KTAADN. 
43 
makes many a wet and uncomfortable camp on the 
shore. He must be able to navigate a log as if it were 
a canoe, and be as indifferent to cold and wet as a musk¬ 
rat. He uses a few efficient tools, — a lever commonly 
of rock-maple, six or seven feet long, with a stout spike 
in it, strongly feruled on, and a long spike-pole, with 
a screw at the end of the spike to make it hold. The 
boys along shore learn to walk on floating logs as city 
boys on sidewalks. Sometimes the logs are thrown up 
on rocks in such positions as to be irrecoverable but 
by another freshet as high, or they jam together at 
rapids and falls, and accumulate in vast piles, which the 
driver must start at the risk of his life. Such is the 
lumber business, which depends on many accidents, as 
the early freezing of the rivers, that the teams may get 
up in season, a sufficient freshet in the spring, to fetch 
the logs down, and many others.* I quote Michaux on 
Lumbering on the Kennebec, then the source of the 
best white-pine lumber carried to England. “ The per¬ 
sons engaged in this branch of industry are generally emi¬ 
grants from New Hampshire.In the summer they 
unite in small companies, and traverse these vast soli¬ 
tudes in every direction, to ascertain the places in which 
the pines abound. After cutting the grass and converting 
it into hay for the nourishment of the cattle to be em¬ 
ployed in their labor, they return home. In the begin¬ 
ning of the winter they enter the forests again, establish 
* “ A steady current or pitch of water is preferable to one either 
rising or diminishing ; as, when rising rapidly, the water at the mid¬ 
dle of the river is considerably higher than at the shores, — so much 
so as to be distinctly perceived by the eye of a spectator on the 
banks, presenting an appearance like a turnpike road. The lumber, 
therefore, is always sure to incline from the centre of the channel 
toward either shore.” — Springer. 
