REDWOOD LUMBERING. 17 



acre (according to Government estimate) is 50,000 feet, which 

 would give 32,000,000 feet to the square mile. This would 

 give as a total for the 4125 square miles 132,000,000,000 feet 

 of standing timber, instead of the published estimate of 25,- 

 825,000,000. " It may be that the estimated yield is too great, 

 or that the extent of the belt has been overstated ; but it is a 

 matter of common experience that estimates fall short of the 

 actual yield of claims when they are " worked," and there are 

 those who believe "the half has not been told." Practical 

 work demonstrates that estimates of timber standing will 

 scarcely hold good, especially when these estimates are made 

 by strangers to redwood lumbering. Even with the greatest 

 care in preparing beds for trees to fall upon, it is conceded by 

 redwood lumbermen that 20 per cent, of the real measure- 

 ment is waste through breakage 



Some of the notable claims "worked" by redwood lum- 

 bermen have yielded by actual scaling 250 M. per acre. The 

 Washington claim near Humboldt Bay is said to have paid 

 its owner by stumpage alone fifty thousand dollars. 



James E. Barnard, now Superintendent of the California 

 Redwood Works on Freshwater Creek, which empties into 

 Humboldt Bay (who, by the way, is given credit for being one 

 of the most practical loggers both in pine and redwood on 

 the Pacific Coast), states that he once felled a tree that scaled, 

 after cut into logs, 66,500 feet. With such luck as Barnard 

 had in felling timber, acres of redwoods in different parts of 

 Humboldt and Mendocino would yield two million to the 

 acre. It must be understood in this connection, however, 

 that there are not a great number of professional loggers that 



