"The Log Jam", Illustrated London News, January 7, 1863.
In January 1854, T.C. Keefer told a Montreal Mechanics Institute audience: " 'Cutting away a jam' is one of the most daring feats a lumberman can perform...it is left to volunteers... A rope, the end of which is held by their anxious but admiring comrades on the shore, is fastened round the waist. Every blow of the axe is watched with intense anxiety, and when the timber begins to yield - without waiting to cut it through - the few favorable instants which intervene while the crackling and crashing mass is preparing to start are seized for escape. Flinging his axe into the water and leaping from stick to stick of the moving timber he reaches the land amid the cheers of his comrades - or, borne down by the moving forest his mangled body in sorrowing silence is hauled ashore..." (See also the song, The Jam on Gerry's Rock.)
