The white birches there were from a foot up to twenty-two inches in diameter, having long, straight trunks, clear of limbs from thirty to forty feet in length.

These clear trunks only were used for bolts.
Plying their axes, Halstead, Addison, Thomas and Willis felled upward of forty trees that night, and these were all sawn by dark.

On an average, five trees were required for a cord of bolts; but with sharp axes such white-birch trees can be felled fast.

Morefield tended the saw and drove the horses in the horse-power; the rest of us were kept busy sliding the birch trunks down the slip to the saw, and rolling away the bolts.
By dark we had made a beginning of our hard week's task, and in the gathering dusk plodded across the lake to the old lumber-camp, expecting to find Aunt Olive smiling and supper ready.
But here disappointment awaited us.

Sylvester, with the sled-load of supplies, had not come, did not arrive, in fact, till half an hour later, and then with his oxen only.