244 REPORT OF THE 



summer he had made him a mill that went with 12 saws. A few such mills will 

 quickly destroy all the woods in the Province at a reasonable distance from them." 



The evolution of the sawmill is largely due to the conditions and demands of 

 the lumber industry in America. Our early colonists built and operated sawmills 

 one hundred years or more before there was one in England. It may be well to 

 note here that this method of manufacturing was not an absolutely necessary 

 adjunct to the work of the forester. The wainscotings, panelled ceilings, cabinet 

 work and Chippendale furniture which made famous the stately homes of England 

 were constructed in all their perfection long before the first sawmill was erected in 

 that country. The men who founded the Massachusetts Bay colony, together with 

 the emigrants who followed them for a hundred years, had never seen a sawmill in 

 their native land. So, if a sawmill did not always make its appearance in the colony 

 soon after the first settlement, it does not follow that no lumbering operations were 

 carried on. They had other means of manufacturing the forest products. 



As already remarked, the pioneer of the wilderness, in building his lonely cabin, 

 could, with axe and wedge, easily supply his few wants in this respect. But in the 

 villages which sprang up at each important trading post there was a demand for 

 building material and shiptimber which the inhabitants themselves could not well 

 supply. Most of the settlers were engaged in better paying pursuits or professions; 

 hence, some outside labor found employment in manufacturing lumber by hand 

 power. Large timbers for house and shipbuilding were hewn out and squared 

 with a broad-axe by men whose expert handling of this tool is now a lost art ; 

 planks, boards and boat-sides were mostly made by pit-sawing. The latter was a 

 common industry in the old country ; and one reason why England had no sawmills 

 until after 1768 was because the mobs, who always opposed labor-saving machinery, 

 destroyed the first ones as fast as erected, through a fear that the pit-sawyers would 

 be thrown out of employment. 



Pit-davving. 



Pit-sawing was done by two men with a long saw which had a cross-handle at 

 each end. A large timber, hewed square, was placed over a pit or elevated on 

 trestles, with one man standing on top of it to pull the saw up, and one man below 

 to pull it down. The workman on top, who guided the saw along a chalk line and 

 was necessarily the better man, was called the " top-sawyer," a name still used occa- 

 sionally in the backwoods to indicate a tip-top man ; and the one below was called 

 the pitman. When sawmills were first substituted in this work the saw was pulled 

 up by a spring-pole overhead, and pulled down by a wooden beam attached to the 



