FOREST, FISH AND GAME COMMISSION. 249 



tree " lodges," and, springing back at the stump, kills the axeman ; a load of logs 

 " shoves " the team down some grade in the road, and the driver is thrown under- 

 neath or dashed against a roadside tree ; a tier of logs starts suddenly, and a man is 

 crushed to death ; a jam on the log drive breaks without warning, and a man is 

 lost; another, while fighting a forest fire, finds his retreat cut off and is burned; 

 another disappears in the current of the spring flood; while in the mills there is the 

 gruesome sight of men killed by falling on the saws. 



Painful wounds and frightful accidents, also, were incidental to pioneer life in the 

 lumber v/oods. In the records of the town of Middlebury, Wyoming County, we 

 find that " In May, 1817, Artemas Shattuck went into the woods to chop. While 

 cutting off a log that had been partially split open, his foot was caught in the crack, 

 and he hung for a long time suspended by his foot and partly supported by one 

 hand. Despairing of receiving aid, he finally unjoiiited his ankle with his pocket- 

 knife, made a crutch of a crooked stick and started for the house." 



Their privations had a pathetic side also. We read in the history of the town 

 of Verona, Oneida County, that " the first death in the settlement was that of a 

 child who was buried in its cradle for want of a coffin." 



Rafting. 



It should be remembered too that there were no canals or railroads in those 

 days ; no loading of boats or cars. The local market of each mill was limited 

 by the distance to which the sawed lumber could be transported on wagons, over 

 soft, newly-built roads ; the greater outside market could be reached only by raft- 

 ing the product and floating it down to the towns and cities which then were 

 always located on some waterway. Hence, the mills were erected on the upper 

 waters of the creeks or rivers, not only to utilize the water power, but to secure an 

 outlet to their market. Each lumberman was a raftsman as well as a log-jobber and 

 mill owner. 



Passing by the lumbering operations during the first century of colonial life, 

 of which there is very little record now, we come to a period in the history of the 

 industry when, for a lack of canal or railway transportation, its beginning in each 

 county was marked by the running of the first rafts. 



Pioneer Raftsmen. 



Arthur Noble, proprietor of the Arthurboro and Nobleboro Patents, Herkimer 

 County, built the first mill in that county in 1790. The first lot of lumber sawed 



