[SPANISH CEDAR LOGS.]
In the early days of cigar box manufacture in California, they were made almost exclusively of Spanish cedar. But that wood has become very scarce and high priced of late years, and other woods are taking its place to a certain extent.
And one of those woods is California redwood. In California at present the cigar box makers use about one-fourth redwood; the balance is composed of Spanish cedar and what is known to the trade as "imitation" lumber, which is nothing more than the common poplar and basswood of New England, sawed up, planed, and then stained in imitation of Spanish cedar, or veneered with Spanish cedar, because Spanish cedar is par excellence the real stuff for cigar boxes.
The gilt edge cigars all have to be packed in Spanish cedar, else there is a kick from the opulent and fastidious smoker, who claims that the natural aroma of the wood imparts an improved flavor to the cigars.
This may be a superstition, but as the well-to-do lovers of the weed are perfectly willing to pay for it the trade are only too anxious to flatter their customers' tastes.
It is a luxury and one that is growing more and more expensive; for in the early days of cigar box making Spanish cedar could be bought at $55 a thousand feet; now it costs $95 a thousand feet.
Now some one asks where and how is Spanish cedar obtained? Right here on the Pacific coast; but not in California, however, replete as her resources are. You have to go away south along the Mexican and Central American coasts for this special kind of lumber. And California has driven a trade in Spanish cedar ever since cigar box making had its inception on the Pacific coast; in fact, there is hardly a product of any part of the known world that does not come to the port by the Golden Gate.
The ever restless coasting schooners are the craft that bring our Spanish cedar logs up out of the tropics, and it is a peculiar trade—not only the maritime part of the traffic, but that part which is performed on land; for that part is done along the primitive ways of the easy going Mexican and Central American.
It is to be presumed that away back in the early days of maritime traffic on the lower coast there were supplies of Spanish cedar logs that could be obtained at the regular ports of entry; but evidently such a supply, if it ever existed, finally became exhausted, and as nobody down in those regions had the enterprise to build railroads from their seaports into the lumber regions of the interior, the stock of cedar had to be picked up all along the coast, wherever the wood could be found. That made the transfer of the logs from the shore to the vessel's side a very laborious undertaking and one no white man would ever have thought of resorting to.
But first in order comes the cutting of the cedar timber and the transportation of the logs to the shore. This, too, was done by the simple-minded Mexicans and Central Americans. Of course, at first these people cut the timber nearest the seashore, and then kept working back into the country, a process that involved more and more labor, because the distance of transportation was all the time increasing.