TOPICS.

Colonist, Volume LI, Issue 12497, 25 March 1909, Page 4

TOPICS.

THE LUMBER INDUSTRY. The logging camps of t North- WestAmerica are established in heart of the forest, and where no railroads are cut to the nearest; river,- which is the highway by which the logs are taken |in the spring to the sawmills. Some | of the camps contain as many as 300 or 400 men, and this force is kept busy during tlio en-tire winter, and tllfi ieo in the river is thickly covered with the logs as Spring aproach.es. When the break-up;' occurs, and the stream is swollen by the melting of the snow and the early spring rains, which is called the log "drive" commences. A "drive" of 100 or 200 miles is nothing unusual, and on- the Mississippi river logs- are. frequently taken as much" as 300 miles:' The force of the current behind the huge mass may force hundreds of logs to a lodgment on the bank when curves in the stream are reached, and then the men are compelled to 'work, perhaps waist-deep, in the water in order to clear the ■stranded logs and once more get them afloat. The foremost logs are especially looked after and kept on the move, for should they become lodged the obstruction thus formed would speedily cause a log "jam," the thing particularly to be dreaded by the drivers, though, notwithstanding, jams do occasionally occur. Then the logs are piled high in the air, the weight of the mass sinking the. under ones to the bottom of the river, and> extending from bankito bank of the stream, they form an almost solid wedge, which constantly becomes larger and more compact. A jam in the St Croix river,in the 'spring of 1892, was about six miles in length, while one which occurred a "few years previously exteiided for a distance of 25 miles, and was estimated to contain over 150,---000,000 feet of lumber. The log drivers wear heavy boots, from the soles of which proiect sharpened steel or iron spikes ••placed thickly. With these in time it becomes. an ; easy matter for the men to run about on the floating and twisting logs with as much confidence as that exhibited by the ordinary individual when striding alorig a.pavement. : Accidents, however occasionally happen, and • some- of the men are precipitated into the water. Where an experienced hand loses his balance and falls into the_ water, he immediately becomes an object of ridicule,, and is severel ybantered by his comrades. '