46 FOREST commissioner's REPORT. 



Dennis was the town selected, and Mr. Isaac Newton of 

 Jackman was the man, — a man, by the way, whose knowl- 

 edge of the country traversed was, from its minuteness and 

 accuracy, a frequent matter of surprise. 



So, loaded with provisions for a stay of three or four days, 

 Mr. Newton and I on the first day of July tramped from Jack- 

 man up the tote road along Sandy stream, through a burn 

 about twelve years old, to an old camp on the stream about a 

 mile and a half from the north line of the to\\ai. The growth 

 along was mixed in its character, the most prominent element 

 from the outside being the hard wood. The town lays nicely 

 for lumbering, being broken up into a number of easy ridges 

 trending generally in a southeasterly direction between the 

 different streams. 



Stowing our dunnage away in the camp, and a substantial 

 dinner inside ourselves, we talked about territory to travel. 

 All except the northwest quarter of the tow^nship had been 

 i?mn3en™tMi ^^^^ through at least once. Some of it had several 

 strip huui. times been cleaned, as was supposed, of merchan- 

 table timber. I heard of one piece that had been gone over 

 no less than eight times by different operators, each of them 

 doubtless thinking like his predecessor that he had "got all 

 there was on it." In the district about our camp, Mr. New- 

 ton had himself been the last to cut, obtaining the previous 

 winter, spite of many a prediction of failure, !)00 M. feet of 

 nice logs on about two and one-half square miles of land. He 

 claimed really to have got it all — neither did he think there 

 was much growing. There Avas in particular a hard wood 

 ridge country just east of camp where Mr. Newton felt sure 

 that not more than two or three small spruce of any size or 

 amivoun^" description would be found per acre. I took note 

 timber. ^^£ ^j^j^^^ ,^^^^ gj^^j j.^^ tackle any definite problem 



which as well as another would tell in working out the more 

 general one had in mind, we concluded to go up there. 



No sooner had we got into the territory aimed for than Mr. 

 Newton was ready to acknowledge that his judgment had been 

 badly at fault. It was not that the cutting had been loose,. 



