and Sourdough Sam lost an arm and leg. Sam's son, Hot Biscuit Slim, then took over the cookhouse, and after demanding and getting a tremendous amount of equipment from Paul, he made mealtimes the happiest hours of the loggers' day.

Paul's loggers amused themselves at night by listening to songs and stories. Shanty Boy, of Bunkhouse 1, was the best storyteller in the camp. Once, when the men were feeling sad, Shanty Boy ran out of stories to cheer them up, and he told them some lies. The men believed all Shanty Boy's lies until he told the story of Jonah and the whale. Then Paul had to be called in to keep the men from beating up Shanty Boy for telling what they thought was a whopper. Paul told them that the story was true. They believed Paul, but from that time on, no logger ever told another lie.

Paul took his camp to Utah to cut down the stonewood trees there. The men grew so tired, and their axes got so dull, that they almost gave up. In disgust, Paul himself started cutting down the trees. He worked so hard that he sweated tremendous drops of water, which later became Salt Lake.

His men, frightened by the flood Paul's sweat caused, ran away to Kansas. There everything was perfect. All anyone did was gamble and drink. One day, a duke planned a revolution against King Bourbon of Kansas. He had all the bars serve very strong drinks, and everyone but the duke and his friends fell down in a stupor. The duke, who wanted to get rid of drink and gambling forever, told all the men, including Paul's loggers, that they had sinned mightily. Paul finally turned up and forgave his men for running away. He also hitched Babe to Kansas and turned it over. He left Kansas flat and hid forever the wonderful cigarette grass, beervines, and whiskey trees.

One day Babe became ill. Johnny Inkslinger tried several cures. He took the camp to the West Coast, where they captured whales and fed Babe whale's milk, but the treatment did little good. Finally, Johnny whispered over and over in Babe's ear that Babe was really well. Johnny drank whiskey to keep his voice clear. After a few days, he fell in a faint. Babe drank some of the liquor and began to get well. Whiskey, not whale's milk, was the medicine for the Blue Ox.

Next the camp went to New Iowa, where Paul left them. The scenery was so beautiful that the men did nothing but write poetry. Paul had to come back and take them to the He-Man country to get them out of the habit. In the He-Man country, it was so cold in the wintertime that words froze in the air, and one could not hear them until they thawed out in the spring. The men grew so virile after a winter of that hard life that all they did was fight one another. One day, they stopped fighting because they seemed to be kneedeep in blood. After a while, Paul discovered that it was not blood but red rain which had fallen up through the earth from China.

After the rain from China, the gang moved into the Nowaday Valley. There Paul discovered that the men were singing about women, a subject he could dimly remember having heard mentioned before. Paul also had trouble with one of his workers, who discovered machines which could do what only Paul and the Blue Ox had been able to perform before. Paul was afraid that his days were over. At last women appeared near the camp, and Paul's men disappeared. Paul went to look for them and met a woman. He picked her up in his hand and looked at her. Completely unconcerned, she powdered her nose. Paul was dumbfounded. Late that night, he started out across the hills with his Blue Ox. He was never heard from again.

Critical Evaluation:

It has been the usual pattern that folk heroes have evolved over the course of centuries, slowly developing their unique characters and accumulating their colorful histories through the oral traditions passed on by generations of storytellers. In a country as young as America, however, this pattern could not be played out, and folk figures scarcely had time to be conceived in the popular imagination before they were overtaken by a rapidly moving history. For this reason, out of a gallery of local heroes which included Mike Fink, Sam Patch, Pecos Bill, and Cap'n Stormalong, only Paul Bunyan has carried his fame into the twentieth century in a considerable body of popular fiction and in some serious literature as well.

Actually, mention of Paul Bunyan did not appear in print until as recently as 1910; over the course of the next decade, only a few scattered references were to be found, including a tale told in a lumber company's advertising brochure, and a 1916 article published by TRANSACTIONS OF THE WISCONSIN ACADEMY OF SCIENCES, ARTS, AND LETTERS. The latter, a study written by K. Bernice Stewart and Homer A. Watt, is one of the few remaining authentic sources of the Bunyan legends, since the rash of best-selling lumberjack stories that followed altered the original tales in many essentials to increase their appeal to a widespread reading audience. These popular adaptations, which flourished from the 1920's on, not only expunged the most vivid logging language and local-color detail in favor of a more business-oriented vocabulary but also modified Paul's character to conform to modern standards of cleverness and success. Paul Bunyan also found his way into literature of a more serious nature, including the poetry of W. H. Auden, Robert Frost, and Carl Sandburg.

The Paul Bunyan tales are products of the American frontier spirit. The numerous stories of lumberjack feats share many common themes and features, including a glorification of strength and endurance in the face of great odds; an admiration of shrewdness and cleverness; a love of hilarious, high-spirited fun; and an incorrigible tendency toward wild exaggeration. Above all, the Paul Bunyan tales reflect man's primitive and universal impulse toward comic expression in the face of the grim realities of existence. Thus, the logger's exploits are based on very real dangers, be they log jams, forest fires, or mosquitoes; but Paul Bunyan's colossal strength and sharp Yankee wit and inventiveness surmount every obstacle. His foes are not only vanquished but made to appear ridiculous, and the listeners' fears are purged in healthy, hearty laughter.