Democratic Sentinel, Volume 1, Number 25, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 3 August 1877 — The Maine River Drivers. [ARTICLE]

The Maine River Drivers.

The annual coining of the river drivers, whose tents are now pitched near us on the banks of the Androscoggin, is an event anxiously awaited this year, not only by the lumber manufacturers, but also by the lumber consumers. And not by these alone; for thelumbermenwill soon be along in quest of new suits of clothes and the luxuries of civilized life. They are vigorous, energetic men, leading a jolly if a laborious and dangerous life. A glance at their style of doing things may not be without interest at this time. Three hundred men will cover and cut a section of about three miles square, taking off over 60,000 logs, which would measure about 10,000,000 feet, each season. Work begins at daylight and ends at dark; and, when the days lengthen, or the moon favors a long twilight or earlier morn, the men get the benefit in longer working hours. On the river, when the drive is started, work begins at 3 o’clock in the morning and ends at 9 o’clock in the evening, the men having five meals—breakfast at 3, lunch at 9, dinner at 12, supper at 5 and tea at 9. The meal consists of pork and beans, corn bread, molasses cake and tea or coffee.

No stint is given to a man’s appetite. The fare, such as it is, is abundant, monotonous, nutritious and cheap. A cook is provided for every fifty men. The beans are generally the large white bush, parboiled in pots holding about half a bushel, then ten pounds of pork is set in the middle of the beans in the pot, a quarter of a pint of molasses poured in, and then the pot is set in a hole surrounded with hot ashes and burning charcoal, the top covered with a stone, over which a heavy wood fire is built, and here they stay from five to eight hours, coming out a palatable dish. All the baking is done in rudely built stone ovens, which are heated, before the dough is. mixed, with a good wood fire. The loaves of biscuit or cake are set upon the stones and are cooked quickly and thoroughly. The consumption of axes and handles is enormous, an ax lasting a month and a handle three weeks. The axes are sharpened daily, some camps having regular sharpeners, while others require each man to keep his own ax in order. The old axes are never collected for the junk dealers, the distance to ship them being almost too great to make it an economical measure.— Lewiston (Maine) Journal.