A Lumber Camp of To-day 



The panting little engine reached the camp and rested from 

 its labours. The engineer, posing as a good-natured Santa 

 Glaus, handed out parcels to those who came expecting them. 

 A scarlet sweater to one burly chopper, a double-bitted axe to 

 another, a new pair of brogans to a third. There were canned 

 and boxed provisions for the boarding house, and papers and 

 letters from the postoffice. 



Off in the woods I heard a sound as of an explosion. Leaving 

 our superfluous belongings on the engine we set out toward the 

 big noise, following a "skid road" down which logs were being 

 dragged. We soon came within the sound of a saw. Two men 

 knelt on opposite sides of a giant pine whose fall we had heard. 

 They were sawing it into lengths according to marks chipped by 

 the axe of a third man who carried also a measuring stick. He 

 had in his hand orders for bridge timbers the " bill " for the day 

 and this log, being as he had judged it, a sound tree, about three 

 feet in diameter, had furnished the seventy-foot "stick" requisite 

 to "fill the bill," and two or three twelve-foot logs beside. The 

 top was a mere rosette of leafy branches, above the clear, straight 

 trunk. Such a tree is worth a dollar for each one of its three hundred 

 years, if no defects are discovered as it goes through the mill. 



There are trees standing among these with a trunk diameter 

 exceeding four feet. These venerable pines do not make the 

 best lumber. They are over ripe, and almost certain to be hollow 

 at the base and to show "punky" spots of cheesy unsound wood, 

 which has to be discarded in the mill. 



This head faller is a man of long experience and ripe judg- 

 ment. He must choose the trees most likely to fill the orders 

 sent him by the manager from the office. His eye measures the 

 standing tree, selects one, and decides which way it shall fall. 

 While his two sawyers are busy cutting the last one into proper 

 lengths, he chops a long notch low on the butt of the next to fall. 

 It is as deep as his axe head a smooth, two-lipped trough, whose 

 angle is a straight line terminating in the bark each way. As the 

 tree falls the two lips meet. There must be no log nor stump 

 across its path, or the falling tree breaks. Often a tree is broken 

 by the impact of its fall on boggy ground, but this usually is due 

 to decay that has weakened its trunk in certain spots. 



The tree must fall where the "skidders" who come with 

 horses to "snake" its logs to the railroad can get at it with least 



464 



