HOW LOGS GO TO MILL.
A MAINE WOOD-CHOPPER.
All boys and girls know that boards are made of sawed logs, and that logs are trunks of trees. Few, however, know with what hardship and difficulty the trees are felled, trimmed and carried from the woods where they grow to the mills where they are made into boards.
In the far West, and in the wilds of Maine, are acres upon acres, and miles upon miles, of evergreen forests. One wooded tract in Maine is so vast that it takes an army of choppers twenty years to cut it over. By the time it is done a new growth has sprung up, and an intermediate one is large enough to cut; so the chopping goes on year after year. The first or primeval growth is pine. That is most valuable. After the pines are cut, spruce and hemlock spring up and grow.
Most of the men who live in the vicinity of the lake region work in the woods in the winter. They camp in tents and log huts near the tracts where they are felling trees. All day long, day after day, week after week, they chop down such trees as are large enough to cut, lop off the branches and haul the logs to the nearest water. This work is done in winter because the logs are more easily managed over snow and ice. All brooks large enough to carry them, all rivers, ponds and lakes, are pressed into service and made to convey the ponderous freight towards civilization. All along the shores and in the woods are busy scenes—men, oxen and horses hard at work, the smoke from the logging camps curling among the trees.
Every log has the initial or mark of the owner chopped deep into the wood to identify it. Then, when the ice breaks up, the logs are sent down the brooks to the rivers and through the rivers to the lakes. The logging camps are disbanded, the loggers return to their homes, and the river-drivers alone are left to begin their duties.