The daily morning journal and courier., 1900-01-22
BIG LOADS OF LOGS.
What Teams Draw on Artificially Con-
 structed Ice Roads.

What Teams Draw on Artificially Con-
 structed Ice Roads.
 We are getting along fairly well in 1 the woods by making ice roads," said 1 Senator Buckman, but we would real | ly like a little snow just as sort of 1 guarantee that we are really going to
 have some winter" The senator is
 cutting something like forty million feet of logs in the Swan river district this [ winter, He has upward of eight hun 1 dred men at work in his camps. As his 1 operations involve an expenditure of about fifteen hundred dollars day, 1t
 may readily be seen that the question of the weather from day to day is one in which Senator Buckman has more than a passing interest.
 Tn the twelve camps where my men
 are now at work" continued the sena-
 tor, T am using about one hundred
 horses in hauling water day and night to keep the roads il. condition. The wa ter is hauled in eighty-barrel tanks
 mounted on sleds, and an arrangement
 of pipes directs the flow of water in
 front of the runners. Of course there
 was a great deal of preparatory work
 required. The roads were laid out and
 graded up smooth in the fall, and
 wherever there was a brook or a pond
 convenient to the roads pool was dug so that the water might be loaded by
 the barrel full. A tank is run up~to one of these pools, and an incline arranged so that barrel rlgged like a huge bucket may be raised and lowered into ba JaaI ,f f,,r-
 nshing the power In this way it doesn't take long to fill tank.
 AS the ice forms the road is gradu- ally raised and we have rut-cutting machine which cuts out the ice where the runners of the log sleds run, and throws it out at the sides. The roads do not average more than four miles in leNgth to the landing places, hnd we have been able to keep them in good condition, but a few warm days would knock things out badly.
 It is astonishing to one not accus- toned to such things how much team can haul over these roads, thousand feet of logs weighs roughly about three tons. l had a letter the other day stating that they were now averaging about five thousand to the load. which means fifteen tons, but they expect to | do better. I was talking with a lum- l herman on the train, who told me that | in some of the camps they had adopted | a system known as trailing, hitching l three sleds one behind the other and | were pulling them all with the same | horse power, loaded with eight thou sand feet each. This means twenty fn1Ir tl,nt1 md or tIr-t tXxy nnc to the trip.
 I remember an instance two or three | years ago when Judge Collins was wis., iting In one of my camps, when twenty thousand, or sixty tons, was loaded on one sled. They tell story of a man who was hauling with two of his own teams and three hired teams. One morning when they came out to hitch on to the five loaded sleds the drivers of the hired teams struck for higher wages and refused to make the trip to the landing. One of the other drivers sug- gested that one of the extra seds be hitched on behind the one with which he started, and the horses pulled it off without any trouble. Then the other driver said he would try the three re- maining loads, and he got away with them without difficulty. The hired teams were allowed to go, and the work was continued with the owners two teams.
 'The logs are loaded on sleds with a bunk or bed fourteen feet wide and piled up as high in the air They dre secured by chains around the whole mass. The outside bottom log on one side is fastened to the sled with short chain at each corner, which goes around the logs and is caught with a grab-hook.' When the landing is reached these hooks are knocked out l, with an axe, and this brings down the whole pile
 Labor is higher than usual this win ; CT. and it will be good season for the ; if the weather holds right. l Common labor is getting about twenty ( 'ix dollars a month, which is from ten l o fifteen per cent higher than the pre- , 1ailfng rate for a number of years"- ( 3t, Paul (Minn) PioneerPress.