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While we were not tickling frogs, we were talking
lumber with the Umbagog damster. I had
already coasted Maine, piloted by Iglesias, and
knew the fisherman-life; now, under the same experienced
guidance, I was to study inland scenes,
and take lumbermen for my heroes.

Maine has two classes of warriors among its sons,—
fighters of forest and fighters of sea. Braves
must join one or the other army. The two are
close allies. Only by the aid of the woodmen can
the watermen build their engines of victory. The
seamen in return purvey the needful luxuries for
lumber-camps. Foresters float down timber that
seamen may build ships and go to the saccharine
islands of the South for molasses: for without
molasses no lumberman could be happy in the unsweetened
wilderness. Pork lubricates his joints;
molasses gives tenacity to his muscles.

Lumbering develops such men as Pindar saw
when he pictured Jason, his forest hero. Life is a
hearty and vigorous movement to them, not a
drooping slouch. Summer is their season of preparation;
winter, of the campaign; spring, of victory.
All over the north of the State, whatever is
not lake or river is forest. In summer, the Viewer,
like a military engineer, marks out the region, and

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the spots of future attack. He views the woods;
and wherever a monarch tree crowns the leafy level,
he finds his way, and blazes a path. Not all trees
are worthy of the axe. Miles of lesser timber remain
untouched. A Maine forest after a lumber-campaign
is like France after a coup d'état: the
bourgeoisie are prosperous as ever, but the great
men are all gone.

While the viewer views, his followers are on
commissariat and quartermaster's service. They
are bringing up their provisions and fortifying their
camp. They build their log-station, pile up barrels
of pork, beans, and molasses, like mortars and
Paixhans in an arsenal, and are ready for a winter
of stout toil and solid jollity.

Stout is the toil, and the life seemingly dreary,
to those who cower by ingle-nooks or stand over
registers. But there is stirring excitement in this
bloodless war, and around plenteous camp-fires
vigor of merriment and hearty comradry. Men
who wield axes and breathe hard have lungs.
Blood aerated by the air that sings through the
pine-woods tingles in every fibre. Tingling blood
makes life joyous. Joy can hardly look without a
smile or speak without a laugh. And merry is the
evergreen-wood in electric winter.

Snows fall level in the sheltered, still forest.
Road-making is practicable. The region is already
channelled with watery ways. An imperial pine,
with its myriads of feet of future lumber, is worth
another path cut through the bush to the frozen

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river-side. Down goes his Majesty Pinus I., three
half-centuries old, having reigned fifty years high
above all his race. A little fellow with a little
weapon has dethroned the quiet old king. Pinus I.
was very strong at bottom, but the little revolutionist
was stronger at top. Brains without much
trouble had their will of stolid matter. The tree
fallen, its branches are lopped, its purple trunk is
shortened into lengths. The teamster arrives with
oxen in full steam, and rimy with frozen breath
about their indignant nostrils. As he comes and
goes, he talks to his team for company; his conversation
is monotonous as the talk of lovers, but
it has a cheerful ring through the solitude. The
logs are chained and dragged creaking along over
the snow to the river-side. There the subdivisions
of Pinus the Great become a basis for a mighty
snow-mound. But the mild March winds blow
from seaward. Spring bourgeons. One day the
ice has gone. The river flows visible; and now
that its days of higher beauty and grace have come,
it climbs high up its banks to show that it is ready
for new usefulness. It would be dreary for the
great logs to see new verdure springing all around
them, while they lay idly rotting or sprouting with
uncouth funguses, not unsuspect of poison! But
they will not be wasted. Lumbermen, foes to idleness
and inutility, swarm again about their winter's
trophies. They imprint certain cabalistic tokens of
ownership on the logs, — crosses, xs, stars, crescents,
alphabetical letters, — marks respected all

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along the rivers and lakes down to the boom where
the sticks are garnered for market. The marked
logs are tumbled into the brimming stream, and so
ends their forest-life.

Now comes “the great spring drive.” Maine
waters in spring flow under an illimitable raft.
Every camp contributes its myriads of brown cylinders
to the millions that go bobbing down rivers
with jaw-breaking names. And when the river
broadens to a lake, where these impetuous voyagers
might be stranded or miss their way and linger,
they are herded into vast rafts, and towed down
by boats, or by steam-tugs, if the lake is large as
Moosehead. At the lake-foot the rafts break up
and the logs travel again dispersedly down stream,
or through the “thoro'fare” connecting the members
of a chain of lakes. The hero of this epoch
is the Head-Driver. The head-driver of a timber-drive
leads a disorderly army, that will not obey
the word of command. Every log acts as an individual,
according to certain imperious laws of matter,
and every log is therefore at loggerheads with
every other log. The marshal must be in the thick
of the fight, keeping his forces well in hand, hurrying
stragglers, thrusting off the stranded, leading
his phalanxes wisely round curves and angles, lest
they be jammed and fill the river with a solid mass.
As the great sticks come dashing along, turning
porpoise-like somersets or leaping up twice their
length in the air, he must be everywhere, livelier
than a monkey in a mimosa, a wonder of acrobatic

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agility in biggest boots. He made the proverb,
“As easy as falling off a log.”

Hardly less important is the Damster. To him
it falls to conserve the waters at a proper level.
At his dam, generally below a lake, the logs collect
and lie crowded. The river, with its obstacles
of rock and rapid, would anticipate wreck for
these timbers of future ships. Therefore, when
the spring drive is ready, and the head-driver is
armed with his jack-boots and his iron-pointed
sceptre, the damster opens his sluices and lets another
river flow through atop of the rock-shattered
river below. The logs of each proprietor, detected
by their marks, pay toll as they pass the gates
and rush bumptiously down the flood.

Far down, at some water-power nearest the reach
of tide, a boom checks the march of this formidable
body. The owners step forward and claim their
sticks. Dowse takes all marked with three crosses
and a dash. Sowse selects whatever bears two
crescents and a star. Rowse pokes about for his
stock, inscribed clip, dash, star, dash, clip. Nobody
has counterfeited these hieroglyphs. The
tale is complete. The logs go to the saw-mill.
Sawdust floats seaward. The lumbermen junket.
So ends the log-book.

“Maine,” said our host, the Damster of Umbagog,
“was made for lumbering-work. We never
could have got the trees out, without these lakes
and dams.”