BEGINNINGS OF LUMBERING. 11 



Hemlock, or spruce grew unmixed in pure stands or "clumps." 

 Along the river valleys where the soil was rich and dark with alluvial 

 deposits, the more valuable hardwoods — White Oak, White Ash, 

 Black Cherry, and Black Walnut — predominated. Maple, Beech, and 

 birch grew everywhere, on mountain and plain; but there was no 

 Chestnut or oak on the great northern plateau, and there is none there 

 now. 



Until recent } r ears lumbermen paid but little attention to the hard- 

 woods, and but few were cut except for cooperage, furniture, or 

 pyroligneous acid — industries which until quite recently were never 

 prominent in this State. 



As fast as the lumbermen took out the pine and Hemlock, however, 

 the great hardwood forests that remained fell beneath the axes of 

 advancing farmers, and disappeared in fire and smoke. 



BEGINNINGS OF LUMBERING. 



The evolution of the sawmill is largely due to the conditions and 

 demands of the lumber industry in America. Our early colonists 

 built and operated sawmills one hundred years or more before there 

 was one in England. This method of manufacturing was not, how- 

 ever, absolutely necessary. The wainscotings, paneled ceilings, cabi- 

 network, and Chippendale furniture which made famous the stately 

 homes of England were constructed in all their perfection long before 

 the first sawmill was erected in that country. The men who founded 

 the Massachusetts Bay Colony, together with the emigrants who fol- 

 lowed them for a hundred years, had never seen a sawmill in their 

 native land. So, if a sawmill did not always appear in a colony 

 soon after the first settlement, it does not follow that no lumbering 

 was carried on. They had other means of manufacturing the forest 

 products. 



The pioneer of the wilderness, with ax and wedge, could easily 

 supply his few wants in this respect; but in the villages which sprang 

 up at each important trading post there was a demand for building 

 material and ship-timber which the villagers themselves could not 

 well supply. Most of them were engaged in better paying pursuits 

 or professions; hence, some labor found employment in manufactur- 

 ing lumber by hand-power. The large timbers for house and ship 

 building were hewn out and squared with a broadax by men who 

 were experts with this tool. The planks, boards, and boat sides were 

 mostly made by pit-sawing. The latter was a common industry in 

 the old country; and one reason why England had no sawmills until 

 after 1768 was because the mobs, always opposed to labor-saving 

 machinery, destroyed the first' ones as fast as erected through fear 

 that the pit-sawyers would be thrown out of employment. 



