THE forests of America,
however slighted by man, must have been a great delight to God; for they
were the best He ever planted. The whole continent was a garden, and from
the beginning it seemed to be favored above all the other wild parks and
gardens of the globe. To prepare the ground, it was rolled and sifted in
seas with infinite loving deliberation and forethought, lifted into the
light, submerged and warmed over and over again, pressed and crumpled into
folds and ridges, mountains, and hills, subsoiled with heaving volcanic
fires, ploughed and ground and sculptured into scenery and soil with
glaciers and rivers, - every feature growing and changing from beauty to
beauty, higher and higher. And in the fullness of time it was planted in
groves, and belts, and broad, exuberant, mantling forests, with the largest,
most varied, most fruitful, and most beautiful trees in the world. Bright
seas made its border, with wave embroidery and icebergs; gray deserts were
outspread in the middle of it, mossy tundras on the north, savannas on the
south, and blooming prairies and plains; while lakes and rivers shone
through all the vast forests and openings, and happy birds and beasts gave
delightful animation. Everywhere, everywhere over all the blessed continent,
there were beauty and melody and kindly, wholesome, foodful abundance.
These forests were composed
of about five hurc1red species of trees, all of them in some way useful to
man, ranging in size from twenty- five feet in height and less than one foot
in diameter at the ground to four hundred feet in height and more than
twenty feet in diameter, - lordly monarchs proclaiming the gospel of beauty
like apostles. For many a century after the ice-ploughs were melted, nature
fed them and dressed them every day, - working like a man, a loving,
devoted, painstaking gardener; fingering every leaf and flower and mossy
furrowed bole; bending, trimming, modeling, balancing; painting them with
the loveliest colors; bringing over them now clouds with cooling shadows and
showers, now sunshine; fanning them with gentle winds and rustling their
leaves; exercising them in every fiber with storms, and pruning them;
loading them with flowers and fruit, loading them with snow, and ever making
them more beautiful as the years rolled by. Wide-branching oak and elm in
endless variety, walnut and maple, chestnut and beech, hex and locust,
touching limb to limb, spread a leafy translucent canopy along the coast of
the Atlantic over the wrinkled folds and ridges of the Alleghanies, - a
green billowy sea in summer, golden and purple in autumn, pearly gray like a
steadfast frozen mist of interlacing branches and sprays in leafless,
restful winter.
To the southward stretched
dark, level- topped cypresses in knobby, tangled swamps, grassy savannas in
the midst of them like lakes of light, groves of gay, sparkling spice-trees,
magnolias and palms, glossy-leaved and blooming and shining continually. To
the northward, over Maine and Ottawa, rose hosts of spiry, rosiny
evergreens, - white pine and spruce, hemlock and cedar, shoulder to
shoulder, laden with purple cones, their myriad needles sparkling and
shimmering, covering hills and swamps, rocky headlands and domes, ever
bravely aspiring and seeking the sky; the ground in their shade now
snow-clad and frozen, now mossy and flowery; beaver meadows here and there,
full of lilies and grass; lakes gleaming like eyes, and a silvery embroidery
of rivers and creeks watering and brightening all the vast glad wilderness.
Thence westward were oak and
elm, hickory and tupelo, gum and liriodendron, sassafras and ash, linden and
laurel, spreading on ever wider in glorious exuberance over the great
fertile basin of the Mississippi, over damp level bottoms, low dimpling
hollows, and round dotting hills, embosoming sunny prairies and cheery park
openings, half sunshine, half shade; while a dark wilderness of pines
covered the region around the Great Lakes. Thence still westward swept the
forests to right and left around grassy plains and deserts a thousand miles
wide: irrepressible hosts of spruce and pine, aspen and willow, nut-pine and
juniper, cactus and yucca, caring nothing for drought, extending undaunted
from mountain to mountain, over mesa and desert, to join the darkening
multitudes of pines that covered the high Rocky ranges and the glorious
forests along the coast of the moist and balmy Pacific, where new species of
pine, giant cedars and spruces, silver firs and sequoias, kings of their
race, growing close together like grass in a meadow, poised their brave
domes and spires in the sky, three hundred feet above the ferns and the
lilies that enameled the ground; towering serene through the long centuries,
preaching God's forestry fresh from heaven.
Here the forests reached
their highest development. Hence they went wavering northward over icy
Alaska, brave spruce and fir, poplar and birch, by the coasts and the
rivers, to within sight of the Arctic Ocean. American forests! the glory of
the world! Surveyed thus from the east to the west, from the north to the
south, they are rich beyond thought, immortal, immeasurable, enough and to
spare for every feeding, sheltering beast and bird, insect and son of Adam;
and nobody need have cared had there been no pines in Norway, no cedars and
deodars on Lebanon and the Himalayas, no vine-clad selvas in the basin of
the Amazon. With such variety, harmony, and triumphant exuberance, even
nature, it would seem, might have rested content with the forests of North
America, and planted no more.
So they appeared a few
centuries ago when they were rejoicing in wildness. The Indians with stone
axes could do them no more harm than could gnawing beavers and browsing
moose. Even the fires of the Indians and the fierce shattering lightning
seemed to work together only for good in clearing spots here and there for
smooth garden prairies, and openings for sunflowers seeking the light. But
when the steel axe of the white man rang out on the startled air their doom
was sealed. Every tree heard the bodeful sound, and pillars of smoke gave
the sign in the sky.
I suppose we need not go
mourning the buffaloes. In the nature of things they had to give place to
better cattle, though the change might have been made without barbarous
wickedness. Likewise many of nature's five hundred kinds of wild trees had
to make way for orchards and cornfields. In the settlement and civilization
of the country, bread more than timber or beauty was wanted; and in the
blindness of hunger, the early settlers, claiming Heaven as their guide,
regarded God's trees as only a larger kind of pernicious weeds, extremely
hard to get rid of. Accordingly, with no eye to the future, these pious
destroyers waged interminable forest wars; chips flew thick and fast; trees
in their beauty fell crashing by millions, smashed to confusion, and the
smoke of their burning has been rising to heaven more than two hundred
years. After the Atlantic coast from Maine to Georgia had been mostly
cleared and scorched into melancholy ruins, the overflowing multitude of
bread and money seekers poured over the Alleghanies into the fertile middle
West, spreading ruthless devastation ever wider and farther over the rich
valley of the Mississippi and the vast shadowy pine region about the Great
Lakes. Thence still westward, the invading horde of destroyers called
settlers made its fiery way over the broad Rocky Mountains, felling and
burning more fiercely than ever, until at last it has reached the wild side
of the continent, and entered the last of the great aboriginal forests on
the shores of the Pacific.
Surely, then, it should not
be wondered at that lovers of their country, bewailing its baldness, are now
crying aloud, "Save what is left of the forests!" Clearing has surely now
gone far enough; soon timber will be scarce, and not a grove will be left to
rest in or pray in. The remnant protected will yield plenty of timber, a
perennial harvest for every right use, without further diminution of its
area, and will continue to cover the springs of the rivers that rise in the
mountains and give irrigating waters to the dry valleys at their feet,
prevent wasting floods and be a blessing to everybody forever.
Every other civilized nation
in the world has been compelled to care for its forests, and so must we if
waste and destruction are not to go on to the bitter end, leaving America as
barren as Palestine or Spain. In its calmer moments, in the midst of
bewildering hunger and war and restless over-industry, Prussia has learned
that the forest plays an important part in human progress, and that the
advance in civilization only makes it more indispensable. It has, therefore,
as shown by Mr. Pinchot, refused to deliver its forests to more or less
speedy destruction by permitting them to pass into private ownership. But
the state woodlands are not allowed to lie idle. On the contrary, they are
made to produce as much timber as is possible without spoiling them. In the
administration of its forests, the state righteously considers itself bound
to treat them as a trust for the nation as a whole, and to keep in view the
common good of the people for all time.
In France no government
forests have been sold since 1870. On the other hand, about one half of the
fifty million francs spent on forestry has been given to engineering works,
to make the replanting of denuded areas possible. The disappearance of the
forests in the first place, it is claimed, may be traced in most cases
directly to mountain pasturage. The provisions of the Code concerning
private woodlands are substantially these: no private owner may clear his
woodlands without giving notice to the government at least four months in
advance, and the forest service may forbid the clearing on the following
grounds, - to maintain the soil on mountains, to defend the soil against
erosion and flooding by rivers or torrents, to insure the existence of
springs or watercourses, to protect the dunes and seashore, etc. A
proprietor who has cleared his forest without permission is subject to heavy
fine, and in addition may be made to replant the cleared area.
In Switzerland, after many
laws like our own had been found wanting, the Swiss forest school was
established in 1865, and soon after the federal forest law was enacted,
which is binding over nearly two thirds of the country. Under its
provisions, the cantons must appoint and pay the number of suitably educated
foresters required for the fulfillment of the forest law; and in the
organization of a normally stocked forest, the object of first importance
must be the cutting each year of an amount of timber equal to the total
annual increase, and no more.
The Russian government passed
a law in 1888, declaring that clearing is forbidden in protected forests,
and is allowed in others "only when its effects will not be to disturb the
suitable relations which should exist between forest and agricultural
lands."
Even Japan is ahead of us in
the management of her forests. They cover an area of about twenty-nine
million acres. The feudal lords valued the woodlands, and enacted vigorous
protective laws; and when, in the latest civil war, the Mikado government
destroyed the feudal system, it declared the forests that had belonged to
the feudal lords to be the property of the state, promulgated a forest law
binding on the whole kingdom, and founded a school of forestry in Tokio. The
forest service does not rest satisfied with the present proportion of
woodland, but looks to planting the best forest trees it can find in any
country, if likely to be useful and to thrive in Japan.
In India systematic forest
management was begun about forty years ago, under difficulties - presented
by the character of the country, the prevalence of running fires, opposition
from lumbermen, settlers, etc. - not unlike those which confront us now. Of
the total area of government forests, perhaps seventy million acres,
fifty-five million acres have been brought under the control of the forestry
department, - a larger area than that of all our national parks and
reservations. The chief aims of the administration are effective protection
of the forests from fire, an efficient system of regeneration, and cheap
transportation of the forest products; the results so far have been most
beneficial and encouraging.
It seems, therefore, that
almost every civilized nation can give us a lesson on the management and
care of forests. So far our Government has done nothing effective with its
forests, though the best in the world, but is like a rich and foolish
spendthrift who has inherited a magnificent estate in perfect order, and
then has left his fields and meadows, forests and parks, to be sold and
plundered and wasted at will, depending on their inexhaustible abundance.
Now it is plain that the forests are not inexhaustible, and that quick
measures must be taken if ruin is to be avoided. Year by year the remnant is
growing smaller before the axe and fire, while the laws in existence provide
neither for the protection of the timber from destruction nor for its use
where it is most needed.
As is shown by Mr. E. A.
Bowers, formerly Inspector of the Public Land Service, the foundation of our
protective policy, which has never protected, is an act passed March 1,
1817, which authorized the Secretary of the Navy to reserve lands producing
live-oak and cedar, for the sole purpose of supplying timber for the navy of
the United States. An extension of this law by the passage of the act of
March 2, 1831, provided that if any person should cut live- oak or red cedar
trees or other timber from the lands of the United States for any other
purpose than the construction of the navy, such person should pay a fine not
less than triple the value of the timber cut, and be imprisoned for a period
not exceeding twelve months. Upon this old law, as Mr. Bowers points out,
having the construction of a wooden navy in view, the United States
Government has to-day chiefly to rely in protecting its timber throughout
the arid regions of the West, where none of the naval timber which the law
had in mind is to he found.
By the act of .June 3, 1878,
timber can he taken from public lands not subject to entry under any
existing laws except for minerals, by bona fide residents of the Rocky
Mountain States and Territories and the Dakotas. Under the timber and stone
act, of the same date, land in the Pacific States and Nevada, valuable
mainly for timber, and unfit for cultivation if the timber is removed, can
be purchased for two dollars and a half an acre, under certain restrictions.
By the act of March 3, 1875, all land-grant and right-of-way railroads are
authorized to take timber from the public lands adjacent to their lines for
construction purposes; and they have taken it with a vengeance, destroying a
hundred times more than they have used, mostly by allowing fires to run in
the woods. The settlement laws, under which a settler may enter lands
valuable for timber as well as for agriculture, furnish another means of
obtaining title to public timber.
With the exception of the
timber culture act, under which, in consideration of planting a few acres of
seedlings, settlers on the treeless plains got one hundred and sixty acres
each, the above is the only legislation aiming to protect and promote the
planting of forests. In no other way than under some one of these laws can a
citizen of the United States make any use of the public forests. To show the
results of the timber-planting act, it need only he stated that of the
thirty-eight million acres entered under it, less than one million acres
have been patented. This means that less than fifty thousand acres have been
planted with stunted, woebegone, almost hopeless sprouts of trees, while at
the same time the Government has allowed millions, of acres of the grandest
forest trees to be stolen or destroyed, or sold for nothing. Under the act
of June 3, 1578, settlers in Colorado and the Territories were allowed to
cut timber for mining and educational purposes from mineral land, which in
the practical West means both cutting and burning anywhere and everywhere,
for any purpose, on any sort of public land. Thus, the prospector, the
miner, and mining and railroad companies are allowed by law to take all the
timber they like for their mines and roads, and the forbidden settler, if
there are no mineral lands near his farm or stock-ranch, or none that he
knows of, can hardly be expected to forbear taking what he needs wherever he
can find it. Timber is as necessary as bread, and no scheme of management
failing to recognize and properly provide for this want can possibly be
maintained. In any case, it will be hard to teach the pioneers that it is
wrong to steal government timber. Taking from the Government is with them
the same as taking from nature, and their consciences flinch no more in
cutting timber from the wild forests than in drawing water from a lake or
river. As for reservation and protection of forests, it seems as silly and
needless to them as protection and reservation of the ocean would be, both
appearing to be boundless and inexhaustible.
The special land agents
employed by the General Land Office to protect the public domain from timber
depredations are supposed to collect testimony to sustain prosecution and to
superintend such prosecution on behalf of the Government, which is
represented by the district attorneys. But timber thieves of the Western
class are seldom convicted, for the good reason that most of the jurors who
try such cases are themselves as guilty as those on trial. The effect of the
present confused, discriminating, and unjust system has been to place almost
the whole population in opposition to the Government; and as conclusive of
its futility, as shown by Mr. Bowers, we need only state that during the
seven years from 1881 to 1887 inclusive, the value of the timber reported
stolen from the government lands was $36,719,935, and the amount recovered
was $478,073, while the cost of the services of special agents alone was
$455,000, to which must be added the expense of the trials. Thus for nearly
thirty-seven million dollars' worth of timber the Government got less than
nothing; and the value of that consumed by running fires during the same
period, without benefit even to thieves, was probably over two hundred
millions of dollars. Land Commissioners and Secretaries of the Interior have
repeatedly called attention to this ruinous state of affairs, and asked
Congress to enact the requisite legislation for reasonable reform. But,
busied with tariffs, etc., Congress has given no heed to these or other
appeals, and our forests, the most valuable and the most destructible of all
the natural resources of the country, are being robbed and burned faster
than ever. The annual appropriation for so-called "protection service" is
hardly sufficient to keep twenty- five timber agents in the field, and as
far as efficient protection of timber is concerned the agents themselves
might as well be timber. [A change for the better, compelled by public
opinion, is now going on.]
That a change from robbery
and ruin to a permanent rational policy is urgently needed nobody with the
slightest knowledge of American forests will deny. In the East and along the
northern Pacific coast, where the rainfall is abundant, comparatively few
care keenly what becomes of the trees so long as fuel and lumber are not
noticeably dear. But in the Rocky Mountains and California and Arizona,
where the forests are inflammable, and where the fertility of the lowlands
depends upon irrigation, public opinion is growing stronger every year in
favor of permanent protection by the Federal Government of all the forests
that cover the sources of the streams. Even lumbermen in these regions, long
accustomed to steal, are now willing and anxious to buy lumber for their
mills under cover of law: some possibly from a late second growth of
honesty, but most, especially the small mill-owners, simply because it no
longer pays to steal where all may not only steal, but also destroy, and in
particular because it costs about as much to steal timber for one mill as
for ten, and, therefore, the ordinary lumberman can no longer compete with
the large corporations. Many of the miners find that timber is already
becoming scarce and dear on the denuded hills around their mills, and they,
too, are asking for protection of forests, at least against fire. The
slow-going, unthrifty farmers, also, are beginning to realize that when the
timber is stripped from the mountains the irrigating streams dry up in
summer, and are destructive in winter; that soil, scenery, and everything
slips off with the trees: so of course they are coming into the ranks of
tree-friends.
Of all the magnificent
coniferous forests around the Great Lakes, once the property of the United
States, scarcely any belong to it now. They have disappeared in lumber and
smoke, mostly smoke, and the Government got not one cent forr them; only the
land they were growing on was considered valuable, and two and a half
dollars an acre was charged for it. Here and there in the Southern States
there are still considerable areas of timbered government land, but these
are comparatively unimportant. Only the forests of the West are significant
in size and value, and these, although still great, are rapidly vanishing.
Last summer, of the unrivaled redwood forests of the Pacific Coast Range,
the United States Forestry Commission could not find a single
quarter-section that remained in the hands of the Government. [The State of
California recently appropriated two hundred and fifty thousand dollars to
buy a block of redwood land near Santa Cruz for a state park. A much larger
national park should be made in Humboldt or Mendocino County.]
Under the timber and stone
act of 1878, which might well have been called the "dust and ashes act," any
citizen of the United States could take up one hundred and sixty acres of
timber land, and by paying two dollars and a half an acre for it obtain
title. There was some virtuous effort made with a view to limit the
operations of the act by requiring that the purchaser should make affidavit
that he was entering the land exclusively for his own use, and by not
allowing any association to enter more than one hundred and sixty acres.
Nevertheless, under this act wealthy corporations have fraudulently obtained
title to from ten thousand to twenty thousand acres or more. The plan was
usually as follows: A mill company, desirous of getting title to a large
body of redwood or sugar- pine land, first blurred the eyes and ears of the
land agents, and then hired men to enter the land they wanted, and
immediately deed it to the company after a nominal compliance with the law;
false swearing in the wilderness against the Government being held of no
account. In one case which came under the observation of Mr. Bowers, it was
the practice of a lumber company to hire the entire crew of every vessel
which might happen to touch at any port in the redwood belt, to enter one
hundred and sixty acres each and immediately deed the land to the company,
in consideration of the company's paying all expenses and giving the jolly
sailors fifty dollars apiece for their trouble.
By such methods have our
magnificent redwoods and much of the sugar-pine forests of the Sierra Nevada
been absorbed by foreign and resident capitalists. Uncle Sam is not often
called a fool in business matters, yet he has sold millions of acres of
timber land at two dollars and a half an acre on which a single tree was
worth more than a hundred dollars. But this priceless land has been
patented, and nothing can be done now about the crazy bargain. According to
the everlasting law of righteousness, even the fraudulent buyers at less
than one per cent of its value are making little or nothing, on account of
fierce competition. The trees are felled, and about half of each giant is
left on the ground to be converted into smoke and ashes; the better half is
sawed into choice lumber and sold to citizens of the United States or to
foreigners: thus robbing the country of its glory and impoverishing it
without right benefit to anybody, - a bad, black business from beginning to
end.
The redwood is one of the few
conifers that sprout from the stump and roots, and it declares itself
willing to begin immediately to repair the damage of the lumberman and also
that of the forest-burner. As soon as a redwood is cut down or burned it
sends up a crowd of eager, hopeful shoots, which, if allowed to grow, would
in a few decades attain a height of a hundred feet, and the strongest of
them would finally become giants as great as the original tree. Gigantic
second and third growth trees are found in the redwoods, forming magnificent
temple-like circles around charred ruins more than a thousand years old. But
not one denuded acre in a hundred is allowed to raise a new forest growth.
On the contrary, all the brains, religion, and superstition of the
neighborhood are brought into play to prevent a new growth. The sprouts from
the roots and stumps are cut off again and again, with zealous concern as to
the best time and method of making death sure. In the clearings of one of
the largest mills on the coast we found thirty men at work, last summer,
cutting off redwood shoots "in the dark of the moon," claiming that all the
stumps and roots cleared at this auspicious time would send up no more
shoots. Anyhow, these vigorous, almost immortal trees are killed at last,
and black stumps are now their only monuments over most of the chopped and
burned areas.
The redwood is the glory of
the Coast Range. It extends along the western slope, in a nearly continuous
belt about ten miles wide, from beyond the Oregon boundary to the south of
Santa Cruz, a distance of nearly four hundred miles, and in massive,
sustained grandeur and closeness of growth surpasses all the other timber
woods of the world. Trees from ten to fifteen feet in diameter and three
hundred feet high are not uncommon, and a few attain a height of three
hundred and fifty feet or even four hundred, with a diameter at the base of
fifteen to twenty feet or more, while the ground beneath them is a garden of
fresh, exuberant ferns, lilies, gaultheria, and rhododendron. This grand
tree, Sequoia sempervirens, is surpassed in size only by its near relative,
Sequoia gigantea, or Big Tree, of the Sierra Nevada, if, indeed, it is
surpassed. The sempervirens is certainly the taller of the two. The gigantea
attains a greater girth, and is heavier, more noble in port, and more
sublimely beautiful. These two sequoias are all that are known to exist in
the world, though in former geological times the genus was common and had
many species. The redwood is restricted to the Coast Range, and the Big Tree
to the Sierra.
As timber the redwood is too
good to live. The largest sawmills ever built are busy along its seaward
border, "with all the modern improvements," but so immense is the yield per
acre it will be long ere the supply is exhausted. The Big Tree is also, to
some extent, being made into lumber. It is far less abundant than the
redwood, and is, fortunately, less accessible, extending along the western
flank of the Sierra in a partially interrupted belt, about two hundred and
fifty miles long, at a height of from four to eight thousand feet above the
sea. The enormous logs, too heavy to handle, are blasted into manageable
dimensions with gunpowder. A large portion of the best timber is thus
shattered and destroyed, and, with the huge, knotty tops, is left in ruins
for tremendous fires that kill every tree within their range, great and
small. Still, the species is not in danger of extinction. It has been
planted and is flourishing over a great part of Europe, and magnificent
sections of the aboriginal forests have been reserved as national and state
parks, the Mariposa Sequoia Grove, near Yosemite, managed by the State of
California, and the General Grant and Sequoia National Parks on the Kings,
Kaweah, and Tule rivers, efficiently guarded by a small troop of United
States cavalry under the direction of the Secretary of the Interior. But
there is not a single specimen of the redwood in any national park. Only by
gift or purchase, so far as I know, can the Government get back into its
possession a single acre of this wonderful forest.
The legitimate demands on the
forests that have passed into private ownership, as well as those in the
hands of the Government, are increasing every year with the rapid settlement
and upbuilding of the country, but the methods of lumbering are as yet
grossly wasteful. In most mills only the best portions of the best trees are
used, while the ruins are left on the ground to feed great fires, which kill
much of what is left of the less desirable timber, together with the
seedlings, on which the permanence of the forest depends. Thus every mill is
a center of destruction far more severe from waste and fire than from use.
The same thing is true of the mines, which consume and destroy indirectly
immense quantities of timber with their innumerable fires, accidental or set
to make open ways, and often without regard to how far they run. The
prospector deliberately sets fires to clear off the woods just where they
are densest, to lay the rocks bare and make the discovery of mines easier.
Sheep-owners and their shepherds also set fires everywhere through the woods
in the fall, to facilitate the march of their countless flocks the next
summer, and perhaps in some places to improve the pasturage. The axe is not
yet at the root of every tree, but the sheep is, or was before the national
parks were established and guarded by the military, the only effective and
reliable arm of the Government free from the blight of politics. Not only do
the shepherds, at the driest time of the year, set fire to everything that
will burn, but the sheep consume every green leaf, not sparing even the
young conifers, when they are in a starving condition from crowding, and
they rake and dibble the loose soil of the mountain sides for the spring
floods to wash away, and thus at last leave the ground barren.
Of all the destroyers that
infest the woods, the shake-maker seems the happiest. Twenty or thirty years
ago, shakes, a kind of long, board-like shingles split with a mallet and a
frow, were in great demand for covering barns and sheds, and many are used
still in preference to common shingles, especially those made from the
sugar-pine, which do not warp or crack in the hottest sunshine. Drifting
adventurers in California, after harvest and threshing are over, oftentimes
meet to discuss their plans for the winter, and their talk is interesting.
Once, in a company of this kind, I heard a man say, as he peacefully smoked
his pipe: "Boys, as soon as this job's done I'm goin' into the duck
business. There's big money in it, and your grub costs nothing. Tule Joe
made five hundred dollars last winter on mallard and teal. Shot 'em on the
Joaquin, tied 'em in dozens by the neck, and shipped 'em to San Francisco.
And when he was tired wading in the sloughs and touched with rheumatiz, he
just knocked off on ducks, and went to the Contra Costa hills for dove and
quail. It's a mighty good business, and you're your own boss, and the whole
thing's fun."
Another of the company, a
bushy-bearded fellow, with a trace of brag in his voice, drawled out: "Bird
business is well enough for some, but bear is my game, with a deer and a
California lion thrown in now and then for change. There's always market for
bear grease, and sometimes you can sell the hams. They're good as hog hams
any day. And you are your own boss in my business, too, if the bears ain't
too big and too many for you. Old grizzlies I despise, - they want cannon to
kill 'em; but the blacks and browns are beauties for grease, and when once I
get 'em just right, and draw a bead on 'em, I fetch 'em every time." Another
said he was going to catch up a lot of mustangs as soon as the rains set in,
hitch them to a gang- plough, and go to farming on the San Joaquin plains
for wheat. But most preferred the shake business, until something more
profitable and as sure could be found, with equal comfort and independence.
With a cheap mustang or mule
to carry a pair of blankets, a sack of flour, a few pounds of coffee, and an
axe, a frow, and a cross-cut saw, the shake-maker ascends the mountains to
the pine belt where it is most accessible, usually by some mine or mill
road. Then he strikes off into the virgin wood, where the sugar pine, king
of all the hundred species of pines in the world in size and beauty, towers
on the open sunny slopes of the Sierra in the fullness of its glory.
Selecting a favorable spot for a cabin near a meadow with a stream, he
unpacks his animal and stakes it out on the meadow. Then he chops into one
after another of the pines, until he finds one that he feels sure will split
freely, cuts this down, saws off a section four feet long, splits it, and
from this first cut, perhaps seven feet in diameter, he gets shakes enough
for a cabin and its furniture, - walls, roof, door, bedstead, table, and
stool. Besides his labor, only a few pounds of nails dre required. Sapling
poles form the frame of the airy building, usually about six feet by eight
in size, on which the shakes are nailed, with the edges overlapping. A few
bolts from the same section that the shakes were made from are split into
square sticks and built up to form a chimney, the inside and interspaces
being plastered and filled in with mud. Thus, with abun- dance of fuel,
shelter and comfort by his own fireside are secured. Then he goes to work
sawing and splitting for the market, tying the shakes in bundles of fifty or
a hundred. They are four feet long, four inches wide, and about one fourth
of an inch thick. The first few thousands he sells or trades at the nearest
mill or store, getting provisions in exchange. Then he advertises, in
whatever way he can, that he has excellent sugar-pine shakes for sale, easy
of access and cheap.
Only the lower, perfectly
clear, free-splitting portions of the giant pines are used, - perhaps ten to
twenty feet from a tree two hundred and fifty in height; all the rest is
left a mass of ruins, to rot or to feed the forest fires, while thousands
are hacked deeply and rejected in proving the grain. Over nearly all of the
more accessible slopes of the Sierra and Cascade mountains in southern
Oregon, at a height of from three to six thousand feet above the sea, and
for a distance of about six hundred miles, this waste and confusion extends.
Happy robbers! dwelling in the most beautiful woods, in the most salubrious
climate, breathing delightful odors both day and night, drinking cool living
water, - roses and lilies at their feet in the spring, shedding fragrance
and ringing hells as if cheering them on in their desolating work. There is
none to say them nay. They buy no land, pay no taxes, dwell in a paradise
with no forbidding angel either from Washington or from heaven. Every one of
the frail shake shanties is a center of dstruetion, and the extent of the
ravages wrought in this quiet way is in the aggregate enormous.
It is not generally known
that, notwithstanding the immense quantities of timber cut every year for
foreign and home markets and mines, from five to ten times as much is
destroyed as is used, chiefly by running forest fires that only the Federal
Government can stop. Travelers through the West in summer are not likely to
forget the firework displayed along the various railway tracks. Thoreau,
when contemplating the destruction of the forests on the east side of the
continent, said that soon the country would be so bald that every man would
have to grow whiskers to hide its nakedness, but he thanked God that at
least the sky was safe. had lie gone West lie would have found out that the
sky was not safe; for all through the summer months, over most of the
mountain regions, the smoke of mill and forest fires is so thick and black
that no sunbeam can pierce it. The whole sky, with clouds, sun, moon, and
stars, is simply blotted out. There is no real sky and no scenery. Not a
mountain is left in the landscape. At least none is in sight from the
lowlands, and they all might as well be on the moon, as far as scenery is
concerned.
The half-dozen
transcontinental railroad companies advertise the beauties of their lines in
gorgeous many-colored folders, each claiming its as the "scenic route." "The
route of superior desolation" -the smoke, dust, and ashes route -would be a
more truthful description. Every train rolls on through dismal smoke and
barbarous, melancholy ruins; and the companies might well cry in their
advertisements: "Come! travel our way. Ours is the blackest. It is the only
genuine Erebus route. The sky is black and the ground is black, and on
either side there is a continuous border of black stumps and logs and
blasted trees appealing to heaven for help as if still half alive, and their
mute eloquence is most interestingly touching. The blackness is perfect. On
account of the superior skill of our workmen, advantages of climate, and the
kind of trees, the charring is generally deeper along our line, and the
ashes are deeper, and the confusion and desolation displayed can never be
rivaled. No other route on this continent so fully illustrates the
abomination of desolation." Such a claim would be reasonable, as each seems
the worst, whatever route you chance to take.
Of course a way had to be
cleared through the woods. But the felled timber is not worked up into
firewood for the engines and into lumber for the company's use; it is left
lying in vulgar confusion, and is fired from time to time by sparks from
locomotives or by the workmen camping along the line. The fires, whether
accidental or set, are allowed to run into the woods as far as they may,
thus assuring comprehensive destruction. The directors of a line that
guarded against fires, and cleared a clean gap edged with living trees, and
fringed and mantled with the grass and flowers and beautiful seedlings that
are ever ready and willing to spring up, might justly boast of the beauty of
their road; for nature is always ready to heal every scar. But there is no
such road on the western side of the continent. Last summer, in the Rocky
Mountains, I saw six fires started by sparks from a locomotive within a
distance of three miles, and nobody was in sight to prevent them from
spreading. They might run into the adjacent forests and burn the timber from
hundreds of square miles; not a man in the State would care to spend an hour
in fighting them, as long as his own fences and buildings were not
threatened.
Notwithstanding all the waste
and use which have been going on unchecked like a storm for more than two
centuries, it is not yet too late - though it is high time - for the
Government to begin a rational administration of its forests. About seventy
million acres it still owns, - enough for all the country, if wisely used.
These residual forests are generally on mountain slopes, just where they are
doing the most good, and where their removal would be followed by the
greatest number of evils; the lands they cover are too rocky and high for
agriculture, and can never be made as valuable for any other crop as for the
present crop of trees. It has been shown over and over again that if these
mountains were to be stripped of their trees and underbrush, and kept bare
and sod- less by hordes of sheep and the innumerable fires the shepherds
set, besides those of the milimen, prospectors, shake-makers, and all sorts
of adventurers, both lowlands and mountains would speedily become little
better than deserts, compared with their present beneficent fertility.
During heavy rainfalls and while the winter accumulations of snow were
melting, the larger streams would swell into destructive torrents, cutting
deep, rugged-edged gullies, carrying away the fertile humus and soil as well
as sand and rocks, filling up and overflowing their lower channels, and
covering the lowland fields with raw detritus. Drought and barrenness would
follow.
In their natural condition,
or under wise management, keeping out destructive sheep, preventing fires,
selecting the trees that should be cut for lumber, and preserving the young
ones and the shrubs and sod of herbaceous vegetation, these forests would be
a never failing fountain of wealth and beauty. The cool shades of the forest
give rise to moist beds and currents of air, and the sod of grasses and the
various flowering plants and shrubs thus fostered, together with the network
and sponge of tree roots, absorb and hold back the rain and the waters from
melting snow, compelling them to ooze and percolate and flow gently through
the soil in streams that never dry. All the pine needles and rootlets and
blades of grass, and the fallen, decaying trunks of trees, are dams, storing
the bounty of the clouds and dispensing it in perennial life-giving streams,
instead of allowing it to gather suddenly and rush headlong in short-lived
devastating floods. Every- 'body on the dry side of the continent is begin-
fling to find this out, and, in view of the waste going on, is growing more
and more anxious for government protection. The outcries we hear against
forest reservations come mostly from thieves who are wealthy and steal
timber by wholesale. They have so long been allowed to steal and destroy in
peace that any impediment to forest robbery is denounced as a cruel and
irreligious interference with "vested rights," likely to endanger the repose
of all ungodly welfare.
Gold, gold, gold! How strong
a voice that metal has!
"O wae for the siller, it is
sae preva'lin'!"
Even in Congress a sizable
chunk of gold, carefully concealed, will outtalk and outfight all the nation
on a subject like forestry, well smothered in ignorance, and in which the
money interests of only a few are conspicuously involved. Tinder these
circumstances, the bawling, blethering oratorical stuff drowns the voice of
God himself. Yet the dawn of a new day in forestry is breaking. Honest
citizens see that only the rights of the Government, are being trampled, not
those of the settlers. Only what belongs to all alike is reserved, and every
acre that is left should be held together under the Federal Government as a
basis for a general policy of administration for the public good. The people
will not always be deceived by selfish opposition, whether from lumber and
mining corporations or from sheepmen and prospectors, however cunningly
brought forward underneath fables and gold.
Emerson says that things
refuse to be mismanaged long. An exception would seem to be found in the
case of our forests, which have been mismanaged rather long, and now come
desperately near being like smashed eggs and spilt milk. Still, in the long
run the world does not move backward. The wonderful advance made in the last
few years, in creating four national parks in the West, and thirty forest
reservations, embracing nearly forty million acres; and in the planting of
the borders of streets and highways and spacious parks in all the great
cities, to satisfy the natural taste and hunger for landscape beauty and
righteousness that God has put, in some measure, into every human being and
animal, shows the trend of awakening public opinion. The making of the
far-famed New York Central Park was opposed by even good men, with misguided
pluck, perseverance, and ingenuity; but straight right won its way, and now
that park is appreciated. So we confidently believe it will be with our
great national parks and forest reservations. There will be a period of
indifference on the part of the rich, sleepy with wealth, and of the toiling
millions, sleepy with poverty, most of whom never saw a forest; a period of
screaming protest and objection from the plunderers, who are as
unconscionable and enterprising as Satan. But light is surely coming, and
the friends of destruction will preach and bewail in vain.
The United States Government
has always been proud of the welcome it has extended to good men of every
nation, seeking freedom and homes and bread. Let them be welcomed still as
nature welcomes them, to the woods as well as to the prairies and plains. No
place is too good for good men, and still there is room. They are invited to
heaven, and may well be allowed in America. Every place is made better by
them. Let them be as free to pick gold and gems from the hills, to cut and
hew, dig and plant, for homes and bread, as the birds are to pick berries
from the wild bushes, and moss and leaves for nests. The ground will be glad
to feed them, and the pines will come down from the mountains for their
homes as willingly as the cedars came from Lebanon for Solomon's temple. Nor
will the woods be the worse for this use, or their benign influences be
diminished any more than the sun is diminished by shining. Mere destroyers,
however, tree-killers, wool and mutton men, spreading death and confusion in
the fairest groves and gardens ever planted, —let the Government hasten to
cast them out and make an end of them. For it must be told again and again,
and be burningly borne in mind, that just now, while protective measures are
being deliberated languidly, destruction and use are speeding on faster and
farther every day. The axe and saw are insanely busy, chips are flying thick
as snowflakes, and every summer thousands of acres of priceless forests,
with their underbrush, soil, springs, climate, scenery, and religion, are
vanishing away in clouds of smoke, while, except in the national parks, not
one forest guard is employed.
All sorts of local laws and
regulations have been tried and found wanting, and the costly lessons of our
own experience, as well as that of every civilized nation, show conclusively
that the fate of the remnant of our forests is in the hands of the Federal
Government, and that if the remnant is to be saved at all, it must be saved
quickly.
Any fool can destroy trees.
They cannot run away; and if they could, they would still be destroyed, -
chased and hunted down as long as fun or a dollar could be got out of their
bark hides, branching horns, or magnificent bole backbones. Few that fell
trees plant them; nor would planting avail much towards getting back
anything like the noble primeval forests. During a man's life only saplings
can be grown, in the place of the old trees - tens of centuries old - that
have been destroyed. It took more than three thousand years to make some of
the trees in these Western woods, trees that are still standing in perfect
strength and beauty, waving and singing in the mighty forests of the Sierra.
Through all the wonderful, eventful centuries since Christ's time - and long
before that -God has cared for these trees, saved them from drought,
disease, avalanches, and a thousand straining, leveling tempests and floods;
but he cannot save them from fools, - only Uncle Sam can do that.
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