compact row, which should be the outer bulwarks separating the
sorting-booms from the channel of the river. Ashore the carpenters
were knocking together a long, low structure for the cook-house and
a larger building, destined to serve as bunk-house for the regular
boom-crew. There would also be a blacksmith's forge, a storehouse,
a tool and supply-house, a barn, and small separate shanties for the
married men. Below more labourers with picks, shovels, axes, and
scrapers were cutting out and levelling a road which would, when
finished, meet the county road to town. The numerous bayous of
great marsh were crossed by "float-bridges," lying flat on the
surface of the water, which spurted up in rhythmical little jets
under the impact of hoofs. Down stream eight miles, below the
mills, and just beyond where the drawbridge crossed over to
Monrovia, Duncan McLeod's shipyards clipped and sawed, and steamed
and bent and bolted away at two tugboats, the machinery for which
was already being stowed in the hold of a vessel lying at wharf in
Chicago. In the storerooms of hardware firms porters carried and
clerks checked off chains, strap iron, bolts, spikes, staples, band
iron, bar iron, peavies, cant-hooks, pike-poles, sledge-hammers,
blocks, ropes, and cables.

These things took time and attention to details; also a careful
supervision. The spring increased, burst into leaf and bloom, and
settled into summer. Orde was constantly on the move. As soon as
low water came with midsummer, however, he arranged matters to run
themselves as far as possible, left with Newmark minute instructions
as to personal supervision, and himself departed to Redding. Here
he joined a crew which Tom North had already collected, and betook
himself to the head of the river.