Connecticut western news., 1872-03-29
numbering in New Brunswick.

In Q forest land like this, it is unnec- essary to say that numbering is carried on largely in the Winter. Although the trade has depreciated much in the last few years, the people cannot give it up :: the farmers have no other employment ia Winter. So few words about the lumberer and his doings. He is so nat urally associated with the woods, that any attempted description of wood life would be incomplete without him. l have traversed most of the woods and rivers of New Brunswick, and have nev- CT yet found place, however remote, without traces of his industry. Like the tree chopping animal of the countrywide beaver-he leaves his mark behind him. With the first fall of snow he hies into the woods, and remains there till the Spring then he takes his logs down the rivers, and for brief period the towns woods. They go in gangs of from SIX or eight men up to twenty. They build camps for themselves and their horses, and make their own roads. Each camp has main or "portage road" in which provisions are portrayed sometimes from as great 8 distance as twenty or thirty miles, and this gives full employment to one team when the gang is large. They breakfast in the woods before daybreak, dine about ten or eleven, have bite at two or three o'clock, supper at six, and "lunch before they turn in-not bad living. And at any hour of the day or night that stranger happens to visit them, on go the kettle and frying pan, and he is treated to the best they can give him; for their hospitality is un- bounded, sometimes embarrassing. Once or twice, travelling in the lumber woods, have had occasion to call in at eight or ten camps in the course of the day, and at every one of them have been actually compelled to partake of dinner, luncheon, or bite. In a camp of twenty men the division of la- bor is as follows: The boss the cook who has no sinecure the teamster and the teamster's assistant-the latter func- tionary is sometimes called "the teams ter's devil," and their joint work is to tend their team, and haul logs from the stump to the river bank five broad ak men, who square the logs the head swamper-i. c. road maker-and five o1 six assistants and four or five fellers oi trees. Their wages vary from $25 to $15 a month, with food :; the cook, team. ster, and broad axmen receiving the highest rates. Their wages when looked into, are not so high as they might ap pear on paper, for it frequently happens that they only receive certain portion in cash, the balance being made up 1T goods, cloth &c., at high prices, from the stores of their employers. The horses are hard-worked, having often te haul the logs @ distance of four or fivt miles; they are fed mainly on oats, hay being expensive to portage, and they de not last very long in the lumber woods The woods numbered are the pine ant the spruce; the former is in the greates request, and the best of it has beer picked out. Flour, pork, tea and molas ses form the staple of the lumberman' diet.
 The lpmberman's Sunday dish is . Bang-Billy," by no means an unpala table morsel let me observe, but th' havoc it must make with the digestive organs of ordinary people is terrible tc contemplate. Its sole ingredients ar' flour, fat pork, and molasses. As fol tea, no one in the woods ever thinks h. has "square mear' without it; anc when real tea is not to be got, spruce raspberry bushes, Labrador plant, te. plant, anything in fact, is used as sub stitute but hot, brownish -colored wate, is sine qua son.-Once q Week.