bruptly to broad and placid lakes, or to sharp narrow valleys, in
which shallow streams pressed forward over beds of white stone and
rock. At this time the streams were narrowed down to a slim channel,
but the broad area of white shingle--frequently scored by many
subsidiary thin channels of water--gave an idea of what these streams
were like in flood.

There was a great deal of unfriendly black rock in the land pushing
itself boldly up in hills, or cropping out from the thin covering soil.
Here and there were the clearings of homesteaders, who lived sometimes
in pretty plank houses, sometimes in the low shacks of rough logs that
seemed to be put in the clearings--some of them not yet free of the
high tree stumps--in order to give the land its authentic local colour.

On the streams that flow between the walls of trees there were always
logs. Logs sometimes jamming the whole fairway with an indescribable
jumble, logs collected into river bays with a neatness that made the
surface of the water appear one great raft, and by these "log booms"
there was, usually, the piles of squared timber, and the collection of
rough wooden houses that formed the mill.

The mills have the air of being pit-head workings dealing with a
cleaner material than coal. About them are lengthy conveyors, built up
on high trestle timbers, that carry the logs from the water to the mill
and from the mill to the dumps, that one instantly compares to the
conveyors and winding gear of a coal mine. Beneath the conveyors are
great ragged mounds of short logs cut into sections for the paper pulp
trade, and jumbled heaps of shorter sections that are to serve as the
winter firing for whole districts; these have the contours of coal
dumps, while fed from chutes are hillocks of golden sawdust as big and
as conspicuous as the ash and slag mounds of the mining areas.

In the mill yards are stacks and stacks of house planks that the great
saws have sliced up with an uncanny ease and speed, stacks of square
shingles for roofs and miles of squared beams.

We passed not a few but a multitude of these "booms" and mills, and our
minds began to grasp the vastness of this natural and national
industry. And yet it is not in the main a whole-time industry. For a
large section of its workers it is a side line, an occupation for days
that would otherwise be idle. It is the winter work of farmers, who,
forced to cease their own labours owing to the deep snow and th