Logging, 193 



the launching of logs. To see them tumbling from such 

 a height, touching here and there the rough angle of a 

 projecting rock, bounding from it with the elasticity of a 

 foot-ball, and at last falling with an awful crash into the 

 river, forms a sight interesting in tlie highest degree, but 

 impossible for me to describe. Shall I tell you that I 

 have seen masses of these logs heaped above each other 

 to the number of five thousand ? I may so tell you, for 

 such I have seen. My friend Irish assured me that at 

 some seasons these piles consisted of a much greater num- 

 ber, the river becoming in these places completely 

 choked up. When freshets or floods take place, then is 

 the time chosen for forwarding to the different mills. This 

 is called a * frolic' Jedediah Irish, who is generally the 

 leader, proceeds to the upper leap with the men, 

 each provided Vv^ith a strong wooden handspike and 

 a short-handled axe. They all take to the water, 

 be it summer or winter, like so many Newfoundland 

 spaniels. The logs are gradually detached, and aftei 

 a time are seen floating down the dancing stream, 

 here striking against a rock, and whirling man)- 

 times round, there suddenly checked in dozens by a shal- 

 low, over which they have to be forced with the hand- 

 spikes. Now they arrive at the edge of a dam, and when 

 the party has arrived at the last, which lies just where my 

 friend Irish's camp was first formed, the drenched leader 

 and his men, about sixty in number, make their way home, 

 find there a healthful repast, and spend the evening and 

 a portion of the night in dancing and froHcing in their 

 own simple manner, in the most perfect amity, seldom 

 troubling themselves with the idea of the labor prepared 

 for them on the morrow. That morrow now come, one 

 sounds a horn from the door of the storehouse, at the call 

 of which they all return to their work. The sawyers, the 

 millers, the rafters, and raftsmen are all immediately 



