264 THE FORESTS OF CANADA. 



Their wages vary from $10 to $30 a month, with food ; 

 the cook, teamster, and broad-axemen receiving the highest 

 rates. These wages, when looked into, are not as high 

 as they appear at first sight. Very often but a small 

 amount of their winter's wages is paid in cash ; the 

 balance is taken out in goods, clothes, &c., from the 

 shop or "store" of their employers. The horses are 

 hard worked, and fed chiefly on oats, hay being difficult 

 to carry; they do not last long in the lumber woods. 

 The logs have often to be hauled a distance of 3 or 4 

 miles to the river or brook. The amount of flour and 

 pork consumed in the lumber woods is prodigious. Five 

 men in one month get through two barrels of flour and 

 one of pork. Supposing no other kind of food, that is the 

 minimum allowance ; and experience has proved that 

 these are the articles of food best suited to the climate. 

 Lumberers look down upon moose and cariboo meat, and 

 will not touch beaver or rabbit As for tea, no working 

 man in Canada ever thinks he has had a " square " meal 

 without it. 



The camps are generally situated in hardwood land, 

 near a brook or river. They are built of spruce logs, 

 well padded with moss, and roofed with cedar or pine 

 splits. The hearth is in the centre of the camp, with a 

 bench or " deacon seat " on each side of the fire. Back 

 of this are the beds, made of fir boughs, constantly re- 

 newed. The stables or hovels are close to the camps, 

 and are made in the same manner, but of course without 

 the fireplace, and with a loft for hay overhead. Neither 

 horses nor men ever suffer from cold in the lumber 

 woods; there is no wind, and the deep snow banked 



