As we advanced we caught sight of numerous logs of timber hauled out into the middle of the stream.  Shortly afterwards the sound of voices reached our ears, and we saw a number of men scattered about--some engaged, with gleaming axes, in felling trees; others with horses dragging the trunks, placed on sleighs, over the hard snow on to the ice.  They were there arranged alongside each other, and bound together so as to form numerous small rafts.  Here they would remain until the giving way of the frost; when, on the disappearance of the ice, they would be floated down towards the mouth of the river and towed across the lake to the various saw-mills on its banks.