is skiing pole and so made the Grand Canyon of the Colorado, or
the building of Crater Lake or the Island of Cuba. Later Bunyan went to
the Pacific Coast where he did many mighty feats of landscape engineering;
in fact he largely made the West, but he never seemed to find logging on
the West Coast congenial, probably due to the fact that machinery had
invaded the Western woods by the time he got there. And Paul never could
endure those "pesky" donkey engines. While it was sometimes necessary for
him to resort to the use of power machinery in his cook house, he would
never have it in the woods. Even when he had a crew so large that it took
eight cement mixers to stir the batter for their hot cakes and a
stern-wheel steamer to stir their soup, the Blue Ox could easily haul all
the logs they could cut without help of any donkey engines or any other
such "fandangoes."

Bunyan, however, was not alone in his logging ventures. He had many
helpers, but none of them were cast in quite such an heroic mould as was
Paul himself. There were the seven axemen who helped him the winter he
logged Dakota, who kept a cord of four-foot wood on the table for
toothpicks, and whose singing could be heard of an evening down on the
Atlantic. There was the little chore boy who turned the grindstone which
was so large that every time it turned around once it was payday. There
was Johnny Inkslinger, the bookkeeper, who made the first fountain pen,
which held twenty-four barrels of ink, and who kept two complete sets of
books, one with each hand. Brimstone Bill cared for Babe and made for him
those wonderful yokes of cranberry wood, which made it possible for Babe
to pull anything which had two ends to it. Big Ole, the blacksmith, had
two tasks. One was to shoe Babe, and every time he did it he had to open
up a new iron mine. The other was to punch the holes in the doughnuts for
the cook. Another helper was Cris Crosshaul, a careless cuss, who was
responsible for taking wrong logs down to New Orleans, which made it
necessary for Paul to bring them back up the river. This was done by
feeding Babe a large salt ration and then letting him drink out of the
upper river. He drank the river dry and the logs came up stream faster
than they went down. Of the other helpers it is perhaps sufficient to
mention only Joe McFrau, who was able to ride anything which ever floated
and in any water, and the two cooks, Sourdough Sam and Big Joe. Sourdough
Sam made ever