The lumber trade is one of the most interesting and necessary industries of the state. Work in the camp is healthful and well paid. Many a delicate boy or young man in the city would grow strong and healthy and live a much longer time if he would cast his lot with the hardy choppers and cutters of the great forest of the Pacific slope. A logging crew consists of thirty men, including two cooks. The discipline is as rigid as that of a military system; each man knows his own particular duties, and must attend to them promptly and faithfully. Trees are not chopped down, as used to be the custom; with the exception of a little chopping on either edge, a saw run by two men does the work. Oxen are seldom used, as in early days on the Atlantic coast, to haul out the logs, for they have given way to “donkeys,”--not the long-eared, loud-voiced little animals, but the powerful, compact donkey-engines. Lumber schooners and steamers are the chief features of our coast traffic. Almost all the large cities of the Pacific coast owe their foundation and prosperity to this trade. San Francisco and Eureka in Humboldt County are the principal ports of the trade. Mendocino has a rock-bound coast, with no harbors, but she has fine forests. Here the lumber steamer secures its cargo by means of suspended wire chutes as trolleys. The outer end of the trolley wire is anchored in the ocean, the wire crosses the deck of the moored steamer, the slack being taken up to the ship’s gaff, thus making a tight wire up and down which the trolley car with its load is sent. Sometimes a great raft made of lumber is taken in tow by a steamer loaded with the same material and they start on a voyage down the coast, but this is a dangerous venture. If the sea becomes rough the raft may break loose from the steamer and go plunging over the waves, no one knows where. The brave captains of our coasting vessels fear nothing so much as a timber raft adrift which may crash into a vessel at any moment and against which there is no way of guarding. Chapter XIII To All that Sow the Time of Harvest Should be Given In all but savage countries, wheat is the most important product of the soil, A large proportion of human beings living on the earth to-day are so poverty-stricken as to make the question of food a matter of anxiety for every day. The prayer for bread unites more voices than any other.