66 North American Forests and Forestry 



school with them in anything which concerns the 

 lumber industry proper, the transporting and saw- 

 ing of logs. Our appliances for transportation, 

 aside from permanent roads, which we do not need 

 as long as we do not care for forest reproduction, 

 are far superior to those employed in Europe ; the 

 machinery of our sawmills causes admiration and 

 astonishment to the foreign expert. When one 

 visits our lumber towns he may at first wonder 

 at the apparent waste, and ascribe it to crude 

 methods, when he sees the immense accumulation 

 of waste material, " slabs," and other debris encum- 

 bering the ground. But in reality everything is 

 utilized for which there is a market or a use. Even 

 the sawdust often serves as fuel in the mill, and is 

 transported automatically from the saws to the 

 fires. If there is some material thrown away which 

 is saved in a European mill, it is because nobody 

 will have it, just as, in felling, we must lose the 

 tops and smaller branches, while the European 

 lumberman binds them into faggots and can sell 

 them for fuel. 



The occupation of a lumberman, his life in camp 

 and on the river drive, has a certain picturesque 

 quality which has always made it attractive to the 

 outsider. But before we attempt to sketch in out- 

 line some of the striking phases of this business, we 

 ought to discuss two questions of very great impor- 

 tance to a proper understanding of the matters with 

 which we have to deal. These are : How long will 

 American forests be able to supply the demand for 



