Читать книгу Near the Top of the World: Stories of Norway, Sweden & Denmark - Nelle E. Moore - Страница 8

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Near the Christmas season the mountain forests of Norway and Sweden become a fairyland of ice and snow. Then the forest rings with the sounds of voices and the blows of the axes of boys cutting trees that will be decorated for the Yule-tide feasts in their homes. And thousands and thousands of pretty little trees are cut at that time of the year.

Eric and Hubert are Swedish boys who live in that land of evergreen trees. Their father owns a farm in the northern part of Sweden, but he works nearly all the year round in the forests. Eric, who is twelve years old, often helps his father in the forest. Hubert is only nine, and too young to work with the trees; but he goes with his father and Eric many times to play about in the woods and to watch the others at their work.

During the winter the men cut down the big trees and saw them into logs which are easy to handle. Then Eric helps stack the logs as they fall from the saws.

But when spring comes Eric is one of the busiest workmen. The strong woodcutters load big logs on to sleds to be hauled to the river bank a mile away. Eric drives the horse which hauls his father’s logs to the river. Often Hubert rides with Eric. The boys sit on the big logs on the sled as the horse pulls them along through the snow on the mountain road.

EVERGREEN TREES IN WINTER

The logs are unloaded at the river bank. Soon the river will be flowing rapidly with much water from the melting snows from the mountains. Many farmers will then float logs in the same stream; therefore at the river bank each of Eric’s logs must be marked so that his father can claim them at the end of the waterway. Sometimes Hubert stays by the river bank to watch the men who work for his father place his father’s mark on each of the logs. The mark is the initials E. K. in a circle.

The boys enjoy seeing the logs go tumbling down the swift-flowing rivers. They have often stopped at a spot below where the river spreads out into a lake. When the logs reach that spot they stack in the water. Men then go along with poles to keep the logs moving. Sometimes there are acres and acres of logs in the lakes of Sweden at one time.

The Swedish and Norwegian people make many things of wood—their ships, their houses, their furniture, their bridges, their telephone poles, and many, many other things. But many of the logs which are floated down the river from that mountain forest where Eric works are made into paper.

Eric and Hubert have been to the factory which stands near the bank of the waterway which carries their logs. Thousands of men work there. They put the logs through a mill which grinds them into coarse fibers. Those shreds are then mixed with water and chemicals to make a pulp. The pulp is pressed under heavy rollers and dried to make sheets of paper—newspaper, writing paper, wrapping paper, and cardboard.

One day when Hubert was lighting a fire with a safety match, his father told him that the wood of the match had come from the big trees of the forests too. A Swedish man found the way to make safety matches. And Sweden was the first country to make the matches that will not catch fire unless the head of the match is scratched on a certain kind of rough paper. He told Hubert, too, that safety matches from Sweden are used all over the world.

In the school which Eric and Hubert attend the boys are taught to plant trees. And every spring they plant little trees to take the places of the big trees which the woodmen have cut down.

The school boys learn that about one fourth of Norway’s land and about one half of Sweden’s land are covered with trees. But they are taught too that the people can use up the supply of trees that Nature has given them. So they help obey the laws of their country which require that trees be planted to keep the forests from being destroyed.

MEN WITH POLES KEEP THE LOGS MOVING