Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 88.djvu/775

 Popular Science Monthly

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��A Tree Which Serves as a Bridge

CUT near Marslifield, Oregon, in the celebrated Coos Bay region, a fallen forest tree is made to serve the useful purpose of a foot-bridge. The tree — an immense fir — grew handily

��is as tractable as a family nag, but when a city man tries to ride it the craft some- times behaves more like a broncho.

In appearance it is most primitive. "Something like a dug-out, something like a canoe, something like a flat-

���A giant fir, felled to drop across the stream, furnished this excellent foot-bridge

��enough by the side of a stream, to bridge which under ordinary circumstances would have cost considerable. Once the interested residents hit upon the idea, it was practically no trouble to fell the tree across the stream, trim away the branches and with an adz to flatten the upper surface of the fallen trunk. To make passage over this unusual bridge less hazardous, a hand rail was built through the simple expedient of boring holes in the log for the upright standards to which the fence-like railing was at- tached. The bridge gives complete sat- isfaction and attracts the interest of every newcomer in the vicinity.

The Ozark Float-Boat

AMONG the types of J~\. small craft that navi- gate North America's inland waters, one of the most pe- culiar is the Ozark Moun- tain float-boat. The swift, crooked and rocky streams of southern Missouri and north- ern Arkansas have known it for many decades, but at last it is beginning to disaj)pear before the invasion of canoes and small power-boats. Un- der the management of a na- tive "hill billy" the float-boat

��bot-tomed skiff," describes it — yet it is no more than a cousin to any of these. It is made of a few pieces of lumber held together with iron clamps, fash- ioned by the cross-roads blacksmith; in length is twenty feet or more; in width, not much wider amidships than two. It rarely has any seats and scarcely ever knows paint. The sides and ends taper like a canoe's, but the bottom is flat and the passenger, if he is care- ful, may stand up in it when he is cast- ing for bass.

The craft is called a float-boat be- cause its specialty is going down stream. When it has to be propelled against the current the native lays down his paddle and takes to poling.

���Tlic Ozark float-boat is rough, but it is as tractable as a family nag in the hands of an experc

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