High hills surrounded the lake and the drivable stream was
ten miles away. Apparently the logs were a total loss.
Then Paul came on the job himself and got busy. Calling in Sourdough
Sam, the cook who made everything but coffee out of sourdough, he
ordered him to mix enough sourdough to fill the big watertank. Hitching
Babe to the tank he hauled it over and dumped it into the lake. When it
"riz," as Sam said, a mighty lava-like stream poured forth and carried
the logs over the hills to the river. There is a landlocked lake in
Northern Minnesota that is called "Sourdough Lake" to this day.
Chris Crosshaul was a careless cuss. He took a big drive down the
Mississippi for Paul and when the logs were delivered in the New Orleans
boom it was found that he had driven the wrong logs. The owners looked
at the barkmarks and refused to accept them. It was up to Paul to drive
them back upstream.
No one but Paul Bunyan would ever tackle a job like that. To drive logs
upstream is impossible, but if you think a little thing like an
impossibility could stop him, you don't know Paul Bunyan. He simply fed
Babe a good big salt ration and drove him to the upper Mississippi to
drink.
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