18 LANDS OF THE ARID REGION OF THE UNITED STATES. 
desire on the part of the Indians to destroy that which is of value to the 
white man. The fires can, then, be very greatly curtailed by the removal 
of the Indians. 
These forest regions are made such by inexorable climatic conditions. 
They are high among the summer frosts. The plateaus are scored by deep 
canons, and the mountains are broken with crags and peaks. Perhaps at 
some distant day a hardy people will occupy little glens and mountain 
valleys, and wrest from an unwilling soil a scanty subsistence among the 
rigors of a sub-arctic climate. Herdsmen haying homes below may in the 
summer time drive their flocks to the higher lands to crop the scanty 
herbage. Where mines are found mills will be erected and little towns 
spring up, but in general habitations will be remote. ‘The forests will be 
dense here or scattered there, as the trees may with ease or difficulty gain 
a foothold, but the forest regions will remain such, to be stripped of timber 
here and there from time to time to supply the wants of the people who 
live below; but once protected from fires, the forests will increase in 
extent and value. The first step to be taken for their protection must be 
by prohibiting the Indians from resorting thereto for hunting purposes, and 
then slowly, as the lower country is settled, the grasses and herbage of the 
highlands, in which fires generally spread, will be kept down by summer 
pasturage, and the dead and fallen timber will be removed to supply the 
wants of people below. This protection, though sure to come at last, will 
be tardy, for it depends upon the gradual settlement of the country; and 
this again depends upon the development of the agricultural and mineral 
resources and the establishment of manufactories, and to a very important 
extent on the building of railroads, for the whole region is so arid that its 
streams are small, and so elevated above the level of the sea that its few 
large streams descend too rapidly for navigation. 
AGRICULTURAL AND TIMBER INDUSTRIES DIFFERENTIATED. 
It is apparent that the irrigable lands are more or less remote from 
the timber lands; and as the larger streams are employed for irrigation, in 
the future the extended settlements will be still farther away. The pastur- 
age lands that in a general way intervene between the irrigable and timber 
