WONDERS OR WOOD 
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piles up in a booming, roaring mass which can be loosened 
only with dynamite. This means that Jack’s masts 
will be shattered and lost and with them hundreds of 
other precious logs, so when the driver sees this coming 
he forgets the danger of rushing, icy water and trusts 
the sharp spikes in his heavy boots to steady him as he 
runs forward and with a thrust of his pole loosens the 
key log which causes the trouble. 
On again moves the mass, on and on until, after a 
journey of many days—it might be weeks in Canada or 
the northwest—the driver shouts as he sees the saw- 
milll, and Jack’s masts pass from the water to the saw 
to be rounded into shape. From the mill they travel by 
train to Jack, waiting by the sea. Up go the masts, up 
fly the sails, off glides the great ship! 
Once I visited a saw mill. It was in Oregon, on the 
Pacific coast, and the logs which came into that mill 
were so big that if four of you joined hands, you could 
not have reached around one of them. In an airy room 
over the water screamed the whizzing saws, shining round 
wheels forged of steel no thicker than a silver dollar. 
Men did not spin them, but machinery; their sharp teeth 
sank through the wood as a knife goes through an apple. 
Do you know how many different kinds of saws there 
are? Ninety kinds, each with its own name; jump saw, 
wobble saw, foxtail saw, rabbit saw,—but if you want 
