ADDRESSES OF MAJOR LACEY 161 



I said laughingly, "There is no danger of the mountain 

 running away, is there?" and the answer came, 



1 ' Come quick, if you want to see it. ' ' 



I ran out, and there in the clear light stood the beauti- 

 ful, snowy peak. I watched it for probably thirty sec- 

 onds, when the cloud of smoke rolled back over it again, 

 obscuring it from view, and that was the first, last, and 

 only time I ever saw Mt. Hood. Last summer I revisited 

 the same locality and did not even get a half-minute 

 glimpse of the mountain. The region was clouded with 

 smoke of the burning fore,sts just as it had been on my 

 first visit in 1887. 



With fire and ax the destroyer has been doing his work. 

 A splendid tree, 300 years old, is attacked with auger and 

 coal oil and is swept from the face of the earth for the 

 li improvement" of the country; a tree that took from 300 

 to 500 years to grow, and which in a few years would be 

 worth as much as forty acres of land, has been destroyed 

 in a day's time. 



Along the banks of the Columbia fish-wheels have been 

 planted, and the salmon packers are diligently engaged 

 in the extermination of those beautiful fish. No adequate 

 recognition of the necessity for permitting a sufficient 

 number to escape seems to exist, but the fish is treated as 

 a common enemy rather than as a friend. Such destruc- 

 tion of our natural resources has but one end on the Pa- 

 cific Coast, as it has had on the Atlantic. 



Terrapin were once so plentiful in Maryland that a law 

 was passed prohibiting masters from feeding their slaves 

 on this succulent reptile more than twice a week. 



In Connecticut the avaricious master fed his apprentice 

 so freely on salmon that a law was passed forbidding so 

 much of a fish diet for those unfortunate boys. Now, 

 with terrapin worth $5.00 apiece, and salmon at seventy- 

 five cents a pound, there is no danger of the excessive use 



