While speaking of this itinerating work we must add a paragraph concerning the homesteaders. In this forest region is much land that is open to settlement. The little cabins of the homesteaders, who have taken up claims, are seen in many parts of the forest, and the small clearings tell of man's presence. When the settlers hear that Rev. Frank E. Higgins is to hold services in a neighboring camp they are often found at the bunkhouse meetings. Mr. Higgins is practically the only pastor who visits the scattered peasantry; he conducts their marriage ceremonies, baptizes their children and speaks the last words over their dead. Into these homes he alone comes bearing spiritual tidings. Some of these homesteaders work their farms in summer and in the winter help out the scanty increase of the little fields by working in the logging camps. So in passing the new homes he leaves the literature, "speaks a good word for Jesus Christ," adds a sentence of comfort and passes along the trail,--like a true servant of him who was gladly received by the common people because he went about doing good. "Go ye into the highways and hedges," said the Nazarene. Work in the Lumber Towns CHAPTER VII. WORK IN THE LUMBER TOWNS. In the camps the missionary is largely a preacher; in the lumber towns the work he must do is cut to no design or pattern. One might call it pastoral work, and in a free use of the term it is, but I know of no pastor who is doing work of this nature unless it be the men in the city missions. It is work which consists largely of the unexpected--changing a chance circumstance into Christian activity. The villages and towns have followed the railways, bringing in the many alluring vices of civilization. Through the approaches of vice the campmen have been demoralized, their lives made almost worthless, and their characters seared with the brand of iniquity. The contractors find it a task to obtain suitable men for their crews, for the saloon and its concomitant evils have made many of the lumberjacks irresponsible and incapable. The men will leave their work on the least provocation to spend a few days in debauchery. Often a contractor finds himself, in the parlance of the camps, "with one crew coming to camp, another working, and another leaving camp." This means loss on the part of the men and inability on the part of the contractor to deliver his contract of logs. As one contractor expressed it: "The jacks work until their hides begin to crack, then follow their tongues to the nearest irrigation plant, tank up until the stake is blown, then mosey to a camp to dry out again." The village and town saloons are largely the cause of this. The rum shops, and worse, are ever on the lookout for the boys, and he who escapes the clutches of the godless crowd must indeed be immune to temptation.