310 RESOURCES OF CALIFORNIA. 
would be too heavy for convenience or quick work. The cir- 
ewar saws are used for cutting all the thin siding, pickets, nnd 
laths. The largest circular saws are fifty-two inches in diam- 
eter, leaving about twenty-four inches on each side of the axle. 
When ‘large logs are to be sawn with circular saws, one saw 
is put above the other, and one cuts into the log from above, 
and the other from below, so that they can saw a log four feet 
in diameter. The frame-work for the circular-saw mills is 
lighter than that necessary for the upright saws ; and circular- 
saw mills are not unfrequently moved about on wagons from 
one place to another. The circular saw is used almost exclu- 
sively in the Sierra Nevada. In Mendocino county and at 
Ranta Cruz, the muley and circular saws are used without the 
gang-saws. The cost of sawing lumber is about the same 
with the circular saw as with the upright saw. The circular 
saw is more dangerous to the sawyer, and requires more skill 
in mechanics, so the wages of a man to manage a circular saw 
are one hundred and fifty dollars per month, while the wages 
of a man for an upright saw are only sixty dollars. The bark 
of the redwood is always taken off before the log is put into 
the mill. <A tree seven feet in diameter will make four thou- 
sand feet of lumber, on an average. Jn Mendocino county 
the logs are cut in the summer along the little streams, and in 
the winter they are carried down by the high water to the 
mills, where they are caught by large booms, but as the rivers 
are large with fierce currents, these booms are sometimes 
broker, when millions of feet of logs are swept out to sea and 
lost. The lumber after. being sawn, is shipped to San Fran- 
cisco in schooners, varying from one hundred and fifty to 
three hundred tons burden. The freight is eight or nine dol- 
lars per one thousand feet. Most of the trees convenient for 
the Juambermen near the mills in Mendocino county, have been 
cut away; but about Humboldt Bay the supply will last many: 
years. In the Sierra Nevada, the circular-saw mills ordinarily 
move from. place to place, so as to have the timber near at 
tend. In the valleys of Eel River there are hundreds of red- 
