MOTOR LORRY.
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It was one of those delightful authnin mornings which are doubtless sent to revive our war-jaded spirits. Just under the hour from London we sighted Blankville Hotel. But what has happened? What hand has been at work? That cannot be the lake buried in the woods, While that tower on the hill! We do not recall having seen it before!
True enough, the church tower and the lake are now both open to view from the turnpike road. The woods have gone. Yawning gaps show where the hand of the Canadian Forestry Corps has spared not the tree.
These lofty shimmering occupants of the woods, large and small, have been pressed into the service of the State, and now fay in huge piles ready to be despatched to destinations Where they will ultimately be converted into aeroplanes, ships, pit props, and a hundred other uses.
The mill, with its four tall spindly chimneys belching forth steam and smoke, is real Canada. Log has surround, swarthy and sinewy nor'-west lumbermen whistle and sing at their work and all is life.
A Cipigner lorry bustles up with its load of–logs, which are rolled off on to the skidway to swell the pile waiting to be sawn into lumber. Canadians armed with the cant hook peculiar to their calling hurry up. Two of them pick out their log, an oak 36 ins, in diameter—a true monarch of the forest. With a thrust and a jerk their cant hooks are inserted, and a pull over rolls the log down the skidway 204:1 ft. to the trolley in waitins... More use of cant hooks
and levers, a shrill whistle and the log in hauled up into the interior of the mill. Cant hooks again come into play, with a deft movement of which it is rolled on to the saw bench.
Three men now take charge of the monster log, the sawing table with the men standing on it rushes past. the saw, the first board is cut, back regain and forivard and a plank 6 ins, thick is cut. The plank is pusind on to live rollers. Away it goes through the mill, down another skidway steeper than the first, where four burly woodmen giro waiting to receive it They guide it as it falls to Slide on the truck. The filled truck is given a push. It 'runs along the gravity railway to be diverted here or there to be brought finally to rest against a stop Mock. Men -in waiting with cant books seize it and our oak is turned on to the stack where it will wait until the lorry, comes to take it to assume its destined role ia the great war.
So the work goes on from daylight to dusk: 50,000 ft. of lumber are converted into timber each day. England's forests grow thinner, and new methods hasten the end. Waste I ..11.aere is no wae
st here : slab boards are used to make log huts for tne men as well as corduroying the road for lorries.
Here a lorry laden with short ends lurches over a road made of outside boards. There a Mountain of sawdust is being loaded into mule-drawn carts to be • used as bedding for cattle ; short branches are cut up for sleepers-to extend the gravity railway—scrap is feeding the furnaoes—there is no waste.
And the men ! What do these backwoods men think of all this ? Nothing! It is their daily round of toil. They sometimes express surprise at the size of a log. Two of them even asked to be pnotographed against an elm 7 ft. in diameter so that they .might send copies home to distant Canada to prove to Mr. Jock that there are trees in England. As one of them remarked, "We expected to find a heap of mud rising out of the sea, but, gee ! it would take 25 years to clear this little bit of empire of timber !
One really marvels at the deftness of these men. A little French Canadian mumbles in some strange tongue, gives a dig with a strange instrument, and hauls a plank many times his own weight to the spot desired.