42 
THE MAINE WOODS. 
ting his eyes, as if to bid farewell to the existing state of 
things, a fair proportion of his winter’s work goes scram¬ 
bling down the country, followed by his faithful dogs, 
Thaw and Rain and Freshet and Wind, the whole pack 
in full cry, toward the Orono Mills. Every log is 
marked with the owner’s name, cut in the sapwood with 
an axe or bored with an auger, so deep as not to be 
worn off in the driving, and yet not so as to injure the 
timber; and it requires considerable ingenuity to invent 
new and simple marks where there are so many owners. 
They have quite an alphabet of their own, which only 
the practised can read. One of my companions read off 
from his memorandum-book some marks of his own logs, 
among which there were crosses, belts, crow’s feet, gir¬ 
dles, &c., as, “ Y — girdle — crow-foot,” and various 
other devices. When the logs have run the gauntlet of 
innumerable rapids and falls, each on its own account, 
with more or less jamming and bruising, those bearing 
various owners’ marks being mixed up together, — since 
all must take advantage of the same freshet,—they are col¬ 
lected together at the heads of the lakes, and surrounded 
by a boom fence of floating logs, to prevent their being 
dispersed by the wind, and are thus towed altogether, 
like a flock of sheep, across the lake, where there is no 
current, by a windlass, or boom-head, such as we some¬ 
times saw standing on an island or head-land, and, if 
circumstances permit, with the aid of sails and oars. 
Sometimes, notwithstanding, the logs are dispersed over 
many miles of lake surface in a few hours by winds and 
freshets, and thrown up on distant shores, where the 
driver can pick up only one or two at a time, and re¬ 
turn with them to the thoroughfare; and before he gets 
his flock well through Ambejijis or Pamadumcook, he 
