400 United States. 



2. Early Forest History. 



The early colonizers, settling on the Atlantic Coast 

 soon after the discoveries of Columbus, did not, as is 

 usually believed, find an untouched virgin forest. The 

 aboriginal Indians had, before then, hewn out their 

 corn fields, and had supplied themselves with fuel wood 

 and material for their utensils ; and fires, accidental, in- 

 tentional, or caused by lightning, had, no doubt, also 



\/ made inroads here and there. The white man, to be 

 sure, is a more lavish wood consumer; his farms in- 

 creased more rapidly, his buildings and his fireplaces 

 consumed more forest growth, and carelessness with fire 

 was, as it is still, his besetting sin. Moreover, a trade 

 in timber with the Old World developed, in which only 

 the best and largest sized material figured. Wasteful- 

 ness was bred in him by the sight of plenty, and the 

 hard work of clearing his farm acres incited a natural 



y^ enmity to the encumbering forest. 



The first sawmill in the N'ew World was erected in 

 1631 in the town of Berwick, Maine, and the first gang 

 saw, of 18 saws, in 1650 in the same place,* while, before 

 that time, masts and spars, handmade cooperage stock, 

 clapboards and shingles formed commonly parts of the 

 return cargoes of ships. By 1680, nearly 50 vessels en- 

 gaged in such trade cleared from the Piscataqua River. 

 The ordinances on record which were issued at the 

 same early times by the town governments of Exeter 

 (1640), Kittery (1656), Portsmouth (1660), and Dover 

 (1665), restricting the use of timber, remind us of the 

 early European forest ordinances; they were probably 



See Forestry Quarterly, vol. IV, p. 14. 



