the boat? They’d pick out the crooked tree they wanted and everything, and I’d have to go and cut it in the woods for them and take it down and

saw it and dress it so’s they’d have it going back to Murray Harbour with them. It’d be yella birch.

And then [Malcolm Beaton would] go into the woods and he’d cut a little load just to come over to the mill. And another man was Damon Ross. He ’d be up twice a week with the horse. Sit in the mill and have a yarn or something. Oh, they were grand customers.

We used to close before Christmas, and then we wouldn’t open till the first of March, see? The boys would be in the woods, and the first of March we’d start getting the stuff ready for the trapsmen, for the fishermen. And from then, carry on with the public sawing the whole year round.

And another thing. In the spring it was all hemlock we were cutting. And then we used to sell the hemlock to the tanners, you know, for making hides. We’d have those three men in the woods for probably a month, peeling the big hemlock trees. Cut it four feet long and peel it all around the stick. You’d spread [the bark] out to dry it flat. Then you’d pack it on the wagon, you know, like slabs or something. Team and truck wagon over to Brooklyn where the tannery was. You know Hume had a tannery in Brooklyn; Earl Hume’s father.

Woollen Mill

The mill down here [at Flat River] was great. We were down here a year and a half and we bought a woollen mill, carding mill. See, this carding mill used to be in Uigg. John Sam Martin used to have it and we bought it from him and set it up down here.

Once we quit [the saw mill] in the evening, at four o’clock, I’d go down [to the woollen mill]. I’d be there to 10 or 11 o’clock. I’d...put through 120 pounds of wool into [rolls of] yarn and that was 22 cents a pound, see?

When they landed with the wool, they came in. They’d leave it on the back of the wagon and come upstairs where the machine was and they’d ask if they could get it now or would they leave it. Well, it’s just according to how many miles they were away from the mill you know. “Well,” I’d say, “you’re a long way. I can shift over and do yours now.” But when you get a big hundred-pound, that’d be about three hours’ work, and if you Started at it you’d have to finish it.

But them batts, you know, for the quilting? There was a part of the machine you took off. And the batts came out three and a half feet long... That was wool batts. Then you got a hold of them and you put them in the

Hughie MacPherson 73