sawyer

This may truly be called an American word; for no country without a Mississippi and Missouri could produce a sawyer.

Sawyers are formed by trees, which, growing on the banks of the river, become undermined by the current, and fall into the stream. They are then swept away by the current, with the branches partly above water, rising and falling with the waves; whence the name of sawyer. They are extremely dangerous to steamboats, which sometimes run foul of them, and are either disabled or sunk to the bottom.