40 AMERICAN FORESTRY 



They believe in taxation that will enable a well trained and efficient force 

 to be oi'ganized and maintained in each state, and endowed with police powers 

 for the protection of the forests. 



They believe the interests are so great and so identical that settlers, 

 lumbermen, manufacturers and railways, and every other interest should 

 unite in a plan to which all can work, which would be harmful to no interest 

 but beneficial to all. 



THE LOST TRAIL 



While the drizzle falls on the slimy pavement, swelling 



The yellow gutters' flow, 

 And the ways are dense with the hosts of buying, selling. 



And hurrying to and fro, 

 I know that out in the north the winds are crying 

 Round the willowed shores of the long white lakes outlying. 

 And the black pine woods where my old lost friends are dwelling. 



And the splendor of the snow. 



I know that mysterious land of wood and river 



Where the half-breed hunters range. 

 The snow wraiths dancing upon the hill slopes ever. 



The gray sun, low and strange, 

 The bull moose skulking through windrow and through hollow, 

 The creak and crunch of raquettes where the trackers follow, 

 The dark spruce shades where the forest dreams forever, 



But never dreams of change. 



A snowshoe track leads up from the swamp and over. 



Where the otter trappers passed. 

 To the drifted winter hut in the hemlock cover 



That shields it from the blast; 

 Are you there, Pierre, Gaultier, as when we together. 

 Free in the face of the grim Canadian weather. 

 Learned the changeless spell of the north to hold and love her. 



And to turn to her at the last? 



The snowstorm blindly drives through the woods to smother 



The ancient trail I knew ; 

 The track we blazed is lost, and never other 



Has marked that blind way through; 

 But the same great roar through the leagues of branches sweeping 

 Wakes the desire of a homesick heart that has long been sleeping; 

 Oh, dark north woods, wild love and ruthless mother, 



I call, I cry to you! 



F. L. Pollock in the Atlantic, May, 1901. 



I 



