22 FOREST commissioner's REPORT. 



sixteen 3'ears from the forks of the river in Eustis has lieen 

 bat thirty-five cents per M., while the main river drive to the 

 Riverside boom in Vassall)oro costs on the average about as 

 much more. Cooperation having greatly improved the river 

 and reduced booming and storage charges also to the lowest 

 figure, logs are carried to Kennebec mills, and particularly 

 from the Dead river region, at a comparatively small expense. 



Recent cutting on the Dead river has been of a very severe 

 kind, and so sweeping in area that but small regions, those 

 far back on the difficult streams, are still uncut. The best 

 of the pine, of course, was years ago cut from every town- 

 ship on the drainage. Spruce began to be cut about 1850, 

 beginning with the best and handiest timber. Of late years 

 the cut has been systematic and severe. The average drive 

 from the Dead river for the last ten years has been fortj^-eight 

 millions, of which probably eighty per cent has been spruce.* 

 To get this timber Dead river, Flagstatf, III R. IV, Coplin, 

 Lang, East and West Eustis, Jim Pond and Chain of Ponds, 

 have been drawn on heaviest, these towns having been drawn 

 on, according to Mr. Viles, for an average cut of three millions 

 a year. This is more than they have been able to stand, the 

 treatment to which they have been subjected leaving some of 

 them with extremely little of merchantable timber. Other 

 towns vary much in their condition, but the drainage as a 

 whole has been very hard cut, and the tracts which have not 

 yet been cut through for spruce are neither large nor many. 



Another thing which has damao:ed the Dead river tremend- 

 ously as a source of spruce supply is fire. The early fires in 

 Great Eustis and Coplin, running also twenty miles down 



recent flres. ^j-^^ jj^^^ ^^ ^^iq Dead river, have already been men- 

 tioned. They must have covered on the Dead river drainage 

 a territory of more than seventy-five square miles. Three 

 also of the most destructive recent fires in the State were on 

 this river. They all occurred according to my information 

 in the year 1886. The largest started in Chain of Ponds 

 town and burnt up 50,000 or 60,000 acres of very irregular 



*See appendix for flgui-es bearing on this point. 



