RAFTING. 417 



fast streams with a steep fall have always several of these 

 brakes on the last raft-section. 



Eafting on shallow mountain streams demands the greatest 

 attention and care, long experience of the rafting channel, 

 and assiduous, trusty workmen. Men engaged in rafting 

 require an amount of skall and daring which only experience 

 from their youthful days can give. The workmen on the 

 Wolf and Kinzig rivers and their tributaries, in the Black 

 Forest, are veritable masters in the art of rafting ; it is now 

 proposed to follow a raft down one of these rivers. 



The logs are floated down to a boom and sorted along the 

 river-bank ; then they are fastened together in its bed into 

 raft-sections and rafts. The rafting-channel here is only 8 to 

 4 meters (10 to 13 feet) broad, with a rocky bed strewn with 

 boulders and a fall of 

 iV t T^ (sometimes even 

 J) ; in the worst places it 

 is improved somewhat by 

 simple weirs, and at the 

 time the wood is floated 

 has a depth of only 15 

 centimeters (6 inches). 



, . Fig. 283. - Plan of brake. 



At longer or shorter in- 

 tervals there are weirs in its upper course, and sluice-gates 

 where its higher tributaries join it. 



The raft, consisting of forty to fifty sections, is made ready, 

 and attached by ropes to the shore. The front section con- 

 sists of only four small logs, which run together like a wedge 

 in front and terminate in a short piece of planking. The 

 second, third, and succeeding sections increase gradually in 

 width up to a middle width of 4 to 5 meters (13 to 16 feet) ; 

 this is attained also by all the remaining sections of the 

 raft, except the last, on which are the brakes, and which is 

 as broad only as the water in the stream. The sections are 

 fastened so that all the small ends of the logs are in front, 

 which gives them a fan-shaped appearance as represented in 

 Fig. 284. Owing to this form, the raft may be actually 

 broader than the stream and the passages through the weirs 

 provided that the latter are not narrower than a b, as the 



F.U. K K 



