Forest Life and Forest Trees: comprising winter camp-life among the loggers, and wild-wood adventure.: with Descriptions of lumbering operations on the various; rivers of Maine and New BrunswickSpringer, John S.
History
Forest Life and Forest Trees: comprising winter camp-life among the loggers, and wild-wood adventure.: with Descriptions of lumbering operations on the various; rivers of Maine and New Brunswick
Springer, John S.
Lumbering -- Maine; Maine -- Description and travel; New Brunswick -- Description and travel; Trees
In other places, where banks are too abrupt to allow the team to pass
on to the river, the logs are unloaded and rolled down in one general
mass; the first few fall upon the ice, others rolling against them;
the main body fall back and accumulate in great numbers. To break or
clear such a landing is often very dangerous. While at work prying on
the foremost, large masses start suddenly, and often the only way of
escape is to spring in advance of the rushing pile and plunge the
river. "I saw one poor fellow," said a logger, "hurled into eternity
very suddenly while at work on one of those jams. Co-operating with
others in an attempt to roll a stick from the pile, the main lever
gave way, and the stick slipped back. This person used a single
hand-spike, holding up the upper end and sallying back. When the log
rolled back it caused the hand-spike to spring forward, and, before he
had time to relinquish his grasp, it flung him headlong forward, like
an arrow from the hunter's bow, down the embankment into the water;
when recovered, he was dead. It was supposed that some internal injury
was inflicted by the sudden ejectment, which caused him to suffocate
more readily in the water. Rarely could the man be found his equal in
physical energy; but strength opposes no barrier to death."
Logs are now driven down streams whose navigation for such purposes
was formerly regarded as impracticable--some from their diminutive
size, and others from their wild, craggy channel. There is a stream of
the latter description, called "_Nesourdnehunk_," which disembogues
into the Penobscot on the southwest side of Mount Ktaadn, whose
foaming waters leap from crag to crag, or roll in one plunging sheet
down perpendicular ledges between two mountains. On one section of
this stream, said to be about half a mile in length, there is a fall
of three hundred feet. In some places it falls twenty-five feet
perpendicularly. Down this wild pass logs are run, rolling, dashing,
and plunging, end over end, making the astonished forest echo with
their rebounding concussion.
It would be a match for "Dame Nature" to locate a handsome Pine-tree
beyond the grasp of the logmen. Where the Eastern hunter pursues the
mountain goat, the logger would pursue the stately Pine. We have seen
them in the deep ravine, on the abrupt hill-top, and far up the rugged
mountain side, or peering down from some lofty cliff upon the
insignificant animal at its base who is contemplating its sacrifice; a
few minutes, and the crash of its giddy plunge is heard, "and swells
along the echoing crag," causing the earth to tremble under the stroke
of its massive trunk; and if it does not break in pieces, as is
sometimes the case, in falling, it will in time find its way to the
slip of the saw-mill. The resolution, daring, skill, and physical
force of the men engaged in this business can find no rival, to say
the least, in any body or class of men whatever.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account