34 THE LOG OF A TIMBER CRUISER 
I’ve often carried double this amount. I’m very 
strong!’’ 
Nothing further was said, and the tall cruiser 
strode off with the rest of us to our stations. 
These cruising stations, indicated by a monument 
of stones and a witness blaze on a nearby tree, on 
which the number of the station and the elevation 
are inscribed, were set every twenty chains along 
the baseline, beginning ten chains from the first sec- 
tion corner. Thus the cruiser, starting at a given 
station and running at approximately right angles 
to the baseline, in cardinal directions, travelled 
through the middle of a tier of ‘‘forties,’’ or forty- 
acre section subdivisions. The forty is the unit for 
timber estimates; and by mapping and estimating 
for ten chains on either side of his course as he ad- 
vanced, a man covered a forty-acre tract as often as 
he paced a quarter of a mile ahead. 
At the end of the outward trip he would offset 
twenty chains from this line, in a direction parallel 
to the baseline, and cruise back through the adjoin- 
ing tier of forties, checking in at the station beyond 
the one from which he started. Each run, there- 
fore, disposed of a strip of country half a mile wide 
’ and as long as the character of the running per- 
mitted. 
On the day of which I speak Bob Moak ran out 
from stations one and two, Horace took three and 
four, while Frazer and I went on to station five, 
where our work began. All were east runs. 
