driven into the first notch and
cuts another. Thus the axeman may often be seen at work standing eight
or ten feet above the ground. If the tree is so large that with his
long-handled axe the chopper is unable to reach to the farther side of
it, then a second chopper is set to work, each cutting halfway across.
And when the tree is about to fall, warned by the faint crackling of the
strained fibers, they jump to the ground, and stand back out of danger
from flying limbs, while the noble giant that had stood erect in
glorious strength and beauty century after century, bows low at last and
with gasp and groan and booming throb falls to earth.
Then with long saws the trees are cut into logs of the required length,
peeled, loaded upon wagons capable of carrying a weight of eight or ten
tons, hauled by a long string of oxen to the nearest available stream
or railroad, and floated or carried to the Sound. There the logs are
gathered into booms and towed by steamers to the mills, where workmen
with steel spikes in their boots leap lightly with easy poise from
one to another and by means of long pike poles push them apart and,
selecting such as are at the time required, push them to the foot of a
chute and drive dogs into the ends, when they are speedily hauled in by
the mill machinery alongside the saw carriage and placed and fixed
in position. Then with sounds of greedy hissing and growling they are
rushed back and forth like enormous shuttles, and in an incredibly short
time they are lumber and are aboard the ships lying at the mill wharves.
Many of the long, slender boles so abundant in these woods are saved
for spars, and so excellent is their quality that they are in demand
in almost every shipyard of the world. Thus these trees, felled and
stripped of their leaves and branches, are raised again, transplanted
and set firmly erect, given roots of iron and a new foliage of flapping
canvas, and sent to sea. On they speed in glad, free motion, cheerily
waving over the blue, heaving water, responsive to the same winds that
rocked them when they stood at home in the woods. After standing in one
place all their lives they now, like sight-seeing tourists, go round
the world, meeting many a relative from the old home forest, some like
themselves, wandering free, clad in broad canvas foliage, others planted
head downward in mud, holding wharf platforms aloft to receive the wares
of all nations.
The mills of Puget sound and tho
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