th a deep
dive, or a splash and a glide, we walked down to the dam to
witness a c - shoot” of the chute when the gate was raised. This
operation requires quickness and nerve, and was superintended
by our host. The water rushing out of the basin carries with it
a great weight of logs, which must not be allowed to make a
“jam” against the dam. The men are on the logs with pikes
directing them so as to head them for the opening and send them
endwise down the slide below the dam, when they take a header
into the stream with a mighty splash, and go floating tumultuously down the agitated water to be arrested by a boom at the
creek’s mouth, and made into a raft for Gray’s Harbor.
The wages paid to men in this camp is from forty dollars to sixty dollars, the foreman getting one hundred and forty. The price of logs is three dollars and fifty cents per thousand feet in the water. The price paid to the owner of the land is fifty cents per thousand. The average per acre is fifty thousand feet of fir and spruce. The cost of putting in a dam is from three thousand dollars to ten thousand dollars; the skidded road costs one thousand dollars per mile; the teams for hauling, one thousand dollars; the mess-house and dormitory, two hundred dollars or three hundred dollars. Nine or ten men at the wages named above, with their board, cost per month about six hundred dollars, and the supplies for the oxen eighty dollars. These figures make this camp cost for its first outfit, being very conveniently located, about five thousand dollars, and its expenses for a season of six months five thousand dollars more. Its profits depend, of course, on the amount gotten into the water ready for the mills. A good deal of money is disbursed in the towns of Washington, every winter, by loggers.
As I shall have occasion to speak again of the lumber interest, I will leave it here for the present and return to the subject of towns and settlements.
Facing the south channel, an-d almost directly opposite the city of Gray’s Harbor is Gray’s Harbor City, whichvhas not yet become formidable as a rival to the towns on the north side. A little distance beyond or west of it is South Harbor, another small place, which has the advantage of being at a point where the south channel approaches closely to the shore with a crosschannel almost due north to the Gray’s Harbor wharf.At
