Rensselaer Union, Volume 7, Number 4, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 15 October 1874 — Logging in the Redwoods. [ARTICLE]

Logging in the Redwoods.

Tffe choppers, especially, must be men of intelligence and experience. A great deal more than mere strength to swing the ax for eleven hours a day is required to make a good chopper. After the tree is selected- the ground needs careful looking after, as a stump or fallen tree, or any inequality of the earth, would, as a gentleman of the profession remarked, “ Knock the biggest on ’em into smithereens.” It is a peculiarity of redwood to split into long and profitless thin strips upon small provocation, and the inexperienced eye, glancing over the ground that bristles with all sorts of obstacles, sees little hope of any tree escaping destruction. And it is only the extreme skill of the choppers that makes the disaster uncommon. They can drive a stake with the biggest tree in the forest when the ground is clear. When there is not sufficient opening in a direct line? a common expedient is to fell the tree so that it will strike, in its descent, the trunk of another. Calculating the bounce well marks an accomplished chopper. Felling a seven or eight foot tree i half a day’s work for three men. Th choppers stand some six or eight feet from the ground, each on a narrow bit of board, one end of which is thrust into a notch in the bark, and this unsteady footing is all they have, while they hack away with their long axes hour after hour. When a ten or fifteen footer is encountered, a platform of bark, with the standing-boards for support, is built, and an extra chopper put on. Two cuts are made in the tree,; that on the side on which the monster is to fall being much larger and somewhat lower than the one on the other side. Thus the weight of the tree is made to serve for its own overthrow. It is tremendously hard work, and wears the strongest man out in from three to four years. When the tree begins to “ complain,” as the shrill, vibrating, cracking noise is aptly called, the choppers give a long, warning wail, that sends all the' workmen in the neighborhood scampering to a safe distance. A second cry tells that the tree is wavering, and the choppers themselves leap from their perches and run for it. The giant yields slowly and with a mighty grumbling. Then, in spite of himself, he leans over painfully, and with a frightsome booming and crackling sweeps to the trembling earth, the -foliage-whistling and screaming like the rigging of a ship in a hurricane. The shock is terrific, and resembles nothing so much as an earthquake. Clouds of dust, mingled kith flying fragments, are thrown into the air. Every branch is snapped off and broken to splinters. The thud is heard and felt miles away.—Oakland (Cal.) Real Estate Reporter.