k to dark and walked to and from work.

[Illustration]

Their axes were so big it took a week to grind one of them. Each man had
three axes and two helpers to carry the spare axes to the river when
they got red hot from chopping. Even in those days they had to watch out
for forest fires. The axes were hung on long rope handles. Each axeman
would march through the timber whirling his axe around him till the hum
of it sounded like one of Paul's fore-and-aft-mosquitoes, and at every
step a quarter-section of timber was cut.

The height, weight and chest measurement of the Seven Axemen are not
known. Authorities differ. History agrees that they kept a cord of
four-foot wood on the table for toothpicks. After supper they would sit
on the deacon seat in the bunk shanty and sing "Shanty Boy" and "Bung
Yer Eye" till the folks in the settlements down on the Atlantic would
think another nor'wester was blowing up.

[Illustration]

Some say the Seven Axemen were Bay Chaleur men; others declare they were
all cousins and came from down Machias way. Where they came from or
where they went to blow their stake after leaving Paul's camp no one
knows but they are remembered as husky lads and good fellows around
camp.

[Illustration]

After the Seven Axemen had gone down the tote road, never to return,
Paul Bunyan was at a loss to find a method of cutting down trees that
would give him anything like the output he had been getting. Many trials
and experiments followed and then Paul invented the two-man saw.

The first saw was made from a strip trimmed off in making Big Joe's
dinner horn and was long enough to reach across a quarter section, for
Paul could never think in smaller units. This saw worked all right in a
level country, in spite of the fact that all the trees fell back on the
saw, but in rough country only the trees on the hill tops were cut.
Trees in the valleys were cut off in the tops and in the pot holes the
saw passed over the trees altogether.

It took a good man to pull this saw in heavy timber when Paul was
working on the other end. Paul used to say to his fellow sawyer, "I
don't care if you ride the saw, but please don't drag your feet." A
couple of cousins of Big Ole's were given the job and did so well that
ever afterward in the Lake States the saw crews have generally been
Scandinavians.

It was after this that Paul had Big Ole make the "Down-Cutter." This was
a rig like a mowing machine. They drove around