No. in.] S13 



i'&Ty of the Hudson wliicli flows through the town of Minerva. 

 The expense of transporting the pine and sprucOj was sixty cents 

 per log, and that for the hemlock, 40 cents. An additional number 

 of 25,000 logs were transported during the same period to Glen's 

 Falls, from the more remote western districts of Minerva, and at 

 abont the same expenditure. These logs are floated singly or in 

 rafts to mills at that place, and are there manufacturiid for the 

 southern market. In addition to this immense exportation, there 

 was sawed in the town of Schroon'an aggregate of about 600,000 

 pieces of lumber, measuring more than nine millions of feet. 

 This enormous consumption of timber has nearly exhausted the 

 primitive forest, and the business may be regarded as approach- 

 ing its termination. It can scarcely be conceived, when in the 

 summer solstice we perceive a tiny stream standing in pools along 

 the steeps of a mountain, that a few months before the largest 

 logs had been transported upon its flood. 



4 



Potashes. — While the county was passing through its transi- 

 tion from a primitive state to cultivation, the forest yielded a 

 highly lucrative and available resource, in the manufacture of 

 potash. Prohibited exportation by the non-intercourse policy of 

 our own government, this traiSc was illicit ; but, stimulated by 

 the exorbitant prices which the exigencies of the British af- 

 fairs attached to the article in the Canadian market, an immense 

 quantity found its way from northern New- York Into Montreal. 

 In the year 1808, and about that period, ])otash commanded in 

 Canada, |300, when the usual price had rauged from $100 to 

 f 120 per ton. This manufacture occupied nearly the whole 

 population in its various connections, while the excitement ex- 

 isted, whibh was alone terminated, by the (inal declaration of war, 

 in 1812. 



The manufacturt* ot potash existed to a considerable extent, 

 within tlie last twenty- live yemy in some sections of KSsex county, 

 but as a distinct occupation is now abandoned. The vast accu- 

 mulations of leached ashes about the ruins of the ashtries, wit- 

 ness the foruicr magnitude of this business, and are proving, 

 where they occur, iuvaluable depuaits of a highly fertilizing ma- 

 terial to oui* farmers. As an appliance to their light and sandy 



