RIVER LIFE. 169 



Fourteen days fjom this time we drove our logs to the boom, 

 having passed a distance of only one hundred and thirty miles in 

 ninety days. 



The mode of living on these driving excursions is altogether 

 "itinerant," and really comfortless, for the most part. A tem- 

 porary shelter vv^here night overtakes them is a luxury not always 

 enjoyed. Often nothing is above them but the forest's canopy, 

 and beneath them the cold earth, it may be snow, with a slight 

 bed of coarse boughs, over which a blanket is spread, and gen- 

 erally a large fire is kept burning through the night. Days and 

 nights, without intermission, are often passed without a dry shred 

 to the back. This is being " packed ;" and, if not a " water cure," 

 it is being water-soaked in earnest. 



It would not be surprising if rheumatism Avere entailed upon 

 the river-driver as a consequence of such exposure ; yet I have 

 known men to enjoy better health under these circumstances than 

 under almost any other. As an instance, I have seen a man pass- 

 ing sleepless nights with asthma at home, now on the bed, then 

 on the floor or reclining on a chair, struggling for a free respira- 

 tion until his very eyes would start from their sockets. I have 

 known such a man exchange his position for the exposures pe- 

 culiar to log-driving, and never for once suffer from this distress- 

 ing complaint during the whole campaign, but, on returning to 

 the comforts of home, experience an immediate relapse. 



From the foregoing account, which is really believed to come 

 short of the reality, the reader will be enabled to form some es- 

 timate of the dangers, hardships, and deaths encountered by thou- 

 sands in the lumbering operations — a business which is hardly 

 supposed to possess any peculiarities of incident or adventure above 

 the most common pursuits of life. How little are the generali- 

 ty of mankind disposed to consider as they should, that for much 

 which contributes to their comfort and ease, many a hardship has 

 been endured and muhitudos of individuals liave been sacrificed 

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