Foundation of Log Cabin.

First we staked out the plan of the house.  It was to be 12 feet long by 10 feet wide, so we leveled off a space of this area, and at the corners, where the greatest weight of the building would come, large rocks were embedded in the ground.

A Logging Expedition.

The logs for the house were cut from a tract of wooded land about five miles up the river, belonging to Mr. Schreiner.  To be sure we could have cut the timber from our own island, but when Reddy had said something to his father about our building a log cabin, Mr. Schreiner had warned us not to cut down any of the trees without the owner’s permission.  All we could learn about the owner was that his name was Smith, and that he lived somewhere in New York city.  It seemed unlikely that he would ever have anything to say about our cutting down a few trees, but rather than run any risk Mr. Schreiner advised us to make use of his woods for any timber we might need.  Accordingly we started out early one morning on a logging expedition.  We had no apparatus for handling any logs more than 6 or 8 inches in diameter, and Bill reckoned it out that we would have to have about fifty logs of this size for the sides of the building alone.  This did not mean that fifty trees had to be chopped down, because we could usually cut two logs from a single tree.  As the logs would have to overlap about a foot at each corner, we had to cut the longer ones to a length of 14 feet and the others to a length of 12 feet.  Aside from these we had to have several 16 foot logs for the roof.  Only the straightest logs were chosen, and while Bill and Reddy wielded the axes the rest of us hacked off the small branches with hatchets and hauled the sticks down the river.  Here we tied them together to make a raft.

The Log Raft.

[Illustration:  Fig. 264.  Tying the Logs Together.]

[Illustration:  Getting Dinner.]

[Illustration:  The Photo after which Our Log Cabin was Modeled.]

This was done by running a pair of ropes alternately over and under the logs at each end (see Fig. 264).  About fifteen were thus fastened together, and then as an extra precaution a log was laid across each end of the raft and tied fast.  As soon as we had cut enough timber for our first raft, we all ceased work, to take a ride down the river on the logs.  Two of us, armed with poles, were to do the steering.  There was one spot in the river of which we were rather apprehensive.  That was a bit of shallow, swift water three miles from camp.  A line of rocks jutted up from the river, forming a natural dam which was broken only at the eastern end.  The water swirled madly through this opening, and veering off a huge rock which lay directly in front of the gap turned sharply westward.  As we neared this dam the river became deeper and deeper, until finally we could no longer reach bottom with the poles, and could not properly steer the boat.  For some time we drifted helplessly round and round in the still water above the dam.  Then suddenly the current caught us and we swept like a shot for the opening.  The gap was quite wide, and had we only thought to provide ourselves with oars we could have steered the raft clear of the rocks below, but we were entirely at the mercy of the current, and with a terrific crash we were hurled head on against the boulder.