54 HOUGH'S AMERICAN WOODS. 



Our tree was not by any means one of the largest of its kind, but it 

 was considered by the lumbermen as a u f air " tree. Its extreme 

 height was 254 ft. ; lowest branches, 176 ft from the ground; diame- 

 ter of trunk, 4 ft. from the ground, 63 in. This trunk was as clear 

 and shapely as a mast, and from it eight logs sixteen feet long and 

 one thirty-two feet long were cut. The upper end of the top-most 

 log (160 ft. from the ground) was 35 in. in diameter, and just above 

 this the material for our wood -sections was taken. 



A powerful "donkey" engine hauled the logs through the forest, 

 with such power that a road for them was unnecessary, until they 

 were deposited at the head of a trough-like chute. They were then 

 rolled into it and down it they slid with awful momentum and plunge 

 into a pond below. Here they were denuded of bark on one side, 

 floated to the logging railroad which terminated on the bank of the 

 pond, and were " dogged " together end to end. A locomotive was 

 then coupled to them a chain of logs to drag them to the saw-mill 

 some miles below. They were promptly hauled out of the water and 

 along over the ties at the rate of ten or twelve miles per hour, the rails 

 of the road keeping them from leaving the track, to the saw-mill. 

 There the nine logs were sawn into just 18,142 ft. of magnificent clear 

 lumber, and the boards were floated in a flume to the planing mills 

 and kilns at the railroad station in the valley below. After treatment 

 there the lumber, in the form of the nicest kiln-dried planed and 

 matched ceiling, was loaded onto the cars and shipped to market.* 



* This record was kindly kept and furnished to me by Mr. Harry L. Bradley of the Bridal Veil 

 JLumber Co., whose courtesy and kindness I hereby gratefully acknowledge. 



