These Money Wages, However, Are In
Addition To Their Diet.
The operation requiring the most skill is
that of marking the trees for the axe.
The largest only are worth
cutting, and form and soundness must also be considered.
But if I were about to visit a party of lumberers in the forest, I
should not be disposed to pass a whole winter with them. Even of a
very good thing one may have too much, I would go up in the spring,
when the rafts are being formed in the small tributary streams, and
I would come down upon one of them, shooting the rapids of the
rivers as soon as the first freshets had left the way open. A
freshet in the rivers is the rush of waters occasioned by melting
snow and ice. The first freshets take down the winter waters of
the nearer lakes and rivers. Then the streams become for a time
navigable, and the rafts go down. After that comes the second
freshet, occasioned by the melting of far-off snow and ice up in
the great northern lakes, which are little known. These rafts are
of immense construction, such as those which we have seen on the
Rhone and Rhine, and often contain timber to the value of two,
three, and four thousand pounds. At the rapids the large rafts
are, as it were, unyoked, and divided into small portions, which go
down separately. The excitement and motion of such transit must, I
should say, be very joyous.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 126 of 538
Words from 33413 to 33667
of 143277
