.]

[Illustration: Fig. 30. Giant Raft. In the background is a completed
raft; in the foreground a cradle in which a raft is being built.]

Another method of traction where the woodland is open enough is with
a traction engine. The ones employed have sixty to one hundred horse
power. The great logs may be placed on wood rollers, as a house is
when moved, or the logs may be hauled in on a low truck with broad
wheels. The "tractor" hauls the log direct to the railway if the
distance is not too great.

[Illustration: Fig. 31. Snow Locomotive. Takes the place of 12
teamsters and 12 horses. Minnesota.]

In Northern Michigan a "snow locomotive," Fig. 31, is coming into
use, which has tremendous tractive power, hauling one hundred to one
hundred fifty tons of lumber over snow or ice. It moves on runners,
but there is between them a large cylinder armed with teeth. This
cylinder can be raised or lowered by the operator as it moves over the
surface of the ground. The teeth catch in the snow or ice, and since
the cylinder is heated by the exhaust steam, it melts and packs the
snow for the trucks following it. The drum is six feet in diameter,
with walls an inch and a half thick, and it weighs seven tons. It is
used in all sorts of places where horses cannot go, as in swamps, and
by substituting wheels for runners it has even been used on sand.

In the Canadian lakes there has been devised a queer creature called
an "alligator," a small and heavily equipped vessel for hauling the
logs thru the lakes. When its operations in one lake are finished, a
wire cable is taken ashore and made fast to some tree or other safe
anchorage, the capstan on its forward deck is revolved by steam and
the "alligator" hauls itself out of the water across lots to the next
lake and begins work there.

The greatest improvement in water transportation is the giant raft,
Fig. 30. When such a raft is made up, logs of uniform length are
placed together, the width of the raft being from sixty to one hundred
feet and its length, one thousand feet or more. It may contain a
million board feet of timber. The different sections are placed end to
end, and long boom sticks, i. e., logs sixty to seventy feet long,
are placed around them to bind the different sections together, and
finally the whole mass is heavily chained. Such a raft has been towed
across the Pacific.

LOGGING.

REFERENCES[*]:

River Lumbering.
Pinchot, _Primer_, II, pp. 40-53.