28 CANADIAN FORESTRY ASSOCIATION. 



The timber, as far as I have observed, is mostly jack pine, but that is a good mer- 

 chantable timber. It makes good stuff for the farmer on the prairis, and that is what 

 the timber is mostly used for there. 



The trouble with the settler out there is about the same as it is here, except in 

 xhat part of the country where we are operating we do not find that the settler has 

 any use for the timber. His idea in going in is not to cut the timber that he has on 

 his land for what it is worth, but to get the timber off so as to clear enough room for 

 those two hills of potatoes and to put up his teepee, and probably plant a few apple 

 trees. 



A good deal of this land is of very fair quality, and it does not take a great many 

 acres of it to make the kind of living that the ' rancher ' in British Columbia is used 

 to whether it is what he requires or not. Those people are not only going into unoc- 

 cupied Crown timber lands, but they are going on to the limits and squatting there. 



<- 



If we clear half an acre for a camp there is some fellow waiting in the distance 



until we take the men out in order that he may jump in there and start a ' ranch.' 

 Of course the regulations do not give him any right there. He cannot get a title to 

 the place; he cannot borrow money on it or anything of that kind; but so long as it 

 is the way it is now the Dominion land agent, or some of his people, let the man quietly 

 understand after he is there that they will give him a title when the limit is worked 

 out and abandoned. That is about the way the thing stands now. And he gets in 

 there, and you cannot get him out without a lot of trouble. 



There is another thing that I would like to mention, and that is the distinction 

 which everybody could observe last year between the main line of the Canadian Pacific 

 Railway, which is the railway belt, where there was a system of fire ranging, and the 

 Crow's Nest line running out to "West Kootenay, where there is no system of fire rang- 

 ing. It is true that we had some fires on the main line, and some of them came our 

 way owing to the prevailing wind from the south. There were three or four small 

 fires in the valley of the Columbia river where we are operating. One of them on the 

 spur between the Bluewater and the Blackwater would have done a great deal of harm 

 if it had not been properly attended to by the fire rangers. 



Many of these fires were started by settlers or people desiring to settle. The argu- 

 ment they use is this: 'Well, this is timber land, and if we set fire to it it is not fit 

 any longer for timber land, and so it will be open for homestead.' 



I want to say this, however, the Dominion government as represented out there 

 has been distinctly active and liberal in the matter of extra assistance whenever it 

 was lequired to cope with those fires. We had practically carte 'blanche to go to work 

 there and fight those fires, and call out anybody that we think necessary, and the gov- 

 ernment will help us on the expense. 



Those fires have done a great deal of harm in the past. There has been a great 

 deal of timber burned. They burned for months, and there were hundreds of millions 

 of feet of valuable standing timber burned. There were some people put out of busi- 

 ness owing to their mills being burned down. It is to be hoped that there was an 

 occasional ' rancher ' put out of business too. 



