The distance to the Paxton lumber camp was over a hundred and fifteen miles, and it took five days to cover the journey. At the end of the lake the goods had to be portaged up to the river, and then had to be portaged around the falls beyond. On the West Branch and the side stream on which the camp was located the bateau had to be poled along, and owing to the low water often caught on the mud or the rocks. But nobody minded the work, and as the weather was cool and dry the journey passed off pleasantly enough. The two strange lumbermen were from Bangor and were named Gilroy and Andrews. They were experienced hands, and Gilroy was an under boss at the camp, having charge of the North-Section Gang, as it was called. All the older men loved to talk about lumbering in general and old times in Maine in particular, and Dale and Owen listened to the conversation with interest. "Got to go putty far back for lumber now," said Joel Winthrop. "All the good stuff nigh to the river has been cut away." "I've heard my grandfather tell of the times when they cut good logs less than ten miles from Bangor," put in Gilroy. "I reckon they didn't think what an industry lumbering would become in these days." "I suppose they cut nothing but pine in those days," said Dale. "Nothing but pine, lad; spruce wasn't looked at." "Yes, and pine was the great thing even up to the Civil War," said Joel Winthrop. "But that was the last of it, and a couple of years after the war ended spruce came to the front, and now, as you perhaps know, we cut five times as much spruce as we do anything else." "I've often wondered how many men worked in Maine at lumbering," said Owen. "There must be a small army of us, all told." "I heard that last year more than fourteen thousand men were in the woods," came from Andrews. "The total number of feet of all kinds of lumber cut was over half a billion." "What a stack of logs!" cried Dale. "No wonder we have a pine tree on the coat of arms of the State," added Owen. "But it ought to be a spruce tree now instead of a pine," he continued. "I can remember the day when the lumber camps claimed the very best of our people," said Joel Winthrop. "Folks wasn't stuck up in them days, and many of the richest men in Bangor and Portland earned their first dollar choppin' down pine trees. But now we've got all sorts in the camps, an' have to take 'em or git nobody. Not but what we've got good men at our camp," he added hastily. "I wouldn't mind a job as a lumber surveyor," said Dale. "They get good wages, don't they?" "A deputy surveyor gets ten cents a thousand on all the lumber he checks off," answered Gilroy. "I've known a man to make six to ten dollars a day at it. The fellows who overhaul the lumber for him get seven and a half cents a thousand each. The surveyor-general of the county gets a cent a thousand on all lumber passed on in the county." "Some day I reckon I'll be a surveyor-general," observed Owen dryly.