Dear Sir: Yes sir, I remember those sections and a lot of bother they made me too. One winter when I was starting the White Pine business and snaking sections down to the Atlantic Ocean, a man from Florida came along and ordered a bunch of sections delivered down to his place. He wanted to see if he could grow the same kind of White Pine down there. I yarded out a nice bunch of sections and next summer when my drive was in and I wasn't busy I took a crew of Canada Boys and Mainites and poled them down the coast. When I come to collect they said this man was gone looking for a Fountain of Youth or some fool thing.
I don't know what luck he had with his White Pine ranch. I never seen them again. I had a lot of other things to tend to and clean forgot it till you sent me Mr. Sowell's letter. Maybe that man was a Spaniard I don't know.
Yours respectively,
P. Bunyan.
*****
From 1917 to 1920 Paul Bunyan was busy toting the supplies and building camps for a bunch of husky young fellow-Americans who had a contract on the other side of the Atlantic, showing a certain prominent European (who is now logging in Holland) how they log in the United States.
After his service overseas with the A. E. F., Paul couldn't get back to the States quick enough. Airplanes were too slow so Paul embarked in his Bark Canoe, the one he used on the Big Onion the year he drove logs upstream. When he threw the old paddle into high he sure rambled and the sea was covered with dead fish that broke their backs trying to watch him coming and going.
As he shoved off from France, Paul sent a wireless to New York but passed the Statue of Liberty three lengths ahead of the message. From New York to Westwood he traveled on skis. When the home folks asked him if the Allegheney Mountains and the Rockies had bothered him, Paul replied, "I didn't notice any mountains but the trail was a little bumpy in a couple of spots."
In the forests of the Red River Lumber Company Paul Bunyan can cut his lumber for many future years in the region where Nature found conditions exactly suited to the growth of pine of the finest texture and largest size.
Early in the closing decade of the nineteenth century the Red River people took a long look into the future. Foreseeing the exhaustion of their Minnesota white pine, which came a quarter of a century later, they set out to find the pine that would take its place. Their search covered several years and reached all the important stands in the western States. This was well in advance of the westward movement of the industry and Red River had the pioneer's opportunity for choice and rejection.
Sugar Pine, "cork pine's big brother," is botanically and physically true white pine, with all the family virtues. It is the largest of all pines.