'Why, then, to raft the trees together when we get 'em into the water,' was his reply; and in the same breath he jumped on to the trunk, and commenced to notch with his axe as fast as possible along the sides, about two feet apart. Another of his gang followed, splitting off the blocks between the deep notches into the line mark. And this operation, repeated for the four sides, squared the pine into such a beam as we see piled in our English timber yards.
What was Arthur's surprise to recognise, in the mass of lumberers gathered round a huge mast, the Milesian countenance of Murty Keefe, a discontented emigrant with whom he had picked up a casual acquaintance on the steamboat which took him to Montreal. He was dressing away the knots near the top with his axe, as though he had been used to the implement all his life. When, after infinite trouble and shouting in all tongues, the half-dozen span of strong patient oxen were set in motion, dragging the seventy-feet length of timber along the snow towards the lake, Arthur contrived to get near enough to his countryman for audible speech. Murty's exaggerated expectations had suffered a grievous eclipse; still, if he became an expert hewer, he might look forward to earning more than a curate's salary by his axe. And they were well fed: he had more meat in a week now than in a twelvemonth in Ireland. He was one of half-a-dozen Irishmen in this lumberers' party of French Canadians, headed by a Scotch foreman; for through Canada, where address and administrative ability are required, it is found that Scotchmen work themselves into the highest posts.
During the rude but abundant dinner which followed, this head of the gang gave Argent some further bits of information about the lumber trade.
'We don't go about at random, and fell trees where we like,' said he. 'We've got a double tax to pay: first, ground rent per acre per annum for a licence, and then a duty of a cent for every cubic foot of timber we bring to market. Then, lest we should take land and not work it, we are compelled to produce a certain quantity of wood from every acre of forest we rent, under pain of forfeiting our licence.'
'And will you not have it all cut down some day? Then what is the country to do for fuel and the world for ships?'
The foreman rubbed his rusty beard with a laugh.
'There's hundreds of years of lumbering in the Bytown district alone,' said he; 'why, sir, it alone comprehends sixty thousand square miles of forest.'