The Ely miner. [volume] (Ely, Minn.) 1895-1986, 1900-06-01
SHANTY BOYS OF NORTH WOOD
Some Interesting Features of the
Logging Business In the Adiron-
dack Wilderness.

The lumber camps, where the ''shan-
ty boys who hew out the annual sup
ply OF logs in the Adirondacks, live dur
ing the long winter months, are large,
low cabins, built of round, unhewn
logs, notched at the ends and laid to-
gether dollhouse style. AT one end
is a door hung on hinges cut from an
old harness tug, at the opposite end
small window. In this mems shanty"
the choppers, sawyers, skidders and
teamsters lounge and sleep. Near by is
the cook camp another log cabin,
with long, rough table in the center,
around which the men sit on wooden
legged benches to eat their grub"
as they call four hearty meals of bean
swagger," saleratus biscuit, fried pork
and potatoes, served to them at day
light, at ten o'clock a. M, at three p.
M. and again after the days work is
ended, about eight o'clock in the even
ing. In the end of this cook camp"
the cook and his satellite, the cookie"
sweat over huge range, preparing the
rations for the hungry army of French
SdhduIdhos LII q 1dA s z loS Odl IL a " llIC
opposite side of the mems shanty" the
logging teams are kept, baled hay be-
ing stored in a loft overhead. Then
there are granary, a blacksmith shop
and an office, where the foreman and
scaler sleep, with an extra bed for the
boss, or proprietor, when he visits the
camp, the whole forming quite a back
woods village, says the New York Sun.
For an average camp of some GO
hands the mems shanty" and the
''cook camp" are each about go by 20
feet in size. The men sleep in rough
wooden hunks, ranged in double tiers
along the sides. In olden times they
lay on spruce boughs, with a single
blanket spread over them, but in these
degenerate days they have thin bed
ticks, luxuriously stuffed with hay,
though they have not yet attained pill
lows and sheets.
With the big stove in the middle of
the room kept roaring with four-foot
sticks of beech and maple, no one suf-
fers from cold. Along the lower row
of hunks runs a wide seat, made of
pine slab, upheld by wooden legs, and
called deacon seat" Ranged along
these seats the jovial crew sit for an
hour or SO after supper, smoking their
short 'dhudeens' filled with cut plug
of the strongest variety, and,gibe and
jest go around and songs arr, sung and
stories told. The musician of the camp
brings out his fiddle, accordion or
mouth organ, and the jig dancer cuts
pigeon wings or the boisterous stag
quadrille" or spirited French four"
brings all hands out on the puncheon
floor, hoeing it down in moccasins,
shoe packs or '.larrigans, the latter an
offshoot of the moccasin with top
boot.
Besides these lumber camps there
are many other little cabins scattered
throughout the woods, whose inmates,
the gum pickers" of the north woods,
make a livelihood from the Adiron-
dack spruce. A large percentage of all
spruce trees are made almost valceless
for lumber by cracks, which extend up
the trunks from the base to the lower
branches of the crown, in most cases
penetrating to the heart of the tree.
This seam fills with resin, which ex-
udes and hardens, forming the spruce
gum of commerce.
Loves Ambiguous Catechism.
s'Did you love me then as now?"
LESS, think"
''Then you love me more?"
slow can I?'
'Darling!"