IN THE BACKWOODS OF BRITAIN.

Waikato Times, Volume 87, Issue 13275, 2 September 1916, Page 1 (Supplement)

IN THE BACKWOODS OF BRITAIN.

LUMBERING AS A WAR-TIME INDUSTRY. Iho trade of "lumbering" sounds foreign to this country, yet in our milder and more .secluded districts it has never ceased to be of importance. Its employees, being graded as woodcutters, bark-peelers, horsemen, wagoners, and so on, do not present the mind with a sharp picture as is the case with tho lumberers in America, but there are torests on the great estates in Wales, in the Pennines, and m Scotland, where all the methods described as peculiar to the "backwoods" camps have been for ages in vogue. I have just returned ironi a long and rough tramp through a great timber area, where there was in course of erection a shoot or flume by which the logs, cut and trimmed on an upper plateau, could be sent expeditiously to the valley level. In its surroundings one was strongly reminded of descriptions favored by the "wild woods" writers—tho dainty trestles, here spanning a burn, there making a short leg against a protruding rock, the .strong funnel, ami now and again a broken stick which the builder had discarded. Four other flumes were visible in open spaces left in the long green forest. Even on quiet, peaceful Windermere it is no new thing to see a small tug patiently working its way toward the railhead at Lakeside with a heavy raft of larch or pine logs, while up in the Cairngorms an artificial loclian has been constructed to produce a flood just when the logs rolled into the bed of the burn need floating three or four miles down to tho road bridge or to a saw mill at the toot of the long glen. The partial stoppage of the import of timber, owing to the war, has given a tremendous fillip to British lumbering. Our mines are calling for more and still more light timber suited for use as pit props, and the War Office demands practically every plank of the heavier grades which can be turned out of the saw mills, as well as much light stuti. Ihe huts and storehouses necessary lor an army in training at home consume a vast footage of timber, beside which there are tactics in the field for which wood is necessary.

A day spent in a British forest may he of much interest. One should arrive after sunset at the logging camp, when the night mists are collecting anil floating, soft as wool, through the treetops, and the world around is swathed in gloom. Then one gets the true aroma of sawdust, of wood tires; one sees the dusk broken by warm lamplight, by the flickering of the hearths; and one hears the gentle murmur of the river over the weir and the waterwheel. Great rough fellows come out, but nowhere is there a vestige of the fierceness of the fabled American; no trace of pistols, no rum, riot, and inherent foolishness which seem to mark the Yankee camp. One can sleep in a bunk with a mattress of heather and a trio of blankets for bedding, and be awakened soon after dawn by the sound of the gangs going out to work, the rumble of the log-train as it gets under way for the cutting ground, and the noise of the mill starting work—the harsh crash of the cross-cut blending with the hum of many circular saws, and now and again the slashing of the axe at some knot or branch which needs trimming before being placed on the bench. Later, when the men troop in to breakfast, the overnight impression of wildness is still maintained. These men are almost strangers to civilisation, living month after month, often year after year, away in the forests. In the Pennines there is a lumber camp which has progressed from point to point of a great wood for four years, and there is a horse-tender there who in that space of time had never wandered as far as the nearest village. The kitchen and storehouse provided everything he needed, so why should he go? Besides, who would look after his teams?

At the working centres there is really nothing to choose between this and a Wild West forest. The great trees come down with tremendous crashes to the saws and axes of the woodsmen; in a few minutes their branches are stripped and the horses hitched to drag the trunk to the main thoroughfare, where shear legs are ready to lift it to the timber wagons or the low trollies of the log-line. Summer and winter this work goes 011 in some degree. When there is 110 cutting there is plenty of barking, and the sawmill is always willing to swallow any surplus labor. Thus, in a year a wide swathe has been cut out of the spreading forest—a place of blanched trunks and broken branches of tangle and ruin and poverty and apparent miserv. But next year or so a new generation of trees has grown, and the woodsman goes on ahead with his labor, knowing that at the allotted speed | his advance to the further march ol the forest will occur just- by the time the trees far behind are ready for axe and saw. hi war-time, however, the rate of cutting lias been accelerated, and one hopes that the forest owners of Britain will see to it that the reafforestation 011 right lines keeps paw with the denudation. There are plenty of waste places of our remoter estates which might profitably go under timber, and provide our wood supplies for thirty years or so hence. Prices will not drop suddenly after the war. and the rental of deer forest or grouse moor is not likely to rise again to pre-war levels for the next generation.