In the olden times log-rolling was always a great frolic and brought the people from far and near to lend a helping hand in building the new house. In handling logs, lumbermen have tools made for that purpose—cant-hooks, peevy irons, lannigans, and numerous other implements with names as peculiar as their looks—but the old backwoodsmen and pioneers who lived in log houses owned no tools but their tomahawks, their axes, and their rifles, and the logs of most of their houses were rolled in place by the men themselves pushing them up the skids laid against the cabin wall for that purpose; later, when the peddlers and traders brought ropes to the settlements, they used these to pull their logs in place. In building my log house in Pennsylvania we used two methods; one was hand power ([Fig. 181]). Taking two ropes we fastened the ends securely inside the cabin. We then passed the free ends of the ropes around the log, first under it and then over the top of it, then up to a group of men who, by pulling on the free ends, rolled the log ([Fig. 181]) up to the top of the cabin. But when Lafe Jeems and Nate Tanner and Jimmy Rosencranz were supplied with some oxen they fastened a chain to each end of the log ([Fig. 182]), then fastened a pulley-block to the other side of the cabin, that is, the side opposite the skids, and ran the line through the pulley-block to the oxen as it is run to the three men in [Fig. 182.] When the oxen were started the log slid up the skids to the loose rafters N, O, P and when once up there it was easily shoved and fitted into place.
Log Steps
Sometimes one wants front steps to one's log house and these may be made of flattened logs or puncheons, as shown by [Fig. 183.]
XXIX
THE ADIRONDACK OPEN LOG CAMP AND A ONE-ROOM CABIN
Adirondack Log Camp
Not satisfied with the open brush Adirondack camp, the men in those woods often build such camps of logs with a puncheon floor and a roof of real shingles. The sketch ([Fig. 184]) is made from such a camp. At the rear the logs are notched and placed like those of a log house (Figs. [162], [163], [164], [166]), but the front ends of the side logs are toe-nailed ([Fig. 173]) to the two upright supports. In this particular camp the logs are also flattened on the inside in order to give a smoother finish, as they often are in old Virginia and Kentucky log houses. In Virginia they formerly hewed the logs flat with broad axes after the walls were up, but that required a workman of a different type than the ordinary woodsman. The broadaxe is seldom used now and may be omitted from our kit.