1) A frame or float, made by laying pieces of timber across each other.--Johnson. In North America rafts are constructed of immense size, and comprise timber, boards, staves, &c. They are floated down from the interior to the tide waters, being propelled by the force of the current, assisted by large oars and sails, to their place of destination. The men employed on these rafts construct rude huts upon them, in which they often dwell for several weeks before arriving at the places where they are taken to pieces for shipping to foreign parts.
2) This term is also given to a large collection of timber and fallen trees, which, floating down the great rivers of the West, are arrested in their downward course by flats or shallow places. Here they accumulate, and sometimes block up the river for miles. The great raft on Red river extended twenty miles, and required an immense outlay of money to remove it in order to make the river navigable.
Gigantic wrecks of the primitive forests, tossed about by the invisible power of the current, as if they were straws, until, finding no rest, they are thrown upon some projecting point of land [on the Mississippi and other great Western rivers]. Here they lie rotting for miles, their dark forms frequently shooting into the air like writhing serpents, presenting one of the most desolate pictures to mind can conceive.--Thorpe, Backwoods.
3) A large quantity. Used only in low language.
We have killed Calhoun and Biddle; but there is a raft of fellows to put down yet.--Maj. Downing's Letters, p. 93.
We've shoals of shad, whole rafts of canvass-back ducks, and no end of terrapins.--Burton, Waggeries.
Among its notices to correspondents, an exchange paper says: "A raft of original articles are on the for next week." We hope none of them will prove mere lumber.--N. Y. Tribune.
TO RAFT
To transport on a raft.--Webster.