In a Lumber Camp.
When the white men first came to the United States, almost all the land between the Atlantic Ocean and the Mississippi River was covered with forests. Most of these were cut down to make clearings for the settlers’ homes. Some of them, fortunately, were left. Among the largest forests still standing to-day are those near the Great Lakes, where the lumber-men work in much the same way as their Canadian brothers. When the snow is thick over the ground, they leave home with their teams of oxen and horses and go to the distant woods, where they build log-houses for themselves and stables for the animals. There they live during the cold months of the year. Sometimes they stop long enough in their work to go bear and deer hunting and so get fresh meat which makes a little change in their daily fare of bread, beans and salt-pork.
The logs are carried to the nearby streams on sledges which move easily over the ice and snow. When spring comes they are floated along the streams and lakes to the saw-mills where they are made into lumber.