of himself by announcing that he had come upon Paul 

 Bunyan in a remote part of a forest. The mighty man was 

 seated, cleaning his tobacco pipe with a five-foot pike 

 pole. The pole was just long enough to go through the 

 stem. 



Thereupon the experts in mythology and physiology 

 came to a conclusion, based on statistical evidence. They 

 determined that, as the stem of the pipes then in use 

 was reckoned as one-tenth of the height of a man, Paul 

 Bunyan could be only 50 feet tall. This calculation of 

 height was well below that held by general opinion. It 

 was promptly disputed by other experts of the time. 



These authorities emphasized a point which everyone 

 accepted: when Paul was smoking, it required the steady 

 service of a stoker using a scoop shovel to keep the 

 bowl filled with tobacco. As such a bowl would, obvi- 

 ously, require a longer stem than that estimated by the 





Steamboat landing 

 at La Crosse, 1872 



