New-York tribune. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1866-1924, 1905-12-03
THE SOUTHERN SW41IPER.
On Log or an Dagout as Much at
Home as Co7cboy on Horse.

Your timber cutters must be a race Of
acrobats giants. s::rely," said the Northern
lumberman doing his first tramp over Delta
timber tract.
why SOP" asked the guide
I'm looking at the height of those great
stumps, fully ten feet above the ground. I'm
less the cutters We're a dozen feet tall or
stood on each others shoulders how could
they have sawed trees up there2"
The guide laughed, and then he explained.
telling the Iumberman how the trunks that
once topped those huge columns were feIled
at the time of the overflow period. when the
baokwaters from the Mississippi River COW
cred all the land with a yellow sea any
where from ten to twenty feet deep
1.-THE swampers stand in their dugouts and
saw the timber at about water level said
the guide. 'They then take advantage of
the water to float the logs out to some naviga-
bic stream and there raft them, ready for
the towboats to call and take the RATS to the
sawmfs."
DO you mean that there is race of
anywhere so foolhardy as even to stand up
in one of those gouged out logs / saw this
morning, much less work crosscut saw
asked the Iumberman with natural Incredibly
s.yyhv I couldn't balance myself sitting in the
one I rode in until I had thrown my cigar
away and then had to let my watch hang
down in front of me to avoid capsizing.'
And it was not until the lumberman had
built his mill and the timber foated to
it on the crest of the overflow, and had also
been padded about through the forest where
the swampers We're at work, that he became
at last convinced that the guide was not
"strfnging" him. For what a swanlper cannot
do aquatically, with and in his cranky cTaft
called truly a dugout is as yet unknown. But
woe betide the stranger to its contrary ways
who first attempts to navigate the most treach-
erous vessel that the devil inspired ingenuity
of man ever invented; for not one but many
duckings await him. And though his initia-
tory practice may be had on the calm bosom
of some retired, reed bordered pool, and he
fondIy fatters himself that there is no living
soul in miles to play the peeping Tom while
he crawIs out after each upset, ready With
grim determination to ride dry one time before
giving up, the very first splash as he goes
overheard will line the brim of that pond
with grinnfng faces almost as plentiful the
reeds. And even after he has fairly mastered
the gentle art of balancing and padding too,
let him beware how he rashly swaps that
chew from cheek to the other. else his
lessons go for naught and he needs dry clothes
once again.
And ride? What the horse is to the COWBOY,
anything that will float under his weight is to
the swamper Beyond the fact that one rides
over the land and the other the water there
is no vast difference between the two types.
Both are what the President calls the average
American: "A pretty decent fellow"
'Whar's tn dugoUt? 1 hyearn a painter
a-cryin' over todes tn little oak dornick," said
swamper to his wife.
Buddy and Mandy TUX hit an tn gun after
tukIIys,' the answer.
Dang it. 1 wanted that ar painters hide;
shOIy did An I'm a-goin' to git hit, too, fo'
hit means bounty money and seln money, too.
I'll ride that ar drift log / hitched ter tn scant-
lin an take tn ak, TO- I'm sho boun ter hev
him
And he did If, too He sank the sharp axe,
haft deep. in the drift log, that it might not
slip into the food, and. with the extra paddle
that always stands behind the swampe-'s door,
sailed away over a mile of inland sea that
covered the tops of tWeney-foot saplings. and
grounded it the little dornick, which, with its
growth of scrubby oaks whose roots sacked sus-
tenance from the crumhling dust of centuries
dead Indians. was the only earth that showed
anywhere above the tur6id food: then, axe IN
hand faced the grinuIn5 panther whose snarI