FIRST EEMOVAL OF THE FOEEST. 335 



Fi/rst Removal of the Forest. 



Wlien multiplpng man had filled the open grounds along the 

 margin of the rivers, the lakes, and the sea, and sufficiently 

 peopled the natural meadows and savannas of the interior, where 

 Buch existed, he could find room for expansion and further growth 

 only by the removal of a portion of the forest that hemmed him 

 in. The destruction of the woods, then, was man's first geograph- 

 ical conquest, his first violation of the harmonies of inanimate 

 nature. 



Primitive man had httle occasion to fell trees for fuel, or for 

 the construction of dwelHngs, boats, and the implements of his 

 rude acrriculture and handicraft. "Windfalls would furnish a thin 

 population with a sufficient supply of such material, and if occa- 

 sionally a growing tree was cut, the injury to the forest would 

 be too insignificant to be at all appreciable. 



The accidental escape and spread of fire, or, possibly, the com- 

 bustion of forests by lightning, must have first suggested the 

 advantagres to be derived from the removal of too abundant and 

 extensive woods, and, at the same time, have pointed out a means 

 by which a large tract of surface could readily be cleared of much 

 of this natural incumbrance. As soon as agricultm-e had com- 

 menced at all, it would be observed that the growth of cultivated 

 plants, as well as of many species of wild vegetation, was particu- 

 larly rapid and luxuriant on soils which had been burned over, 

 and thus a new stimulus would be given to the practice of de- 

 stroying the woods by fire, as a means of both extending the open 

 grounds and making the acquisition of a yet more productive 

 eoil. After a few harvests had exhausted the first rank fertility 

 of the virgin mould, or when weeds and briers and the sprouting 

 roots of the trees had begun to choke the crops of the half-sub- 

 dued soil, the ground would be abandoned for new fields won 

 from the forest by the same means, and the deserted plain or 



tion across the great American isthmus, where the journey lay principally 

 through thick woods, several of the party died of starvation, and for many 

 days the survivors were forced to subsist on the scantiest supplies of innutri- 

 tious vegetables perhaps never before employed for food by man. See tha 

 interesting account of that expedition in Harper's Magazine for March, Ayril, 

 and May, 1855. 



