FIRST PART. 



ORIGINAL ARTICLES 



Historical Review of Canada's Timber Industry 



by 



James IvAwler. 



When the adventurous sailors from Europe first visited the part of 

 North America now known as Canada they were not looking for timber. 

 They were seeking a passage to India and China and, failing that, desir- 

 ed to carry back in their ships large value in small compass — gold, silver, 

 precious stones, furs. But though they did not seek them the forests were 

 there, covering the shores of bay and headland and the banks of rivers, 

 — forests of pine, spruce, hemlock, oak, maple and birch. They stretch- 

 ed away as far as the eye could see from the most lofty lookout. They 

 were dark and sombre and presented a maze which none but a native could 

 thread and — worst of all — they effectually concealed those natives and 

 their intentions, leaving the pioneers a prey at once to loneliness and fear. 



Some writers have lamented that North America on the east side was 

 found by the earliest settlers covered with these heavy forests which ren- 

 dered life exceedingly difficult and precarious for the colonists, while the 

 interior was a vast treeless plain or prairie whereon the settler might have 

 secured abundant crops in one or two seasons. Bj' the time that settle- 

 ment had reached the prairies, the timber had largely been destroyed and 

 part of the energy of several generations had been wasted in trying to 

 make farms on certain areas of inhospitable non-agricultural land along 

 the sea-coast. It is idle to speculate in this manner and, doubtless, had the 

 forests been in the interior and the prairies on the shores of the continent 

 the early settlers would have suffered as ranch from lack of fuel and build- 

 ing material as they actuall}' did from lack of arable laud in which to grow 

 .crops - 



