The Marvelous Exploits of Paul Bunyan: As Told in the Camps of the White Pine Lumbermen for Generations During Which Time the Loggers Have Pioneered the Way Through the North Woods from Maine to California; Collected from Various Sources and Embellished for PublicationLaughead, William B.
General
The Marvelous Exploits of Paul Bunyan: As Told in the Camps of the White Pine Lumbermen for Generations During Which Time the Loggers Have Pioneered the Way Through the North Woods from Maine to California; Collected from Various Sources and Embellished for Publication
Laughead, William B.
Bunyan, Paul (Legendary character)
The Winter Paul Bunyan logged off North Dakota he hauled water for his
ice roads from the Great Lakes. One day when Brimstone Bill had Babe
hitched to one of the old water tanks and was making his early morning
trip, the tank sprung a leak when they were half way across Minnesota.
Bill saved himself from drowning by climbing Babe's tail but all efforts
to patch up the tank were in vain so the old tank was abandoned and
replaced by one of the new ones. This was the beginning of the
Mississippi River and the truth of this is established by the fact that
the old Mississippi is still flowing.
The cook's in Paul's camps used a lot of water and to make things handy,
they used to dig wells near the cook shanty. At headquarters on the Big
Auger, on top of the hill near the mouth of the Little Gimlet, Paul dug
a well so deep that it took all day for the bucket to fall to the water,
and a week to haul it up. They had to run so many buckets that the well
was forty feet in diameter. It was shored up with tamarac poles and when
the camp was abandoned Paul pulled up this cribbing. Travellers who have
visited the spot say that the sand has blown away until 178 feet of the
well is sticking up into the air, forming a striking landmark.
* * * * *
WHAT is camp without a dog? Paul Bunyan loved dogs as well as the next
man but never would have one around that could not earn its keep. Paul's
dogs had to work, hunt or catch rats. It took a good dog to kill the
rats and mice in Paul's camps for the rodents picked up scraps of the
buffalo milk pancakes and grew to be as big as two year old bears.
[Illustration]
Elmer, the moose terrier, practiced up on the rats when he was a small
pup and was soon able to catch a moose on the run and finish it with one
shake. Elmer loafed around the cook camp and if the meat supply happened
to run low the cook would put the dog out the door and say, "Bring in a
moose." Elmer would run into the timber, catch a moose and bring it in
and repeat the performance until, after a few minutes work, the cook
figured he had enough for a mess and would call the dog in.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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