“’A body of wood-cutters unite to form what is called a “lumbering-party,” and they are in the employ of a master-lumberman, who pays them wages and finds them in provisions.  The provisions are obtained on credit and under promise of payment when the timber has been cut down and sold.  If the timber meets with any accident in its passage down the river, the master-lumberman cannot make good the loss, and the shopkeeper loses his money.

“’When the lumbering-party are ready to start, they take with them a supply of necessaries, and also what tools they will require, and proceed up the river to the heart of the forest.  When they reach a suitable spot where the giant trees which are to serve for masts grow thick and dark, they get all their supplies on shore—­their axes, their cooking-utensils and the casks of molasses’—­and too often of whisky or rum, too, I am sorry to say—­’that will be used lavishly.  The molasses is used instead of sugar to sweeten the great draughts of tea—­made, not from the product of China, but from the tops of the hemlock.

“’The first thing to 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.