The introduction of the team to winter quarters is always attended with more or less trouble: much less, however, of late than in former years. Then, all the chains and other implements connected with the business, together with provisions for the crew and provender for the oxen, enough to last until the swamps, rivers, and lakes were frozen, so as to allow teams to pass over them, were boated in the manner described in a former chapter, which required many trips, and were continued until a late period in the fall. To the latest trips an additional and most uncomfortable inconvenience is added to the many hardships of boating provisions. This is when the ice makes on our poles while in the act of passing up over rapids. Often our hands become so cold and stiff as to render it very difficult to hold on to the icy instrument. The mariner may stop a moment, even in a gale, while at the yard-arm, to blow his freezing fingers; but not so with the lumberman with a loaded boat in a rapid current: every finger is needed every moment, as life and property would be endangered by paying even slight attention to cold fingers. Where the nature of the route will allow it, and an early start is desired, our teams are attached to a long sled, lightly loaded, which is dragged over miry, rough roads. In crossing large streams, we unyoke the oxen and swim them over. If we have no boat, a raft is constructed, upon which our effects are transported, when we re-yoke and pursue our route as before. Our oxen are often very reluctant to enter the water while the anchor ice runs, and the cold has already begun to congeal its surface. But an ox hardly knows how to refuse compliance with his master's wishes, so submissive is he in his disposition. Of late, since roads have been cut, and even "turnpikes" made a considerable portion of the distance up the main rivers, such as the "Calais and Houlton Road" on the St. Croix, and the "Military Road" on the Penobscot, which connect with other less perfect thoroughfares, and finally terminate in common swamp roads, our conveyances are much easier, and the business of taking the team on to the ground is, and may be safely, deferred until frosts and snows admit of a more agreeable mode of travel.