A Lumber Camp of To-day 



track sagged. The passengers kept their seats, even on that 

 car. A short length of rail was laid under the offending wheels, 

 the little engine at the upper end of the train pulled suddenly 

 and the wheel got back to the rail. There was just time to 

 pick a bunch of scarlet hobble berries which the kindly genius 

 of the short rail heard me crave; then the descent began again, 

 the little engine halting violently to overcome and to gauge 

 properly the mighty force of gravitation, in whose power we were 

 hurrying to the valley. And we drew in alongside the mill slough 

 while the autumnal sun still shone through the hemlocks on the 

 western hill. 



There was one stop at a siding to attach a car piled high 

 and solid with sheets of dry hemlock bark, and to add a number 

 of extra passengers from the woods and berry patches. This 

 hemlock furnishes a valuable side line to the main lumbering 

 business. The wood is not highly rated, but the bark is valuable 

 for tanning. All through the summer, work is active among the 

 hemlocks. The bark slips until September, and a gang of peelers 

 works through the growing season. Then it disbands. There 

 is only the bark to market, and the logs to get to the mills. 



The bark is checked into uniform sheets four feet long before 

 it is stripped from the fresh-cut log. It is stacked and loaded on 

 cars by the stripper, who gets |2 per cord for his work. The 

 tanneries pay |io or more per cord for it. The force of 150 

 men get out 10,000 cords of bark in a summer. 



The hemlock logs, too slippery for handling by men, are 

 loaded on cars by machinery. A big iron thumb and finger — 

 a derrick — lifts them and places them on the cars. They are 

 sawed into building timbers of the cheaper sorts, and the small 

 stuff goes to the shingle mill. Most of the bark is consumed 

 by a tannery in the neighbourhood. Green hides from the 

 Argentine Republic are shipped to this establishment, which does 

 also a great business with Western hides. 



It is the proud boast of the owners that in their mills there 

 is no waste. It is indeed remarkable how little good pine goes 

 out over the dam to feed the ever-burning slab pile on the other 

 side of the river. The course of one log is easily followed in the 

 great open mill. 



The pine logs, bleeding red at both ends, are rolled from the 

 cars into the mill slough. A man on a raft with a long pike 



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