REDWOOD LUMBERING. 41 



Since pioneer days, when emigration to the far West by 

 ox teams was more a question of necessity than choice, the 

 peculiar characteristics of the driver have become as familiar 

 to the reading public as household words. His positive 

 method of expression, the variety of manner in which he 

 unbosoms himself to his dumb servitors, the varied inflection 

 of voice, ranging from the whoop of an Apache to the tender 

 caressing of an infant, and the imitation war dance indulged 

 in at critical periods, have been the theme for narrative writ- 

 ing both in prose and song since the days of '49. 



We have seen the Arkansas and Pike County bull 

 driver, with his " whoope " (whip) thirty feet long, marching 

 up and down his team of fifteen yoke of oxen attached to a 

 two-ton load ; wearing out both his buckskin lash and his 

 leather lungs in the endeavor to make a speed of ten miles 

 per day. Painting the sky red with the most blasphemous 

 expressions that could be translated from the vocabularies of 

 all the Demons in Hades, his energies seem to be a waste of 

 life, as compared to the" bull-puncher " in the logging camps. 

 Here, every pound that a team of ten or twelve yoke can 

 pull is got out of it by the knight of the " goad-stick," the 

 latter a slim hickory rod, perhaps five feet long, with a steel 

 brad projecting one-fourth of an inch from the small end. 

 One single touch of this terrible persuader upon an ox's 

 haunch is a reminder of unfaithfulness not soon forgotten. 



Starting a log from its bed, when every yoke in the team 

 must buckle to the work, is the time the science of our char- 

 acter of the " bull-puncher " is brought to the highest plane of 

 perfection. The chainmen having secured the hooks and 



