. Ox-team days on the Oregon Trail /by Ezra Meeker ; revised and edited by Howard R. Driggs. them we burned through them. We bored two holes at anangle to meet inside the inner bark, and when we got afire started there the heart of the tree would burn through,leaving an outer shell of bark. One morning, as usual, I was up early. After lighting thefire in the stove and putting on the kettle, I hastened to the burning timber to start thelogging fires afresh. As I neareda clump of three giants, twohundred and fifty feet tall, onebegan toppHng over toward my confusion I ran across th
. Ox-team days on the Oregon Trail /by Ezra Meeker ; revised and edited by Howard R. Driggs. them we burned through them. We bored two holes at anangle to meet inside the inner bark, and when we got afire started there the heart of the tree would burn through,leaving an outer shell of bark. One morning, as usual, I was up early. After lighting thefire in the stove and putting on the kettle, I hastened to the burning timber to start thelogging fires afresh. As I neareda clump of three giants, twohundred and fifty feet tall, onebegan toppHng over toward my confusion I ran across thepath where it fell. This tree hadscarcely reached the groundwhen a second started to fallalmost parallel to it, the twotops barely thirty feet apart andthe limbs flying in several direc-tions. I was between the twotrees. If I had not becomeentangled in some brush, Ishould have been crushed bythe second falling tree. It wasan escape so marvelous as almostto lead one to think that thereis such a thing as a charmed rafting our precious ac-A narrow escape. cumulations of timber down. Getting a New Start in the Neiv Land 77 the Columbia River to Oak Point, we were carried by thecurrent past the place where we had expected to sell ourlogs at six dollars a thousand feet. Following the raft tothe larger waters, we finally reached Astoria, where wesold the logs for eight dollars a thousand instead of six,thus profiting by our misfortunes. But this final success had meant an involuntary plungeoff the raft into the river with my boots on, for me, andthree days and nights of ceaseless toil and watching forall of us. We voted unanimously that we would have nomore such work. The flour sack was nearly empty when I left were expecting to be absent but one night, and we hadbeen gone a week. There were no neighbors nearer ourcabin than four miles, and no roads — scaicely a trail. Theonly communication was by the river. What about thewife and baby alone in the cabin, with the d
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Keywords: ., bookcentury1900, bookdecade1920, booksubjectoverlan, bookyear1922
