingram, Kennedy and Company; the great 

 Knapp, Stout and Company which cut two billion feet 

 of lumber in sixty years, from 1836 to 1896, and the 

 Chippewa Lumber & Boom Company, which cut 325,- 

 000 feet a day, vv^ith 75,000 lath on the side. 



There was lively work bringing this down the Chip- 

 pewa to Read's Landing, where small rafts or pieces 

 were made up into a large Mississippi raft for down- 

 river. 



Sawed lumber and timber were fitted at the rear of 

 the mill into a frame or heavy crate sixteen feet wide, 

 thirty-two feet long, and twelve to twenty inches deep, 

 made of grub plank two inches by twelve inches, held 

 together by heavy two-inch pins of hickory or oak, 

 holding top and bottom sides and ends all solid to- 

 gether. This made a "crib," the unit which was built 

 on a movable platform that, when tilted, would let the 

 crib, slide down, into the river. 



A number of these cribs, fastened in regular strings 

 by strong couplings of plank fore and aft and also cross- 

 wise, would make a raft of perhaps twenty-four cribs 

 for the Chippewa, and from one hundred and twenty 

 to one hundred and sixty cribs for the Mississippi. 



Until the middle sixties, all rafts of both logs and 

 lumber, were floated down by the current and kept in 

 the channel and clear of sand bars, heads of islands, 

 bridge piers, and other besetting dangers, by a crew of 

 strong, lusty men, who used large oars or sweeps on the 

 bow and stern. There was an oar at each end of every 

 string of cribs, so that a raft of ten strings had a bow 

 crew of the ten best men, and the other ten pulled on 



