A competent hand in this profession generally calculates to do a good winter's hauling, and bring his team out in the spring in quite as good flesh as when they commenced in the early part of the season. But as in all other matters, so in this, there are exceptions to the general rule. Some teamsters spoil their cattle, and bring them out in the spring miserably poor, and nearly strained to death. Such a practice, however, can not be regarded as either merciful or economical. So far as true policy is concerned, it is much better to keep a team well. What may be gained by hard pushing during the former part of the season will be more than made up during the latter, when the teams are moderately urged and well kept, and then you have a good team still for future labor.
Having completed our winter residences, next in order comes the business of looking out and cutting the "main," and some of the principal "branch roads." These roads, like the veins in the human body, ramify the wilderness to all the principal "clumps" and "groves of pine" embraced in the permit.
We have here no "turnpikes" nor rail-ways, but what is often more interesting. No pencilings can excel the graceful curves found in a main road as it winds along through the forest, uniform in width of track, hard-beaten and glassy in its surface, polished by the sled and logs which are so frequently drawn over it. Each fall of snow, when well trodden, not unlike repeated coats of paint on a rough surface, serves to cover up the unevenness of the bottom, which in time becomes very smooth and even. And besides, no street in all our cities is so beautifully studded with trees, whose spreading branches affectionately interlace, forming graceful archways above. Along this road side, on the way to the landing, runs a serpentine pathway for the "knight of the goad," whose deviations are marked now outside this tree, then behind that "windfall," now again intercepting the main road, skipping along like a dog at one's side. To pass along this road in mid-winter, one would hardly suspect the deformities which the dissolving snows reveal in the spring—the stumps and knolls, skids and roots, with a full share of mud-sloughs, impassable to all except man, or animals untrammeled with the harness.
In the process of making these roads, the first thing in order is to look out the best location for them. This is done by an experienced hand, who "spots" the trees where he wishes the road to be "swamped." We usually begin at the landing, and cut back toward the principal part of the timber to be hauled.
In constructing this road, first all the underbrush is cut and thrown on one side; all trees standing in its range are cut close to the ground, and the trunks of prostrated trees cut off and thrown out, leaving a space from ten to twelve feet wide. The tops of the highest knolls are scraped off, and small poles, called skids, are laid across the road in the hollows between. Where a brook or slough occurs, a pole-bridge is thrown across it.
These preparatory arrangements are entered upon and prosecuted with a degree of interest and pleasure by lumbermen scarcely credible to those unacquainted with such a mode of life and with such business. Though not altogether unacquainted with other occupations and other sources of enjoyment, still, to such scenes my thoughts run back for the happier portions of life and experience.
I have attended to various kinds of labor, but never have I entered upon any half so pleasing as that usually performed in the "logging swamp." Although greatly jeoparding my reputation for taste, I will utter it. Positively, it is delightful. I have since had some years' experience in one of the professions, in the enjoyment of some of the refinements of life, yet, if it could be done consistently, I would now with eagerness exchange my house for the logging camp, my books for the ax, and the city full for those wilderness solitudes whose delightful valleys and swelling ridges give me Nature uncontaminated—I had almost said, uncursed, fresh from the hand of the Creator. To write of those things makes the bustling city seem dull and irksome. Fain would I hie away once more to those pleasant pastime labors.
Happily, all tastes are not alike. Yet there are few who, on entering a beautiful native forest, would not experience delight; the varieties of trees set out by the hand of Nature, their graceful forms and spreading branches interlocked with neighborly affection and recognition; the harmonious confusion of undergrowth; the beautiful mosses, the ever-varying surface—old age, manhood and youth, childhood and infancy—massive trunks and little sprouts; the towering Pine and creeping Winter-green, intermingled by the artless genii of these wild retreats, all combined, serve to explain the attachment of the Aborigines to their forest abodes, and give to savage life the power of enchantment.
CHAPTER IV.