Fifty Years In The Northwest
of the surface from the Dalles to the head of the rapids, the portage
is an immensely difficult one. They are then taken to their place of
destination, the bateaux returning to the Falls for successive loads,
the whole transfer requiring considerable time. Sometimes, if late in
the season, part or whole of the fleet of bateaux may be caught in the
ice, in which case a bushed road must be made, and the supplies
transported by teams and men.
Arriving on the ground, the operators blaze trees on lines surrounding
the region which they wish to work during the winter. These claims are
generally respected by others. The first work to be done is making a
camp, building stables, clearing streams of obstructions, and making
roads. Incidentally the Indians, certain to be visitors at the camps,
are to be propitiated with presents of flour, pork and tobacco. These
pacified and out of the way, the lumberman may say with Alexander
Selkirk--
"I am monarch of all I survey;
My right there is none to dispute."
Trespassing is unknown. The lumberman is not conscious that he himself
is a trespasser on the domain of Uncle Sam. Nor is he. Has he not the
best title in the world? Who is there to dispute it? No government
agent ever troubles him, or questions his right to fell the royal
trees and dispose of them as he may choose. He is earning by his
strong right arm his title to the trees. He endures much, accomplishes
much and is the advance courier of civilization. He spends long months
away from the common haunts of men. He is cut off from the mails and
from home pleasure. He lives an industrious life. Cold is the day when
the stroke of his axe is not heard. The snow deepens around him, the
temperature sinks lower and lower, till it would not discredit
Labrador; still he toils on unceasingly, and at night builds high his
blazing fire, wraps himself up in his buffalo robe and blankets, and
sleeps through the night the sleep of the tired and the just.
Meanwhile his appetite is marvelous. The cooking (done by one of the
crew) maybe of the rudest, and the provisions none of the daintiest,
but exercise and the cold gives a relish to the food not often found
in the fashionable restaurants. The members of the crew have each
allotted duties. To one is intrusted the cooking department, to
another the position of teamster, to another that of sled tender;
some are choppers, some are swampers, some are sawyers. The records of
the camp are kept by the foreman or some person detailed for that
purpose.
The winter over, the teams are returned to the settlements. The log
driving crew succeeds the choppers and other workers. The logs, having
been hauled upon the ice of the driving streams, with the melting of
snow are afloat on the swollen streams, and the drivers commence their
work, following the logs in their downward course to the mills or
booms, dislodging them when they are driven upon shore, and breaking
jams when they occur. This work is difficult and attended by
considerable exposure, as the driver is often obliged to go into the
stream. It therefore commands higher wages than other work. The
drivers are without tents, but a wangan, or small flat boat,
containing bedding, provisions and a cooking kit, is floated down the
stream so as to be convenient at night. The wangan is managed by the
cook alone, and his work, when he ties up for the night, is to take
ashore the bedding, cooking material, etc., build a fire and provide a
meal for the hungry crew. His cooking utensils are of the rudest kind,
consisting of a tin reflector and a few iron pots and pans. The savory
repast is scarce finished before the arrival of the crew, cold, wet,
tired, and hungry. They are not particular about a table with its
furniture, but are satisfied to eat from a tin plate, sitting or lying
on the ground. Hunger satisfied, they spend their evenings by the
blazing fire, drying their clothing, jesting, story telling, or
recalling the events of the day, or scanning the open or clouded sky
for indications of weather changes. When the sky is clear they trace
the constellations, locate the principal stars and planets, or follow
the devious windings of the milky way. Some of them have studied
astronomy, and some have learned from others, and all are intent,
though without books or teachers, on learning the wisdom that Nature
teaches, and some are found who have learned to look "from Nature up
to Nature's God."
Occasionally some rougher specimen mars the order and pleasantness of
this wild-wood converse by an oath or coarse remark, heard, perhaps,
but unheeded by the more serious and thoughtful. Such men are found
everywhere, in the streets, saloons, and even in the wilderness, men
who pollute the air in which they move with profanity and obscenity.
These are not the men who succeed and build up great fortunes; these
are not the true conquerors of the wilderness. The sober, thoughtful
man is the man who succeeds. It is not necessary that he have the
learning acquired from books, or a smattering of science from the
schools. He may acquire great knowledge by close study of men, and
observation of the phenomena of nature, and so make himself a peer of
the book worm and scholar of the library and schools.
The acquaintances formed in these camp scenes and toils often result
in life long friendships, and the scenes of camp, river and forest
become cherished reminiscences to the actors, who are as fond of
recalling them as veteran soldiers are of recounting the hairbreadth
escapes and stirring incidents of campaign life.
The drive ends with the delivery of the logs at the booms and mills,
the men are paid off and devote themselves for the remainder of the
summer to other work.
LUMBERING ON THE ST. CROIX IN 1886.
The St. Croix lumberman, after the lapse of nearly fifty years, is
still a picturesque figure, clad, as he is, in coarse, strong woolen
garments, these of brilliant red, yellow, blue and green, or in some
cases as variegated as Joseph's coat of many colors. He is usually a
man of stalwart frame, which is set off to advantage by his close
fitting garments. His circumstances are, however, widely different
from his old time predecessor.
The rough, hard work of the wilderness, including the building of
dams, the construction of reservoirs and roads, and the improvement of
the streams, has been accomplished chiefly by his predecessors. He is
abundantly supplied with food, produced almost in the neighborhood of
the scenes of his winter's work. He travels by rail almost to his
destination or drives blooded teams over comparatively good roads,
where his predecessors tediously blazed the way and cleared it of
underbrush. His camp accommodations are far superior. He is housed in
comfortable cabins, warmed with large stoves and heaters, whereas the
cabin of the lumberman of 1845 had a fire built on the ground in the
centre of the room. The modern camp is well furnished with tables and
other conveniences. The cook has a separate room furnished with a
cooking stove and modern appliances for cooking. He has his assistant,
known as the "cookee" or second cook. The table is spread with a
variety of food, and delicacies that would have astounded the
lumberman of 1845. Each operator is limited to his own special work.
His bounds are set and he can go no further, except at the risk of the
loss of his labor.
The work goes on with clock-like precision and is comparatively easy.
Everything is done on a larger scale and more economically. The crews
are larger and the life is not near so solitary. The various crews
employed for the spring drive combine and thereby greatly increase
their efficiency. They are supplied with better and covered boats. The
cook in the drive has in addition to his "cookee" a wangan man to
assist in managing the boat. The drives are larger and yet more easily
handled, the conveniences are greater and the expenses less. The men
are more independent, and owing to the number employed, and the
nearness of settlements and villages, more sociable, and possibly more
hilarious and less thoughtful. We shall nevertheless find among them
men of character, thoughtful, industrious and earnest men, who would
have shone in the associations of the earlier camps and who will
doubtless in the future be ranked among the successful and capable
men, worthy successors of the veterans now leaving the stage of
action.
Conjecture as to the future of the lumbering industry, and
consequently as to the character of the men engaged in it, would be
idle. Who can tell what a day or another fifty years may bring forth?
The pine woods will not last always; already the camps are being
pushed further and further to the north and west, and whereever the
denuded pine lands are arable the farmer is making his home. The
lumbering industry is also passing into the hands of corporations, and
with their extensive means and the armies of men employed by them the
forests are disappearing more rapidly than ever. It is possible that
the present generation of lumbermen may be the last in the valley of
the St. Croix, and that before another fifty years have passed the
last of the number may have shouldered his axe or peavy and passed
"over the divide."
THE LOG JAMS OF THE ST. CROIX.
The St. Croix river in its passage through the Dalles is compressed
into a comparatively narrow channel, by which means the logs driven
down the stream are crowded closely together, so closely as to
sometimes become firmly wedged or jammed together. The jam generally
occurs at a point known as Angle Rock, a huge promontory of massive
trap rock extending into the middle of the channel from the Minnesota
side, and opposite to the St. Croix landing. The river makes a bend
around this rock nearly at a right angle with the channel above. At
this point jams are, under certain conditions, almost inevitable.
Sometimes they are of small dimensions and are easily broken.
Sometimes the logs gather in such quantity and become so tightly
wedged that it is a labor of weeks to break them.
The first jam worthy of note occurred in 1865, during the prevalence
of high water. It is, in fact, only during high water that jams can
occur, the current being at such time swift and strong, and the logs
apt to accumulate in greater number than in the regular drives, from
the fact that logs that have been stranded in former seasons or at low
water are floated off, and the river is thus filled with logs from
bank to bank. These are crowded into the narrow channel of the Dalles
faster than they can be discharged, and a jam results. An obstruction
once formed, the logs continuing to come in from above fill the
channel. The tide of logs arrested, crowd downward until they rest
upon the bottom of the river, and are heaped upward sometimes to a
height of twenty or thirty feet above the surface. The river thus
checked in its course rises, wedging the logs more closely and heaping
them higher.
In the jam of 1865 the river channel was filled nearly to the St.
Croix dam, a distance of a mile and a quarter above Angle Rock. This
being the first of the great jams excited unusual attention.
Excursionists came up daily in the boats to look upon it. It was
indeed a wonderful sight. The logs were heaped together in the wildest
confusion, and wedged in at all angles. Men and horses were employed
to break the jam, which at that time, owing to the inexperience of the
workers, was no light task. The _modus operandi_ of jam breaking is to
remove logs from the lower part of the jam till some log which serves
as a key to the jam is reached. This being removed the logs above
commence moving, and, if the haul be a long one, in a short time the
movement is extended to the head of the jam. Perhaps the logs are so