68 NEW YORK STATE MUSEUM 
g THE BLACK FOREST 
I dare say that no one who has ever visited the region of the 
Black Forest fails to look back upon that visit as one of the mile- 
stones upon life’s journey. A semimountainous region extending 
from the Neckar at Heidelberg to the Swiss border and from 
the valley of the Rhine across Baden and most of Wiurttem- 
berg, for the most part covered with forests of spruce or fir and 
with small farms and villages in the valleys, with its fine roads 
reaching to every portion of the forest, presents a picture of beauty 
that does not fade quickly from the mind. 
In the days of the primeval Black Forest the conditions were 
somewhat like those prevailing on the Pacific coast 20 years ago, as 
regards lumbering operations. The timber most accessible was cut 
first. The operations were reckless, timber rights were sold cheaply 
or were given away. The logging camps were established where 
there was a little tillable soil, and from such beginnings have come 
the numerous little villages of the Black Forest. The men worked 
in the woods, and during periods when woods work was slack they 
cultivated their little tracts of ground, built roads, wove baskets 
and carved wood. The government received, on the average, only 
6 cents a log in those days. No working plans existed, as all the 
timber was mature; but with the development of railroads and new 
markets and the enlargement of the market from a local one to a 
far-reaching one, the value of the Black Forest rose by leaps and 
bounds in spite of the rapid cutting away of the primeval forest. 
The Black Forest covers 500,000 acres in Baden and 600,000 acres 
in Wurttemberg. Much of it is now private (such as the enormous 
holdings of the princes of Fiirstenberg), communal, state and stock 
companies. 
The early method of marketing the timber was to raft the logs 
down the streams to Holland or intermediate markets, but prior 
to 1718 the existence of many little principalities through which the 
logs must pass to a market made it expensive or unremunerative 
in spite of the low cost of the stumpage. After 1718, by means of 
a treaty between the various small states, the rafting of logs 
became possible upon a large scale. 
No good records exist of the forest conditions of the Black Forest 
prior to 1758, when the region is said to have contained more than 
80,000 feet of timber an acre, and many trees contained as high 
as 28,000 board feet each. 
The companies rafting logs to Holland in some cases acquired 
