WOOD-GREATEST GIFT OF THE FOREST 135 



cities and the rapid clearing of ground for agricultural pur- 

 poses, it soon became impossible for communities to obtain 

 their wood locally. 



From this time on yearly drives of logs came down out of 

 the forests of Maine and later of Pennsylvania and New York. 

 It was the beginning of lumbering as a national industry. Each 

 year when the snows melted into the streams of the Northeast, 

 mile after mile of log rafts came floating down to the cities. 

 Prodding them from the banks, loosening them when they 

 jammed, keeping them ever moving, lumberjacks of the north 

 woods worked night and day to see that the drive might not 

 lag behind the high water. A new occupation was being born 

 to the world the trade of the lumberjack. He was to see many 

 changes of methods, forests, and locality during the next 

 hundred years of his colorful and turbulent existence. Today 

 the "White River Boys," the men who drove those logs down 

 the eastern rivers to market, are almost as scarce as the buffalo. 

 The long, fragrant rafts of white pine are gone perhaps for- 

 ever. Yet behind them these men have left a tradition and a 

 memory that will always remain an imperishable part of our 

 conquest of the wilderness. 



Maine was the first state to begin a wholesale exploitation 

 of her forests and during the middle eighteen hundreds white 

 pine and spruce timbers were shipped from her ports all over 

 the world. First she cut only the finest of her pine. Next she 

 took the poorer individuals and after that her lumbermen had 

 to content themselves with hemlock and spruce. When these 

 were exhausted even the formerly valueless hardwoods were 

 cut. 



As the New England forests began to play out, New York 



