LONGLEAF PINE. 15 



would be cut off. For that reason it was desirable that America 

 should become a producer of the commodities so necessary to the 

 maintenance of England's position upon the seas. The colonists in 

 New England had scarcely landed before they were encouraged to 

 look into the possibility of developing the naval-stores industry. The 

 same was true in Virginia. Within 15 years after the feeble settle- 

 ment had planted itself at Jamestown a report was. made on the 

 possibilities of developing the tar and pitch industries in the region 

 on and near the coast of Virginia. 1 The report was unfavorable, for 

 the reason, as it was set forth, that pines were too much dispersed to 

 make the manufacture of pitch and tar profitable. This report has 

 been construed as evidence that pine was much scarcer in the original 

 forests of tidewater Virginia than in the secondary forests which 

 grew afterwards. 2 The prevailing pine in that region is loblolly, 

 which readily takes possession of abandoned fields. 



The manufacture of naval stores began on a small scale in the long- 

 leaf pine region and grew gradually. Statistics showing the prog- 

 ress of the industry are fragmentary. In 1704 the shipments of tar 

 to England from the Carolinas amounted to 400 barrels. One hun- 

 dred years later the annual output of the South was 77,827 barrels. 

 How much of this was tar and how much was rosin and other prod- 

 ucts is not shown. The shipments went to Northern States and to 

 Europe. In the North the article was employed to a considerable 

 extent by soap manufacturers. In the same year (1804) 19,526 gal- 

 lons of spirits of turpentine were shipped from North Carolina. In 

 later years petroleum was substituted for spirits of turpentine in 

 many arts and industries. 



The value of the naval stores produced in the United States in 

 1908, chiefly from longleaf pine, was $21,895,950. Florida was the 

 largest producer. At one time North Carolina stood first, then the 

 first place went to Georgia, and later to Florida. The center of the 

 industry shifted from region to region where pine was most conven- 

 ient and abundant. In early years the turpentine operators destroyed 

 forests for naval stores alone and made no use of the wood. They 

 boxed the trees that is, cut deep notches in the base of the trunk 

 and collected resin year by year for a time. When the trees could 

 produce no longer they were abandoned to fire and storms. The 



1 Neill's Virginia Co. of London, p. 283, report made in 1622. 



2 An inference that pine was plentiful near the sea, but not in the interior, has been 

 drawn from a paragraph in John Oldmaxon's British Empire in America, edited by Her- 

 mann Moll, London, 1708. In accounting for the failure of grape culture in Virginia, he 

 said : " Fir and pine trees, with which the country abounds, are noxious to the vine ; 

 and the experiments that have been made were in the lowlands, subject to the pine, and 

 near the malignant influence of the salt water." (Vol. 1, p. 306.) Two hundred years 

 ago, and about the same time that Oldmaxon wrote, John Lawson traversed the uplands 

 of North Carolina for a distance of 125 miles and noted particularly that he saw no 

 pine trees, but when he had proceeded eastward into what he called the "lowestmost 

 parts " he encountered an abundance of pine. 



