RIVER LIFE. 101 



grand drive on. the main river, where the separate crevi^s unite, 

 and make common cause in the driving operation. In other in- 

 stances one drive may precede another, making the river for 

 miles one general scene of logs and river-drivers. Sometimes the 

 foremost logs of one drive, unobstructed, pass on and mingle vi^ith 

 what is called the "tail end" of the preceding drive. Under 

 such circumstances, if there be any grudge to gratify by the fore- 

 most crew, or a substantial joke to be put, such truant logs are run 

 aground, into creeks, in meadow land, among the bushes, and on 

 the shore. A crew of thirty or forty men will take a log be- 

 longing to another crew and run it up high and dry on to the 

 land, stand it on end, prop it up, and leave it in that position. 

 The rear crew, on coming up, stimulated by the prank, knock 

 away the props, and throw it down ; a score of pikes pierce its 

 sides, when they shove it upon the run perhaps twenty rods to 

 the river again, amid the most vociferous hurrahs and whooping, 

 enough to give one quite an idea of the Indian war-whoop. 

 Some, perhaps, who may trace these lines may be curious to 

 know how the logs of one party can be distinguished from those 

 of another. The answer is, precisely as one farmer distinguishes 

 his sheep from those of his neighbor by the particular mark they 

 bear, each diflering in some particular from every other. A rep- 

 resentation of these marks, which are cut in the side of the log, 

 would remind one of the letters or characters of the Chinese. 



No employment that I am aware of threatens the life and 

 health more than river-driving. M"any a poor fellow finds his last 

 resting-place on the bank of some wild stream, in whose stifling 

 depths his last struggle for life was spent ; where the wild wood 

 skirts its margin — where, too, the lonely owl hoots his midnight 

 requiem. I have visited many spots that were, from facts called 

 up by retrospection, lonely and painfully silent, but have never 

 been so spell-bound, so extremely oppressed with a feehng of sad- 

 ness, as while standing over the little mound which marked the 



