1901. AMERICAN FORESTRY ASSOCIATION. 37 



sou'westers, wood and water are plenty on it on push cars. If there is any stnell at 



Front street. Only last January the door all in the air it is the smell of saw dust; 



of the Allcomer's Saloon was forced by a any talk it is the talk of the woods and the 



Redwood log as big as a sewer main, and logging camp, and as for sea fish, it is a 



the billiard table was driven to the wall. food not thought of. It is a queer anom- 



Further excesses on the part of the ele- aly, this seaport without seamen, and it 



ments often cut off Crescent City's mail gives the sea an air of unreality almost 



and supplies, which arrive either by stage disenchanting. Here is the Great Ocean 



from Grant's Pass, or by weekly steamer of the South Seas and the trade winds, 



from San Francisco. Snow perhaps falls but where are the men who catch the fish 



on the Siskiyous barely f oily miles from and tell the tales ? 



the balmy coast, and the townspeople Take the logging train at the mill and 



may not see the stage for a week. Or ride out with the friendliest trainmen in 



again, if the sea is up (as it frequently is), the business to the camp beyond the cut- 



the little steam schooner may have to bang over lands. There, beside the railroad 



about off shore for days, drummers, fresh are a cluster of cabins and a cook-house, 



fruit, newspapers, and everything, while and a little farther on, a building with a 



she waits her chance to make the wharf great donkey engine sticking through the 



among the rocks. roof. This stands on a raised landing 



But if Crescent City is poor in commu- beside the track. Away toward the wall 

 nications, she is rich in compensations to of uncut timber, perhaps half a mile off 

 the visitor. To begin with the neighbor- through the stumps, stretches a wire cable 

 ing sea shore is not to be surpassed for following the course of a deeply grooved 

 rugged varietyandpicturesqueness. North- mud road. At the end of the mud road, 

 ward from the rocky island where the in a mass of peeled and prostrate logs, 

 lighthouse stands, grassy-topped cliffs with is another and smaller donkey engine, 

 groves of Pines upon them break away These, with their respective crews and 

 into deep coves and solitary monuments surrounding woodsmen, move the logs out 

 capped with Spruces, or swell upward into to the train. In the far background the 

 high-shouldered headlands, where in June, choppers fell the trees, taking sometimes 

 green shrubs and fleshy little sea plants two days of chopping and sawing and 

 blossom, and whence, from a hundred preparing the ground before they get one 

 pleasant nooks, one can watch the sun go to earth ; near at hand are the sawyers, 

 down behind the ocean. Between these one to an eight-foot saw, slowly "buck- 

 eminences are small beaches strewn with ing up " gigantic trunks; and close about 

 wet and barnacled rocks and flanked by the donkey, the hooktender and his men 

 echoing caves. Beyond and still farther fix the iron "dogs" in the logs, the blocks 

 north, the barriers "sink away, the beach and wire rope among the stumps, and the 

 becomes continuous, and for as far as you load begins to gather. With constant 

 can see, the great swells roll in unhindered. shifting of rigging, hauling first one way 



For all this wealth of marine beauty, and then another, starting and stopping, 



the traveller in Crescent City finds it hard one, two, perhaps three logs are brought 



to believe himself in a seaport town. The out to the mud road and coupled up with 



whole atmosphere of the place is anything chains and iron "grabs." The endless 



but nautical. Instead of the fleet of small cable is made fast, the electric bell signals 



boats at their moorings, drying nets, and the distant bull donkey, and groaningly 



smells of fish one associates with seaboard the "turn" begins to move. Thus five 



villages of New England, there is hardly or six times a day the big engine winds in 



a craft along the beach (unless the steamer a half mile of wire rope with tons of wood 



happen to be in), neither any nets nor at the end. The whistles answer each 



fishy odors, nor any signs of a seafaring other in the clear air, the logging train 



population, but only the bleak little wooden comes and goes across the plain, and now 



streets and men teaming lumber or moving and again, loud over the distant roar of 



