There is little chance for personal cleanliness in the camps. No facilities are there for bathing unless one is willing to do so in the presence of the whole camp; the clothing is often worn much longer than is conducive to health, and many of the things we consider so essential are missing, yet few of the men are affected with sickness. Unsanitary are the surroundings, but the hours in the pure air and the hard, active lives of the workers seem to counteract the disease-breeding conditions. Most of the cases that go to the hospitals are due to accidents rather than to disease. Accidents are all too common in the camps. Felling the large trees is never without hazard and the loading of the logs is more dangerous still. The heavy hauling adds an element of uncertainty, particularly where there are grades to be run on the way to the landing. It requires skill to let a load down the grade. This is done by means of sand or hay being placed in the ruts so that the runners of the sled are retarded in the descent, but if the load be checked suddenly it will cause the logs to shift, endangering the life of man and beast.
From what has been written in the foregoing chapters we do not desire to convey the impression that all the campmen are depraved and sunken in vice. There are all kinds and conditions of men among them. Many of them have been well educated, have come from homes of refinement and ease, but through adversity have gone to lower plains of life. Others have followed the woods from youth and feel that they are not fitted for any other class of labor, yet amidst surroundings that tempt to viciousness they have kept their moral virtues with scrupulous care.
The campmen are a neglected class of men. No one has in past years tried to touch them with the elevating power of good. They are what they are because their labors have isolated them from civilization and its agencies for good, while the vices of the provinces have followed them because there were dollars to be gained. The railway men of a few years ago were almost in the same condition as the lumberjacks of today. The saving power to the railroader was the restraint that their homes cast about them, and through their homes the gospel and other adjuncts of civilization were possible, but these are men who are separated from their homes or unblessed with home ties. When Christian indifference was supplanted with Christian activity a change was soon noted among the workers on the railroad and they became a respectable class of men, of whom the nation is justly proud. Y. M. C. A.s were established for their benefit, missions were opened where they congregated, the church held out its hand in welcome, and under the stimulus of gospel encouragement they arose. But what has been done for the lumberjack? Almost nothing. In the camps he works through the dreary, cruel winter, and when he returns to civilization in the spring only the hand of the depraved is extended in welcome.
INTERIOR OF BUNK-HOUSE
[CHAPTER V.]
A VIEW OF THE CAMP SERVICES.
"The woods were God's first temples." I cannot pass through the pineries, beholding the long fingers of cooling green pointing to the eternal blue, without feeling an exaltation of spirit, a desire to praise the Creator. The shrub and towering tree, the aisles of the woods and the sweet soothing comfort of the silence all conduce to prayer and adoration. No temple is more suggestive of worship than that whose dome is of sheltering leaves and whose columns are living, graceful trees. But the camps are the destroyers of the primitive temples, and their denizens are not suggestive of devoutness; yet in the rude hewn shacks of the lumberjacks nature is heard speaking and her voice is persuasively calling to worship. In the gray of dawn her call is clear and sweet, and as the loggers tighten their heavy belts and view the new-born day she whispers, "Praise." In the busy noon day, amidst the bruised and broken tops, the playing winds repeat the echo of the morning, "Praise." Then when the hush of evening falls o'er the dying day and the purple of the west shows through the crown of richest green, the evening shadows take up the chorus, "Praise him for his goodness, for his love to the children of men."
On visiting a camp for the first time Frank Higgins is apt to inquire, "Ever had any preachers up this way?"