News and citizen. [volume] (Morrisville, Vt. ;) 1881-current, 1888-02-23
A LIFE.
Breaking Log Jams on Steep Roll
ways-Chased by Timber.

The most exciting and dangerous pc
Rod of the lumberman's always perllous
life in the woods is now approaching,
says q letter from the lumber regions.
This is the breaking in" of big piles
heaped or ranked at the SUBMITS and on
the faces of the long rollways that
border the streams IN h lumber woods.
These rollways extend from the tops of
high and abrupt banks to the waters
edge. There are two ways of piling the
logs at the rollways-and by laying them
in regular ranks or tiers, and the other
by throwing or dropping them in jun
bled heaps on the ground. In the latter
method the logs lock, cross and key one
another, and SO it frequently occurs that
some log, in q dangerous position, must
be loosened at the risk of life and limb
before the logs have gone down the
steep hillsides to their place in the
water. This style of piling logs is called
a rough-and-tumble. Many fatalities
attend it every year, while the square
and regular piles are manipulated with
comparatively little danger and with
tenfold greater facility.
In the regular piles, tier on tier, the
logs are started in q body down the roll
way, and they usually go down in one
great heap clear into the water. In the
other way the logs are dumped from the
trails and lie in a ragged, promiscuous
tumble from top to bottom of the roll
way. The key log or logs may be at the
bottom of the pile, in the water, or half
way up the hill. There are always such
conf~igurations of the pile that there are
many openings like great pitfalls here
and there. At some of these piles the
rollways are selected at places in the
creek where the banks are high On either
side. Then high dams are thrown
across below. with f~oodgates. By these
dams the water can be thrown back,
and by manipulation of the gates raised
and lowered among the tightly massed
logs so that it lifts them and generally
releases the jam.
But even where these dams are in use
there are frequently piles SO obstinate
that nothing but the skilful work of the
lumberman on the key logs will break
them down. The logs are often woven
together almost like q web, land to the n
experienced spectator the.task of unrav-
yelling it, as it may well be called, seems
beyond human power. But there never
yet was a log pile so tightly keyed that
the agile and expert log driver of the
S~usquehanna could not break down, al
though he may not only risk but lose his
life in doing it. 1t seems utterly in
credible that men could be found so dar-
ing as to make their way out along
these icy, jagged and twisted piles, with
two thousand waiting logs above them,
held, probably, by the obstinate keylng
of a single log, and ready to thunder
down upon them the instant that log IS
moved a single inch from its position.
But the occasion is only needed on the
Susquehanna and its branches to pro-
duce such men by the score, no matter
how great the danger may be.
The woodsman makes his way nimbly
but with caution over the ~protruding
logs and across treacherous : pitfalls,
frequently disappearing entirely be-
meath some lifted group of immense
timbers, as he tries to locate the log OF
logs that prevent the great pile from
breaking and completing its lightning
like plunge into the river below. The
log that makes all the trouble may be
near the bottom, which, of course in
creases the peril. The woodsman's
quick eye is not long in demonstrating
how the KEY may be most advantageous
" removed, and he at once proceeds to
accomplish his task. One or two blows
of his axe may be sufficient to remove an
obstruction that has defied the many
tons of pressure from above. 1t may
require an hours chopping and prying,
and it may take a days hard work to
break the jam.
When the key is broken, however, is
the time when the driver must use all
his nimbleness, nerve and skill to es-
cape from the rush of pitching, tossing
and laundering logs that he has started.
He leaps he's and there, and jumps
from log to log in his flight, with the av-
alanche of timber pressing close behind
him. In releasing one jam, last season,
five men were caught in the break and
killed. The fatality that accompanies
the ~'breaking in" of log piles in the
Susquehanna lumber regions would
startle the public if made a special item
in reports of vital statistics. The rush
of a pile of logs down a steep rollway,
unobstructed, is an exciting scene, in
itself, as anyone could wish to see. A
hundred logs, rolling, tumbling and
roaring into a stream will dash the wat
er fifty feet in the air, and leave the
bottom of the stream as bare as the shore
until the water falls back again in foam
op1 cnrov