CHAPTER V. 
DESTROYING THE REDWOOD. 
A Description of the Redwood Forests.—Lumbering Operations in the 
Redwood Forests in Detail.—The Advantages of Skilled Axemen 
in Lumbering Operations.—The Axeman’s Efficiency in Time of 
War.—The Mill Machinery, of What Consisting.—Process of Pre- 
paring the Timber.—Immense-sized Trees.— Average Yield of 
Sawed Stuff per Acre. — The Forest Soil Described. — Depth of 
Root of the Redwood-tree, to What Due.—A Reasonable Expla- 
nation.—Great Age of the Redwood-tree.—Manner of Growth and 
General Appearance.—Experiences of the Log Camp.—Redwood 
Logging in California. 
A rretenp of mine, while in California not long ago, 
made a visit to the Redwood forests on Russian River. 
His description of what he saw is so graphic and inter- 
esting that I give it a place in these chapters. He says: 
“The nearest mill was twenty miles distant. But such 
was the purity of the atmosphere that the timber could 
be seen distinctly, looming up in its gigantic height, 
twenty miles away on the mountains. After a sharp 
drive across the plains we descended to the river through 
a pocket cafion, where forests of fir and laurel line the 
hillsides. At this season the river is a stream of fifty 
feet in width, about knee-deep. The other bank is the 
margin of the red woods. A mile beyond we came to 
Murphy’s mill, located in a valley in the heart of the 
timber. Though it has been running continuously all 
summer with a force of twenty-five men, and a capacity 
for sawing twenty-five thousand feet per day, they have 
not succeeded in clearing the trees away from danger- 
ous proximity to the buildings. 
