INFLUENCE OF CHIPPEWA FOREST RESERVE ON THE LOCALITY. 23 1 



their policy is apt to be too directly influenced by politics to be 

 sufficiently permanent for results. For instance, it can easily 

 be seen how a loud and continuous demand that this forest re- 

 serve be opened to settlement would, if state politics had control 

 of it, be apt to succeed and allow the ruinous experiment to be 

 tried, when it would then be too late to re-acquire the land for 

 a reserve. National policy is more permanent and more far 

 seeing-, less apt to be swayed by gusts of selfish shortsightedness, 

 and is the only control under which results in forest growing 

 can be hoped for commensurate with the effort put forth. 



The cutting of all but five per cent of the pine on this land 

 will destroy the scenery on the area cut, but it will create the 

 most favorable conditions for a second growth of Norway pine, 

 which the five per cent of seed trees and protection from fire will 

 render possible. Should the possibilities of the reserve be de- 

 veloped to the utmost, it will make this section a continuous 

 producer of lumber fifty to loo years from now, with no doubt 

 of a ready market. But this dim and distant benefit pales beside 

 the prospect of an immediate advantage of great significance, 

 the foundation for which lies in the so-called "Park" clause of 

 the Morris bill. Under this clause, besides certain islands in 

 Cass and Leech lakes, which unfortunately are marred by Indian 

 allotments, ten sections of pine land have been set aside for the 

 public. The selection of this land, left to the Bureau of Forestry, 

 has been made so as to secure a continuous unbroken strip of 

 shore line on Cass Lake, twenty miles long, including the whole 

 of Pike bay, while a dip to the south takes in four beautiful and 

 secluded smaller lakes, increasing the shore line to over thirty 

 miles. Stately groves of Norway cover nearly the whole extent 

 of these shores and make a park for tourists and campers unex- 

 celled for beauty, whose national fame is only a brief matter of 

 time and acquaintance. For this is the last of the Norway — not 

 that it is all cut, but nowhere else are standing groves accessible, 

 and what is left is owned by lumbermen and will inevitably be 

 logged. The park stands as a monument to the most beautiful 

 of eastern pines. Ten sections out of the i,ooo sections on the 

 reservations, or about one per cent of the area, three per cent 

 including the islands and points specified with their allotments, 

 is the modest area of this park, yet it is worth as much to the 

 locality as if it were ten times as large. 



We in northern Minnesota have yet to learn the tremendous 

 volume of the summer tourist business, the underlying sentiment 

 of which goes deep into the heart springs of humanity — the 



