be done is to build some kind of shelter, for they
must remain in the forest until spring, and the cold of those Northern
winters is terrible. Their cabin--for it cannot be called by any better
name--is built of logs of wood cut down on purpose and put together as
rudely as possible. It is only five feet high, and the roof is covered
with boards. There is a great blazing fire kept up day and night, for
the frost is intense, and the provisions have to be kept in a deep place
made in the ground under the cabin. The smoke of the fire goes out
through a hole in the roof, and the floor is strewn with branches of
fir, the only couch the poor hardworking lumberers have to rest upon.
When night comes, they turn into the cabin to sleep, and lie with their
feet to the fire. If a man chances to awaken, he instantly jumps up and
throws fresh logs on the fire; for it is of the utmost importance not to
let it go out. One of the men is the cook for the whole party, and his
duty is to have breakfast ready before it is light in the morning. He
prepares a meal of boiled meat and the hemlock tea sweetened with
molasses, and the rest of the party partake heartily of both, and in
some camps also of rum, under the mistaken notion that it helps them to
bear the severe toil. When breakfast is over, they divide into several
gangs. One gang cuts down the trees, another saws them in pieces, and
the third gang is occupied in conveying them, by means of oxen, to the
bank of the nearest stream, which is now frozen over.

"'It is a hard winter for the lumbermen. The snow covers the ground
until the middle of May, and the frost is often intense. But they toil
through it, felling, sawing and conveying until a quantity of trees have
been laid prostrate and made available for the market. Then, at last,
the weather changes; the snow begins to melt and the streams and rills
are set at liberty. The rivers flow briskly on and are much swollen with
the melting snow, and the men say that the freshets have come down.

"'Hard as their toil has been, the most difficult and fatiguing has yet
to be encountered. The timber is collected on the banks of the river,
and has now to be thrown into the water and made into rafts, so that it
can be floated down to the nearest market-town. The water, filled with
melting snow, is deadly cold and can scarcely be endured, but the men
are in it from morning till night constructing the rafts, which are put
together as simply as po