As long as there was timber close to the river banks it was not necessary to haul big loads, but when it come to hauling several miles the loads were increased and there some smart man got the idea of hauling water and forming ice, on which the sleighs slipped much more easily than on snow. In order to ice the roads a water tank was put on runners, and when I first knew about it the men took the tank out on a lake or stream and filled it by hand, with pails, which was a slow job and very cold. Some one then got the idea of using a barrel, which was hauled up on skids by a horse which worked on the opposite side of the sleigh from the water hole, and a barrel full of water was taken up every time so that it took a comparatively short time to fill the tank. The sprinkler crew worked during the night, so as not to interfere with the loads of logs during the day, and this was a very disagreeable job when the thermometer was below zero. However, It enabled the lumbermen to haul large loads long distances with horses, and these Ice roads would hold out longer in the spring when the weather began to get mild and they often hauled logs for days after the snow was nearly gone. 

One spring Nell McKillop was logging for us on Beaver Creek, a tributary of the Peshtigo. I was there with Paul McDonald 
 

Paul McDonald, Superintendant of logging operations for Holt Lumber Company. Photo- Oconto County WIGenWeb Project archives.
 
 
 
 
 

on April Ist and it was raining and parts of the road, where It crossed low lands, were under water, but there was a good ice bottom and they were hauling as big loads as at any time during the winter, but he had about 400,000 feet of logs to haul. They hauled day and night, putting their horses in the bam for about four hours but never taking off the harnesses, and the men got a little sleep, and they finished the job April 4th, after all of the other camps had broken up. James Elliott was camp foreman and when he came down to Oconto after the camp broke up he came into the office and reported, and then sat down in a chair and went to sleep. When we locked up the office and went to supper we had to wake him up and take him home as he was dead to the world. 
 

In those days men took great pride in their work and they would do things for the foreman that they would not do in later times. McKillop's men were all very loyal to him and did extraordinary things to help him out. McKillop always paid higher wages than any of the Company camps, and picked the very best men who were available and he had no trouble to get these men, even when others were looking for them, because of the higher wages and better treatment which he gave to all of his crew, although they knew that they would have to work harder for him than for anybody else. 
 
 
 

Thirty-eight 

Later on a smart man down east conceived the idea of a steam log hauler which operated on a movable track, the forerunner of the modern caterpillar tractor. We bought one of these machines and used it for a number of years very successfully. We used to haul from ten to thirteen sleighs at a trip and we could haul up to 5000 feet of sawlogs on each sleigh and, of course, could make several trips in the time a team could make one. It was not economical on a short haul because the sleighs had to be hauled in from branches on to the main road and made up into trains with horses anyway, but on a long haul it was a great success. There was one thing about It that fooled us a couple of times; that was that there was no way of stopping the train and if it got going down hill and the sleighs got going faster than the log hauler could go, there was a wreck. One winter we were hauling logs off from McCauslin Mountain an the west side of Marinette county. Usually the sleighs were hauled with teams on to the level ground, before they were made up into trains, then the log hauler would take the train and haul it about ten miles to the end of one of our railroad spurs. However, during the winter the foreman made up some trains part way up the hill, where there was a level piece of ground, and the log hauler took the train down the last hill. One morning they started down with the train and after they got started they discovered that there was not enough sand on the hill to hold the loads back. Before the log hauler reached the bottom of the hill it was shoved off the road and overturned and some of the logs were piled up on top of it, breaking It up badly, but fortunately the engineer jumped and got out of the way. We had to send the machine to Eau Claire to be repaired. We hauled logs for a few days with four-horse teams but soon found horses could not stand it as the road was too long and they could not haul enough logs every day to load the cars which had to be loaded I, so we rented a log hauler, identical with ours, from' Moore & Galowmay Lumber Company, and used that until we broke up in the spring. This machine was called a snow snake by the men. It would not operate on ba,,\re ground because the castings were too soft and would wear out in a very short time,  but on an ice road it worked all right. The modern caterpillar tractors are built with much harder steel and can operate in mud or sand without wearing out too fast. 

It wascustomary in going down hills with loads of logs, whether drawn by horses or by the log hauler, to put dry sand in the runner track, to check the speed of the sleighs, and it required a good sand hill man to put on just the right amount of sand, and not too much, because if he got on too much the sleigh would stick and if he did not get on enough it would run over the horses or the log hauler, as the case might be. Sometimes, where the hill was not very steep, when we were hauling with horses we used to put marsh hay on the hill to check the speed of the sleighs, and then usually during the night the dear would come along and eat up the hay so they would have to put fresh hay on the hill in the morning. It was very difficult and dangerous to operate a sand hill when it was snowing as it was almost impossible to keep the snow swept off and the hill properly sanded , and sometimes there were accidents caused by the hill getting too slippery with the falling snow. 

Thirty-nine