Watertown republican. [volume] (Watertown, Wis.) 1860-1906, 1886-09-08
WISCONSIN RAFTSMEN.
How Rats Are Built and Rebuilt in che
Great Northern Pin ries.


Great Northern Pin ries.
If you look at a forestry map of Wis
consin you will see that st.ip of the
peculiar shade of yellow which indi-
Gates territory stripped of its market
able trees lies along either side of all
the rivers. The raftsman's greatest
day is gone, then-the day, at least,
when he was the most important per-
son, as he yet thinks he is, whom the
log encounters from the woodm an to
the carpenter. Rafting, like every
thing else, has been changed. some
what by the railroad, and many Of tho
river drivers" adventures with his
logs in shooting rapids and going down
swift and narrow streams are denied
to his successor. Great mills have been
built in the Wisconsin forests. and
fewer logs every year are transported
a great distance. Yet in the last CEN
sus year $12,000,000 worth Of round
timber was sent by RATS down the
rivers Of Wisconsin to mills in Iowa,
Illinois and Missouri. Ten billion feet
1880 in the valley of the Wisconsin
river, to say nothing of the valleys of
the other rivers, or of other species of
marketable woods; anil the State is,
next to Michigan and Pennsylvania,
yet the greatest lumber producing
State in the Union.
Rafting is by no means the mere
binding together of logs and the easy
floating down stream on them that the
picture OF raft IN a mild current in
dicates The logs are thrown into the
stream above rapids and narrows, and
the raft often has to be made over
many times. The simple splicing and
fastening Of them together, which
makes the voyage down a steady cur
rent easy enough, are at best a trihing
protection against the forming of
liam, where the stream runs rapidly
through narrow or crooked channels
Then one log wrenched cut of position
may ohstruct all the rest, and the raft
become a wreck. To loosen d jam has
sometimes proved to be the work of
whole week, and men have had to be
swung over it to find the ''key log"
and to cut it from tree or cliff above.
And when the jam is loosed, the raft
must be rebuilt, wherever and when
ever its material can be got together
again. If there be freshet when the
logs get loose, OF if jam has SO
damned the water that when it is loos-
ened the stream is swollen at any
angle the river makes, half the raft or
all is likely to be driven and left high
and dry on land. In the upper waters
the raftsInan has to make his way
sometimes on his raft, sometimes by
boat and sometimes by land, to keep
his cargo together. The men whom
this traffic has trained to be amphib-
ious have acquired degree of skill in
the management of logs that gives
warrant for their feeling of contempt
for mere river pilots or boat captains
on the lower waters.
When the raft has been built for the
last time, and only the broad river lies
before it, it is equipped with rudder
the raftsmen make their home on it for
days and even weeks; they stretch
their tent and go comfortably on, using
long poles when necessary as an auxil-
larry either to the rudder Or to the cur
rent. Saw-mills as far down the Mis-
sissippi river as St. Louis are yet sup
piled with logs from the high waters
of the Wisconsin river. When the river
broadens sufficiently, number of
smaller RATS are joined together into
onelarge one, and when it reaches the
point where tug-boat can be employed
with advantage, the consolidated raft
is forest afoat several hundred yards
in length. Harper's Weekly.