TIMBER WORKING ON A HUGE SCALE.

Temuka Leader, Issue 2891, 7 November 1895, Page 3

TIMBER WORKING ON A HUGE SCALE.

In a recent number of Great Thoughts is given a description of “A Colossal Timber-slide in Canada,” which gives some idea of the colossal scale on which the timber industry is carried on there. The Government owns the bush country, and yearly parcels of land, 12 miles square, are sold on lease, under the name of townships, to timber merchants or lumber-men, who have only the right to clear away the timber within five years, when the land is again sold to intending settlers in freehold. One of these firms, that of Gilmour, of Trenton, has a mill which outs a million feet board measure af Iqgs daily. It commences on the Isf May gad cuts nptil the Ist October, when the mill shuts down’ and all hands are sent to the bush to fell and skid for next season’s cut. The firm estimates 25,000,0(|0ft Qf wood can be cut opt each year for flOyears an the 85 square miles of their “limit, 1 ’ and has, therefore, expended 1.500,000 dollars in building slides, dams, and the most wonderful " portage ” that has yet been erected in Canady. The slide is a mile long, the logs going into a trough into 'which engines pump J 0,000 gallons of water per minute, and are curried by locks out of the river system on one side of the Miukoko *’divide,” into another system of creeks and rivers .’SOO miles down yu Trenton, ou the Trent,

river which enters Lake Ontario. Thus the problem was solved of conveying an unlimited quantity of timber from one system of lakes and rivers across a wide and broken strip of land into another network of streams 150 feet higher in level The machinery for the slide was taken up by a specially-built steamer, the Alligator, which can propel itself on land as well as on water, and can be utilised also as a sawmill. This accomplished, the vessel towed the machinery in a barge to Dorset, pulled itself up on the shore by means of a wire rope and winch, worked by its own engines, previously disconnected from the paddle wheels. Its bottom being fiat, with three heavy runners bolted on, the boat slides along with ease. Once well up on dry laud the industrious Alligator does not rest, but one of its paddle-wheels being removed, and a 60-inch circular saw fixed in its place to the shaft, the vessel cuts 20,000 feet board measure per day, thus preparing all planks and timber used in the construction of the and dam.