AMONG THE WOODCUTTERS, INTERESTING PHASES OF LIFE IN THE LOGGING CAMPS.
At the midwinter season the pineries, stave-timbers and cypress swamps of the country are full of choppers; and there they remain until the blue-bird and the bud chase them from the woods. The logging “crews” of the great Northwest are picked up in the lake cities and adjacent lumber towns during September and October and shipped in squads to the woods, frequently hundreds of miles away. These crews are made up of “swampers,” “teamsters,” “sawyers” and choppers. The “swamper” is a general utility man, helping the other loggers in divers [sic] ways, but more often in “swamping” or cutting out logging roads. The teamsters do their work usually with oxen, as they are by far the best animals for the woods. They haul with either “bobs” or “go-devils.” Where it is practicable to use “bobs,” from five to eight logs are piled up for a load and taken to the “bank.“ The “go-devil,“ which is a sled made from the crotch of a tree and resembling the “wish-bone” of a goose, is used in “swamping” or “gulching,” where it would be difficult to handle “bobs.” The “sawyers,” either singly or in pairs, follow after the choppers and cut the felled trees into saw-logs. The chopper generally works by himself, and is paid, sometimes by “stumpage” (number of trees cut), sometimes “by the foot” (amount of timber he fells), but generally at specified wages by the month. A good axman can always command from $30 to $50 per month, and is “found.” The others make from $15 to $25 per month. The men working in the pines are gathered from nearly all civilized countries, with the exception of the Latin races. Excepting the French-Canadians the Latins have an insurmountable aversion to the ax.
“Shanty” life in the woods is as original as can well be imagined. The “shanties” are put up entirely by the ax, of unhewn logs, covered with guttered troughs made from stems of smaller trees. A short distance away stand the stables, similarly constructed. The logger's shanty is long and narrow, with a few square holes cut through the logs for windows and fitted with panes of glass. In the front, on either side, are ranged the “bunks,” two tiers high. Next comes the eating-room with its two tables, and then the kitchen. Sometimes, having relatives in the camp, women do the cooking; but generally the camp is without the gentler sex, men performing all kinds of work.
The shanties are warm and comfortable, for it is rarely very cold in the woods, however far north. The trees break the wind and their evergreen heads seem to form a roof to keep the natural heat of the earth from escaping. The men rarely work with coats on, Indeed, the ax will not permit of a coat. The feet are the members of the body requiring the greatest attention. Though boots are worn, the preference is for that peculiar article (found and used exclusively in the timbers), the “bootpack.” It is similar to an Esquimatix boot and is made of untanned skin, sewed together with sinews or hide, and very large.
They are loosely filled with hay, and the foot, covered with from one to three pairs of woolen stockings, thrust into them. When evening comes the stockings will be wet with sweat and are hung up by their owners along the roof of the shanty to dry. The “grub” is always good and substantial, for men would “jump” a camp where it was otherwise. There is plenty of “pickled” meat, beans and potatoes, generally enough fresh beef and pork, and often venison and bear. Excellent bread and butter, with coffee and tea ad libitum [latin, "at one's pleasure"], always garnish the board. Dried apples and peaches, with “plum duff,” [type of pudding] form the luxuries. The “crew” of a shanty will number from twenty to sixty. The mail and the outside world rarely intrude upon them front the opening of the season in November to its close in April. It is easy to comprehend, then, that when the “logger” gets back to civilization in the spring with his unspent season’s wages in his pocket, he is a hurricane, and “makes fur fly.” Life in camp is made up of cheerful monotony. A song, a story and loafing hours smothered in tobacco smoke, comprise it. The chopper passes his time in “tinkering” with his ax, or contemplating its virtues. When not hurling its head against the pines, he is generally engaged in grinding [ax sharpening], whetting, rehanging, scraping or polishing it. There is as much diversity of opinion among them as to what should constitute a good ax, and how it should be hung, as there is among society belles relative to hairdressing. One wants his ax heavy and broad-bitted, another, light, long and narrow; some prefer thick bits, some thin; others require a soft, easily whetted blade, and others a hard, lasting one. In helves, from the extreme crook to the perfectly straight, the whims are as various as the owners. A good chopper always likes to make his own handle, and the ax that one swings in graceful dexterity another throws away as useless.
White pine, in fact, all pines used for lumber, are cut from the ground, leaving usually a stump of about three feet. Other American evergreen timber trees, the cypress and red wood, are generally cut at a distance up the trunk high enough to overcome the bulbous nature of the base. In regard to the temperature in the timbers it is a curious fact that, while a chopper would hardly ever think of building a fire near his work to keep him warm, he frequently builds one to keep his ax warm. A cold, frost-filled ax-head has a positive dislike for entering wood that can only be overcome by coaxing and keeping the frost out of it. The dexterity and precision with which a first-class chopper handles his ax are remarkable. Trees three feet in diameter are often cut entirely through and still retain their perpendicular position until a breeze or some slight shock topples them over. The two gaps on either side meet in a straight line. To the novice there are many strange things within the province of an ax. In clearing a piece of farm land it is frequently a stipulation that the chopper shall “bucket” his stumps to hold a pail of water; in other words, leave a concave bowl on their tops to catch rainwater and rot them. In the pineries the ax is used for nearly every purpose for which a cutting tool is required. With it the chopper trims his “boot-packs,” cuts lacing thongs, “buckets” horse and cattle feed-boxes, pins up his sheds, shanties and out-houses, constructs his bobs and “go-devils,” and even whittles his toothpicks. He gutters chips for drinking cups, fixes tobacco for his pipe, throws flying bridges over winter streams, whittles out the checkers for his evening’s amusement, and carves the checker-board. In a word, it is a part and parcel of himself, and its song is the music of life to his ear.
After leaving the pineries the ax has a long ramble to a new life upon the Pacific slope. In California, on the coast range, it enters the famous redwoods. These noble trees, the Goliaths of the forests, are fast disappearing. But their gigantic stumps still remain to tell of their departed greatness. And enormous stumps they truly are. So much so indeed that the ax has to climb in the world to overcome them, and the chopper assumes a position which he is not compelled to attempt anywhere else. To surmount the enormous swell at the base of the tree and commence operations where the average diameter of the trunk may be said to begin, he builds a platform made of stakes with cross-pieces of rails, sometimes six or ten feet high, around his victim, and chops from that, cutting above the bulbous swell. Or, if an expert, he will simply “bucket” a hole in the trunk, and driving a stout stake into it, stand perched upon that slender foothold as he dexterously swings his blade. The size of the redwood giants is world-famous, and it is a legend of the coast that a woodsman having chopped for a week on side of a tree, walked around it and found another chopper who had been at work for a month on the other side.
But it is not until the cypress swamps of the southland are reached that the ax takes the water. In those dark-shadowed and moss-draped lagoons the chopper becomes amphibious, and performs his work while skillfully balanced in one of the most treacherous of all aquatic contrivances, a dug-out. Of the ax in the oak-lands of the Southwest, where it labors for France and Spain, sending them annually thousands of dollars’ worth of staves, and also of its desultory existence in cordwood chopping, “grubbing,” charcoal-stacking, hoop-pole-cutting and kindred industries little need be said, save that it does its share of the work honestly, and has a settled policy that no man shall hold intercourse with it with his coat on. This deference it exacts from all with whom it enters into business relations, whether among the ice-locked lakes and rivers of the white pine, the laurel-scented canons of the Coast Range or the magnolia-haunted lagoons of the mournful, moss-draped cypress. There is no healthier, cleaner and more enjoyable exercise in the world than swinging an ax.
