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product, and is worth a much higher price than the more or less knotty lumber known as “merchantable.”
The business of lumbering which has been carried on for many years on a very large scale is, on the Pacific coast, as in most parts of North America, conducted in a way which, though perhaps necessary in order to meet the severe competition for price which everywhere prevails, would shock the feelings of any European forester, on account of its wastefulness and the absolute disregard which is paid to the future of the forest; which is in most cases abandoned to fire, as soon as the soundest, cleanest, and most accessible trees have been extracted.
A tract of land having been first surveyed, and its probable contents roughly estimated by the “cruiser,” on whose judgment in selecting the best field of operations much of the success of the business depends, is purchased or leased from the owner on the basis of so much per thousand feet board measure. This estimate runs in most cases from 20,000 to 70,000 feet per acre, and as far as I could judge is rarely more than half, and often much less than half, of the actual contents, which in favourable situations amounts to as much as 300,000 to 500,000 feet per acre.
Unless the timber to be felled is near the sea,—in which case it is on Puget Sound often slid direct into the salt water, made up into rafts, and towed by steamers to the sawmill,—the next operation is to build a railroad up the valley to bring the logs from the forest to the sawmill. Sometimes the mill is in the forest itself, anda wooden flume of many miles in length is built, by which the sawn boards can be floated down to the nearest railway station. Sometimes the logs themselves are floated to the mill, where a large enough river exists ; or a combination of railway, river, and flume may have to be adopted as the distance from the mill or station increases. The cost of extracting the logs from the forest and bringing them to their shipping point, governs the value of the growing timber, which is rapidly becoming less and less accessible as the best areas are cut over.
When the means of transport are completed, a “skid road” or a temporary tramway is built right up to where the trees grow, and powerful movable donkey engines are used, which are able, with a steel-wire rope, to drag logs of 40 to 50 feet long to a distance of 1000 yards or more from where they fall. Felling then commences and is managed as follows:—The most experienced man in the gang, having marked the trees to be felled, cuts a deep notch into one side at 4 to 6 feet from the ground, after carefully considering which way the tree should fall, so as to run least risk of lodging, or of breaking in falling. Both the undercutting and the sawing which follows, are done on spring boards fixed into a notch cut into the butt at 3 to 4 feet from the ground. When the two fellers, who sometimes make the notch themselves, have got within 5 to 6 inches of it, they insert large iron wedges in the sawcut, carefully watching the top of the tree to see where the wedges should be driven, so as to fell the tree with least danger to themselves and the log. After a few blows on the wedges the tree begins to lean and the men jump clear, calling out to warn others who may be near. There is some risk of large branches being torn off the falling tree or adjacent trees, and many accidents occur.