COST OF CLEARING FOREST LANDS. 127 



"To enclose 50 acres of land (with rail fence) takes $120 

 or 24. Clearing- land from willows and alders costs $10 

 or 2 per acre, and these two trees always indicate good 

 (though damp) land." But "it takes quite $200 or ^40 

 per acre to clear pine land, though the value of the timber 

 would make some return for this outlay." * 



This last item is however altogether dependant on 

 circumstances, as unless near rivers, or other settle- 

 ments, the value of timber is so trifling" as to be almost 

 inappreciable to early settlers, beyond its utility for 

 construction purposes and fuel. 



The wonderful dexterity with which some of the 

 American woodsmen wield the axe must be seen to 

 be believed. There was an immense amount of wood- 

 cutting to be done, for instance, to enable the surveyors 

 to fix the exact boundary between British Columbia 

 and the United States, which runs for an immense dis- 

 tance through almost impenetrable forests of the heaviest 

 timber; and Mr. Lord, one of the officers employed 

 on the British Commission, who had extensive oppor- 

 tunities of forming an accurate opinion upon this sub- 

 ject, tells us that "trees measuring eight and ten feet 

 in diameter, counted by hundreds, were cut down by 

 their axe-men, two men only at a tree, with a rapidity 

 utterly astonishing trees which no ordinary woodsman 

 would fell in a day, were stretched upon the ground 

 in less than an hour." f The axes used to be in all 

 cases of the American wedge-shaped pattern, weighing 

 about 8 Ibs. and mounted with springy and somewhat 

 curved hickory handles. Thus equipped Mr. Lord says, 



* Life and Labour in the Far West, by W. Henry Barneby, 1884, 

 p. 129. 



| At Home in the Wilderness, by John Keast Lord, 3rd edition, 

 1876, p. 122. 



