rivers. We should have had more of them had our forefathers 

 been better informed and more considerate of posterity. 



Come and spend a few days with me during the season 

 when nature draws us to her realm. As we travel trails day 

 after day, we find the dried-up stream beds in cut-over lands, 

 where once trout were plentiful, birds and all wild life flour- 

 ished and throve in the shelter of the woods. What has hap- 

 pened here? Nothing but that the timber was cut off, and the 

 debris left to provide fuel for fires that were sure to come. 

 These fires not only ate up the lumberman's refuse but killed 

 all vegetation, leaving dead brush and trees to blow over, and 

 bare rocks and blackened stumps, and not satisfied with this 

 work of devastation, went on into such timber as was beneath 

 the lumberman's notice, killing it and leaving in turn more 

 fuel for the next fire. Heavy rainstorms sweep over this coun- 

 try, but without vegetation to hold the discharge and allow 

 it to perform its natural duty of nourishing vegetable and 

 animal life, it pours down the barren hillsides into the dry 

 stream bed, grows into a raging torrent and sweeps on to a 

 larger stream, depositing therein its load of silt and other 

 debris, growing in flood volume as it proceeds until, as is too 

 often the case, the larger river is ruined for fishing purposes 

 and becomes a thing of horror to the orderly mind of nature 

 lovers. 



Why tarry here? There is a piece of green timber in yon- 

 der valley, there must be a stream there where we can camp 

 and fish. Let us go there, and we go to find a delightful 

 piece of forest, threaded by a crystal stream with moss-grown 

 rocks, rapids and pools that promise large for trout. Par- 

 tridges are drumming all about us, rabbits hop around as we 

 make camp, birds are flitting from tree to tree, deer and 

 moose' tracks are thick about the banks of the stream, and 

 here we find that for which we have sought. A forest pri- 

 meval, sheltering an abundance of wild life, a quiet, shady 

 and secluded retreat wherein we are to rest and refresh our 

 souls and bodies. A forest, but not such a one as tempts the 

 avarice and greed of men, trees not yet valuable enough or 

 accessible enough to return two or ten dollars for the one 

 necessary to market them. 



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