Northern California, Oregon, and the Sandwich Islands

by Charles Nordhoff

To chop down a redwood-tree, the chopper does not stand on the ground, but upon a stage sometimes twelve feet above the ground. Like the sequoia, the redwood has a great bulk near the ground, but contracts somewhat a few feet above. The chopper wants only the fair round of the tree, and his stage is composed of two stout staves, shod with a pointed iron at one end, which is driven into the tree. The outer ends are securely supported; and on these staves he lays two narrow, tough boards, on which he stands, and which spring at every blow of his axe. It will give you an idea of the bulk of these trees, when I tell you that in chopping down the larger ones two men stand on the stage and chop simultaneously at the same cut, facing each other.

They first cut off the bark, which is from four to ten, and often fifteen inches thick. This done, they begin what is called the "undercut"—the cut on that, side toward which the tree is meant to fall; and when they have made a little progress, they, by an ingenious and simple contrivance, fix upon the proper direction of the cut, so as to make the tree fall accurately where they want it. This is necessary, on account of the great length and weight of the trees, and the roughness of the ground, by reason of which a tree carelessly felled may in its fall break and split into pieces, so as to make it entirely worthless. This happens not unfrequently, in spite of every care.

So skillful are they in giving to the tree its proper direction that they are able to set a post or stake in the ground a hundred feet or more from the root of the tree, and drive it down by felling the tree on top of it.

"Can you really drive a stake with a tree?" I asked, and was answered, "Of course, we do it every day."

The "under-cut" goes in about two-thirds the diameter. When it is finished the stage is shifted to the opposite side, and then it is a remarkable sight to see the tall, straight mass begin to tremble as the axe goes in. It usually gives a heavy crack about fifteen minutes before it means to fall. The chopper thereupon gives a warning shout, so that all may stand clear—not of the tree, for he knows very well where that will go, and in a cleared space men will stand within ten feet of where the top of a tree is to strike, and watch its fall; his warning is against the branches of other trees, which are sometimes torn off and flung to a distance by the falling giant, and which occasionally dash out men's brains.

At last the tree visibly totters, and slowly goes over; and as it goes the chopper gets off his stage and runs a few feet to one side. Then you hear and see one of the grandest and most majestic incidents of forest life. There is a sharp crack, a crash, and then a long, prolonged, thunderous crash, which, when you hear it from a little distance, is startlingly like an actual and severe thunder-peal. To see a tree six feet in diameter, and one hundred and seventy-five feet high, thus go down, is a very great sight, not soon forgotten.

The choppers expressed themselves as disappointed that they could not just then show me the fall of a tree ten or twelve feet in diameter, and over two hundred feet high. In one logging camp I visited there remained a stump fourteen feet high. At this height the tree was fourteen feet in diameter, perfectly round and sound, and it had been sawn into seventeen logs, each twelve feet long. The upper length was six feet in diameter. Probably the tree was three hundred feet long, for the top for a long distance is wasted.

So many of the trees and so many parts of trees are splintered or broken in the fall, that the master of a logging camp told me he thought they wasted at least as much as they saved; and as the mills also waste a good deal, it is probable that for every foot of this lumber that goes to market two feet are lost. A five-foot tree occupies a chopper from two and a half to three and a half hours, and to cut down a tree eight feet in diameter is counted a day's work for a man.

When the tree is down the sawyers come. Each has a long saw; he removes the bark at each cut with an axe, and then saws the tree into lengths. It is odd enough to go past a tree and see a saw moving back and forward across its diameter without seeing the man who moves it, for the tree hides him completely from you, if you are on the side opposite him. Then come the barkers, with long iron bars to rip off the thick bark; then the jack-screw men, three or four of whom move a log about easily and rapidly which a hundred men could hardly budge. They head it in the proper direction for the teamsters and chain-men, and these then drag it down to the water over roads which are watered to make the logs slide easily; and then, either at high tide or during the winter freshets, the logs are run down to the mill.

The Maine men make the best wood-choppers, but the logging camp is a favorite place also for sailors; and I was told that Germans are liked as workmen about timber. The choppers grind their axes once a week—usually, I was told, on Sunday—and all hands in a logging camp work twelve hours a day.