ver-drivers with their long poles and quick movements,
looking not unlike a band of savages, have enough to do, with steady
feet, and eyes on the alert. For of all the vast array of logs--and I
once saw twenty-four thousand in one drive--not one goes through the
sluice but is guided on to it by one or more of the drivers. They often
ride standing on the floating logs, conducting this, pushing that,
hurrying another, straightening, turning and guiding; and just before the
log on which a driver stands reaches the sluice, he springs to another.

Woe to him if his foot should slip, or his leap fail! He would be crushed
among the logs in the sluice, or dashed among the rocks in the seething
water.

[Illustration: "THE LIBERATED LOGS CAME SAILING ALONG."]

After all the logs are safely sluiced, the chains of the guards are
slipped, the rafts are broken up, and these, windlasses and all, follow
the logs. Then the boats are put through the sluice. Sometimes, when the
dam is high, some of the river-drivers go through in the boats--a
dangerous practice, this; for often the bateaux have gone under water,
entirely out of sight, to come up below the falls, and more than once
have lives been lost in this foolhardy feat.

[Illustration: THROUGH THE SLUICE.--A DANGEROUS PRACTICE THIS.]

A boom generally passes from three to six dams, and sometimes takes four
months to reach the mills.

Occasionally the logs become jammed in the rivers, and must wait for more
water; if this can be supplied from a lake above, the difficulty is
easily remedied.

In the spring of 1880, a jam occurred at Mexico in Maine. The logs were
piled forty feet above the water and covered an extent of area as large
as an ordinary village. This great jam attracted visitors from all parts
of the country until the spring freshets of the next year could supply
the river with water sufficient to loose them and bear them on their way.

-----

At the present time, July, 1880, the jam is still there. I saw the
driving and sluicing as I have described it, in May, 1880. It was very
interesting.--S. B. C. S.

***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ILLUSTRATED SCIENCE FOR BOYS AND
GIRLS***

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