2-iT] Condition of Forests on the Public Lamh. 63 



Rocky Mountains, and it is no one's business or 

 interest to prevent and stop these conflagrations 

 when once started. 



I recollect one August being in the vicinity of the 

 Bighorn Mountains of Northern Wyoming for several 

 weeks, and as I first approached them nothing could 

 be seen at a great distance but a" vast cloud of smoke. 

 During the whole period of my stay there this cloud 

 of smoke hung over the mountains, gradually work- 

 ing its way northward, and thus marking the move- 

 ment of the fire. No one of the many settlers or 

 inhabitants of the towns in the vicinity of these 

 mountains paid the slightest attention to this fire 

 which was destroying millions of property, and 

 changing the future condition of their water supply, 

 on which the whole region depended for irrigation. 

 Apparently it was a matter of such common occur- 

 rence that they took no interest in it. 



Then there is no more effective way of concealing 

 the cutting of the better portion of a forest than by 

 firing what is left after the timber depredator has 

 carried off his material. 



In 1887 I made as careful an estimate of the loss 

 by fire in the destruction of public timber as the 

 insufficient data obtainable permitted, and placed the 

 annual loss to the government at 8, 000, 000, in the 

 value of wood-material destroyed. This made no 

 account of the secondary and resultant loss from the 

 destruction of the forest protection by floods, drouth, 

 the ruin of the soil and young forest growth, which, 

 though very great, is immeasurable. 



Large areas of the finest pine lands have been 

 disposed of by the government in Minnesota and 

 elsewhere, under the settlement laws. There was no 



