GREAT PINE SWAMP. 55 



have already been culled, turned into boards, and floated as far as Phila- 

 delphia. 



In such an undertaking, the cutting of the trees is not all. They have 

 afterwards to be hauled to the edge of the mountains bordering the river, 

 lainiched into the stream, and led to the mills over many shallows and 

 difficidt places. Whilst I was in the Great Pine Swamp, I frequently 

 visited one of the principal places for the launching of logs. To see them 

 tumbling from such a height, touching here and there the rough angle of 

 a projecting rock, bouncing from it with the elasticity of a foot-baU, and at 

 last falling with awful crash into the river, forms a sight interesting in the 

 highest degree, but impossible for me to describe. Shall I tell you that I 

 have seen masses of these logs heaped above each other to the number of 

 five thousand ? I may so tell you, for such I have seen. My friend IiiisH 

 assured me that at some seasons, these piles consisted of a much greater 

 number, the river becoming in those places completely choked up. 



^Nhen freshets (or floods) take place, then is the time chosen for for- 

 wardino: the logs to the different miUs. This is called a Frolic. Jediah 

 Irish, who is generally the leader, proceeds to the upper leap with his men, 

 each provided with a strong wooden handspike, and a short-handled axe. 

 They all take to the water, be it summer or winter, like so many New- 

 foundland spaniels. The logs are gradually detached, and, after a 

 time, are seen floating down the dancing stream, here striking against 

 a rock and whirling many times round, there suddenly checked in dozens 

 by a shallow, over which they have to be forced with the handspikes. 

 Now they arrive at the edge of a dam, and are again pushed over. Cer- 

 tain numbers are left in each dam, and when the party has arrived at the 

 last, which lies just where my friend Irish's camp was first formed, the 

 drenched leader and his men, about sixty in number, make their way home, 

 find there a healthful repast, and spend the evening and a portion of the 

 inVht in dancing and frolicking, in their own simple manner, in the most 

 perfect amity, seldom troubling themselves with the idea of the labour 

 prepared for them on the morrow. 



That morrow now come, one sounds a horn from the door of the store- 

 house, at the call of which each returns to his work. The sawyers, the 

 millers, the rafters and raftsmen are all immediately busy. The mills are all 

 going, and the logs, Avhich a few months before were the supporters of broad 

 and leafy tops, are now in the act of being split asunder. The boards are 

 then launched into the stream, and rafts are formed of them for market. 



