Paul Bunyan lay in his camp office and listened to the peaceful snores of the Big Swede, who could sleep so well because he lacked imagination. But the great logger’s thoughts and visions banished any hope of rest for him. Work should begin at once, and a great idea must precede it. His determination for the double drive was solidly fixed; he _would_ get a good plan for it. Now then: first, for a drive there must be logs; next, for logs there must be trees; then, for trees there must be timberland, as trees cannot be conjured from nothingness. Now, all around him was nothing but logged-off land; perhaps it would be possible to invent a way to log off logged-off land.... Thunderation! what preposterous notions he was getting! But all his ideas seemed to be as absurd. As the night hours crawled slowly on Paul Bunyan began to doubt his powers. Had the fight with the Big Swede left him a little crazy? Perhaps. At dawn his mind was in a turmoil; he felt that he had brought himself face to face with the supreme crisis of his career, and it looked like he was not to meet it successfully. If so, the meanest swamper in camp would despise him. And the Big Swede--how soon he would lose the humble worship that Paul Bunyan had pounded into him and be filled with a cold Nordic scorn for this Latin victim of imagination!... What was wrong with his ideas? Why didn’t they swell with their usual superb force and burst into a splendor of magnificent plans? Was this new history of logging, then, to be a history of failure?... In a torment of thought, Paul Bunyan could lie still no longer. Darkness was passing fast now; he threw off his blankets and tramped to the office door. He drew it open, then--motionless, unblinking, breathless--he stared for sixty-six minutes. At last he rubbed his eyes; but then he again stared as woodenly as a heathen idol. He could only believe that his rebellious imagination was deceiving him, that the incredible sight before him was certainly unreal. For he saw trees everywhere; on both sides of the river they reached to the horizon. They were in exact rows, like trees in an orchard, and each one was a large, smooth, untapering column, flat-topped and without a trace of bark or boughs. Again and again Paul Bunyan rubbed his eyes, thinking to see the strange forest vanish. But it remained, and he rushed out at last and seized one of the trees. He pulled it up easily, and he was more amazed than ever, for it had a sharp point instead of roots. He walked on out into the forest and pulled up others here and there, and they were all exactly alike in shape and size.