and carried from the woods where they grow
to the mills where they are made into boards.

In the far West, and in the wilds of Maine, are acres upon acres, and
miles upon miles, of evergreen forests. One wooded tract in Maine is so
vast that it takes an army of choppers twenty years to cut it over. By
the time it is done a new growth has sprung up, and an intermediate one
is large enough to cut; so the chopping goes on year after year. The
first or primeval growth is pine. That is most valuable. After the pines
are cut, spruce and hemlock spring up and grow.

Most of the men who live in the vicinity of the lake region work in the
woods in the winter. They camp in tents and log huts near the tracts
where they are felling trees. All day long, day after day, week after
week, they chop down such trees as are large enough to cut, lop off the
branches and haul the logs to the nearest water. This work is done in
winter because the logs are more easily managed over snow and ice. All
brooks large enough to carry them, all rivers, ponds and lakes, are
pressed into service and made to convey the ponderous freight towards
civilization. All along the shores and in the woods are busy scenes--men,
oxen and horses hard at work, the smoke from the logging camps curling
among the trees.

Every log has the initial or mark of the owner chopped deep into the wood
to identify it. Then, when the ice breaks up, the logs are sent down the
brooks to the rivers and through the rivers to the lakes. The logging
camps are disbanded, the loggers return to their homes, and the
river-drivers alone are left to begin their duties.

The river-drivers are the men who travel with the logs from the beginning
of their journey till they are surrendered to the saw-mills. Each wears
shoes the soles of which are thickly studded with iron brads an inch
long; and each carries a long pole called a "pick-pole," which has a
strong sharp-pointed iron spike in the end. This they drive into the
wood, and it supports and steadies them as they spring from log to log.

Their first duty is to collect "the drive." The logs which form "the
drive" are packed together and held in place by a chain of guard-logs
which stretches entirely around the drive, forming what is called "the
boom." The guard-logs are chained together at the ends about two feet
apart. The guard is always much larger than the boom of logs, so that the
shape of the boom may be changed for wide or narrow wa