FOREST, FISH AND GAME COMMISSION. 255 



nous matter so that when piled again in the yards it would season better and 

 quicker. But whatever the advantage thus gained it was more than offset by the 

 wet, muddy condition of the boards as they were taken out of the river. Each 

 course had to be scrubbed with a broom ; and even then the front of each pile in 

 the lumber yard was plastered with the mud that was scraped off as the boards 

 were drawn up over the top edge. Then, again, when the dried lumber was sent to 

 the planing mill the boards were covered with a thin coating of dirt and grit that 

 dulled the planer knives and filled the mill with a cloud of fine dust. And such was 

 rafting in the old times before the railroads paralleled our rivers. 



Hewed timber, as well as boards, was floated to market in rafts. Fifty years 

 ago most of the long timber was hewed instead of sawed ; for the mills had no appli- 

 ances then for sawing long sticks. Moreover, the hewed timber was thought to be 

 more valuable ; it was stronger and would last longer than sawed timber wherever 

 it was used. The sticks were of white pine, ranging from thirty to seventy feet 

 long and from twelve to twenty-four inches square. At one time considerable 

 " square " timber, as it was called, was sent to the Albany and New York market by 

 canal, the rafts being made up into " lockbands " corresponding in size to the 

 canal locks. 



hoQ Driving'. 



Log driving on the Upper Hudson commenced about 1813. This method of 

 bringing logs to a mill by floating them down a stream was first used by the Fox 

 Brothers, Norman and Alanson, v/ho took this means to get their timber from the 

 Brant Lake Tract to the mills at Glens Falls, which had previously been stocked by 

 hauling the logs direct to the mill. Their example was quickly followed, and for 

 seventy-five years the great sawmills at Glens Falls, Sandy Hill and Fort Edward 

 obtained their stock this way, thereby concentrating the entire manufacturing 

 business of the Upper Hudson and its tributaries in that one locality. 



In time the large number of logs coming down the Hudson on each freshet 

 made it necessary that a sorting boom should be established at some convenient 

 place, where the logs of the various lumber companies could be separated in accord- 

 ance with the " log-marks " or characters which had been stamped or indented on 

 the end of each log with a " marking hammer." This necessity, together with the 

 frequent loss of stock by the breaking of poorly constructed booms in time of high 

 water, caused the organization, in 1849, of the Hudson River Boom Association 

 and the construction of the "big boom" at Glens Falls, where suitable arrange- 



