CHAP. CXIII. 



CONI FER7E. y/IHE TIN/E. 



2117 



they build a log hut, forming a pit or cellar below it to preserve those things 

 which are liable to be injured by the frost. The cold is so intense that they 

 are obliged to keep up a constant fire night and day, and they drink enormous 

 quantities of rum, generally without water. When they work, they divide 

 into three gangs: one of which cuts down the trees, another hews them, and 

 the third is employed with oxen in dragging the logs to the nearest stream. 

 Here they lie till the snow begins to dissolve in April or May, when " the 

 rivers swell, or, according to the lumberers' phrase, ' the freshets come down.' 

 At this time all the timber cut during winter is thrown into the water, and 

 floated down till the river becomes sufficiently wide to make the whole into 

 one or more rafts. The water at this period is exceedingly cold ; yet for weeks 

 the lumberers are in it from morning till night, and it is seldom less than a 

 month or six weeks from the time that floating the timber down the streams 

 commences, until the rafts are delivered to the merchants. No course of life 

 can undermine the constitution more than that of a lumberer and raftsman. 

 The winter snow and frost, although severe, are nothing to endure, in compari- 

 son with the extreme coldness of the snow water of the freshets ; in which the 

 lumberer is, day after day, wet up to the middle, and often immersed from head 

 to foot." The lumberers of New Brunswick, and those who cut down timber in 

 the United States, take great care to select trees of a proper size. Mr. 

 M' Gregor states that not one tree in 10,000, in the woods, is fit for the 

 purposes of commerce. In the United States the forests of pines and 

 firs, when they occur on poor, dry, sandy plains, where broad-leaved trees 

 will not grow, are called pine barrens, and they extend over a very consider- 

 able portion of the southern states, as far as North Carolina. " Upwards 

 of 500 miles of our journey," says Captain Hall, " lay through these deso- 

 late forests, and I have therefore thought it worth while to give a sketch 

 {Jig. 2004.), which is sufficiently characteristic of these singular regions. 



.;: 2004 



Occasional villages (j%. 2005.) gave some relief to the tedium of this part 

 of the journey, and wheresoever a stream occurred, the fertility of the 

 adjacent lands was more grateful to the eye than I can find words to describe. 

 Once or twice, in travelling through the state of Georgia, we came to high 

 knolls, from which we could look over the vast ocean of trees, stretching 

 without a break in every direction as far as the eye could reach ; and I 

 remember upon one of these occasions, thinking that I had never before had a 

 just conception of what the word forest meant." (Hall's Sketches in Canada. 

 and the United Stales, No. xxiii.) The pines in the United States which furnish 

 timber for exportation are, according to F. A. Michaux, P. mitis (the yellow 

 pine,) P. tftrobus (the white or Weymouth pine), and P. australis (the long- 

 leaved pine.) Of these, the wood of P. mitis is called, in the English markets, 



G x 4 



