Rensselaer Republican, Volume 12, Number 10, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 20 November 1879 — A California Log-Slide. [ARTICLE]

A California Log-Slide.

Around the foot of a steep slope, where a spur of the mountains thrusts its shoulder into the water, the road runs its winding way. Following this the traveler comes at last to a peaceful spot, whose quiet would throw the mbst timorous soul into reverie. Death lurks in ambush here, however, and where there should be black flags, yellow flags, red lanterns, skulls ana crossbones m abundance, there is no omen of his distinguished and pallid presence other than a mild warning, marked on a strip of board and tacked to a stump, which is hidden. so deep in the evergreens that none but the most vigilant observers would notice it. It is the premonitory signal: “Look out for LogsP' Reading this indefinite hint, the traveler might feel a languid curiosity as to what it meant, but he would hardly construe it as significant of peril. Perchance by day he would look around for logs beautiful with lichen, or by night for logs beaming with “ fox-fire, ’ but as for apprehension of danger, that were absurd, for of all inanimate objects the log, emblem of all that is inert and stupid, has always been considered most free from inimical designs upon man. A hundred feet further, however, and the full force of this caution comes home to him. A hundred feet further and the road is cut by a line from which his intelligent horse shrinks as he would from a serpent across his path. It is a tram-way or chute of heavy timbers, sunk in the ground, reaching from the crest of the hul to the edge of the water. It is hollow, like a trough, and in places its concave surface is trashed with strips 'of iron shining with a polish which could come from only the most violent friction. It is a “logslide,” down which the trunk of a large tree, peeled of its bark to make it slippery, is coming with all the force of a ship from the stocks. Such a bat-tering-ram would send into dust the strongest wall that was ever made, and

wo ula bring utter annihilation to thdH passing traveler so unlucky as to be astride of the track at this critical moment. A cloud of splinters, smoke and dust marks the wake of its meteoric flight, which lasts but the length of a suspended breath, from the launch, at trestle-work to the water beneath, where it strikes with a sharp clap and dashes the white spray into a cloud which washes the highest tree-tops. Then, tardy as the thunder after the lightning's flash, there comes a yell of warning from the men assembled at the head of the slide, who are responsible for all this tumult and terror. To the jocular natures of the men of Lake Tahoe every log launched and every wayfarer scared are but items of their entertainment, for which, however, under the name of work, they receive liberal wages.— Good Company. —Mr. G. F. Waters, the Boston Dentist who treated Mr. Gardner, who died recently from the effects of a diseased tooth, prints a long statement in which he says: “If I had been in the habit of using arsenic, which I discarded twenty ! rears since, and was entirely unscrupuous as to iteuse and had the arsenic at hand, I should not have used it in such a case. I saw no indication that arsenic bad been used at all.”