138 AMERICAN FORESTRY 



interest in tracts of forest, and in ore-bearing regions nowadaj's it behooves 

 him to make his position clear. His interest in the Southern Appalachian 

 range is a patriotic and not a pecuniary one and the same may be said of his 

 interest in the White Mountains. It is solely that they may be preserved for 

 tlie nation. And tirst it is his belief that they, like the White Mountains of 

 New England, are in the future to be the great health resort and the great 

 pleasure ground in its higher sense of all the i)eople of the eastern part of 

 this great country. The parts that have been opened have already become 

 a great health resort. Nor is this the least remunerative wa.j of using moun- 

 tains. The Land of the Sky in North Carolina has paid the country more than 

 if every stick of timber in it had been sawed and shipped as lumber. So it 

 will be of other portions of the range. Modern science has discovered that a 

 certain elevation neither too high nor too low is best adapted for the health of 

 the human race. Near enough to the sea to feel the influence of that ocean 

 which "creates a climate with its breath," and yet far enough away to have 

 the rawness and the dampness strained through its fine-spun temse of forest, 

 high above the influence of malaria; contributing with its beauty and its 

 charm to the welfare alike of body, of mind, and of spirit, this region seems 

 as if placed by God for the cure and abiding health of the race that inhabits 

 this country. 



In considering this all important matter of the conservation of onr 

 national resources of forest in this region, the richest opportunity offered to 

 the advocates of conservation richer than the preservation of all the forests 

 that clothe the Appalachians from one end to the other is one that has been 

 little considered. No delicate questions of constitutional construction arise 

 touching it. At a glance it will be seen to be the plain duty of every one of 

 whatever view as to national powers to aid in the movement. It is the educat- 

 ing and uplifting of the mountaineers, who inhabit this region. Like the 

 Swiss mountaineers they are the greatest lovers of their homes in all the 

 world. Without their co-operation the whole power of the United States can 

 not save these forests. With their aid the thing will be done beyond a question. 

 The writer declares his belief then that not only the best way, but the only 

 way, to preserve the forests of the Appalachians is to avail ourselves of this 

 richer opportunity and educate the strange and sterling people who dwell 

 among the mountains and constitute their population. In this great region 

 of the Appalachians dwells a race which needs only to have the mountain 

 regions fully opened up to renew one of the most vital strains in our national 

 life. Some three million souls inhabit the Appalachian range and its inter- 

 vening valleys extending from the Pennsylvania border almost to the Gulf of 

 Mexico. They are absolutely of Anglo-Saxon blood, whilst in other portions 

 of the country, even in a portion like Massachusetts in the very heart of New 

 England, which was once as absolutely Anglo-Saxon as is now this region of 

 which I sj)eak, foreign immigration has so changed the complexion of the 

 population that 80 odd per cent are now foreign born or the ofl'spring of for- 

 eign-born parents. In the Appalachian range the foreign-born population is 

 so small as to be absolutely negligible, in some of the states it being less than 

 one i)er cent. 



It has been customary to apply to this mountain population such terms as 

 "poor white," and "mountain cracker." Heaven knows they are in the main 

 white enough and poor enough, but if the designation is intended to convey a 

 term of reproach it is wholly misplaced. These people are the mountaineers of 

 America i)ure bred English, Scotch and Scotch-Irish stock. They have the 

 names, they have the physiogonomy, they have the characteristics, they have 

 the vices, to some extent only, and they have the virtues and more than the 

 virtues of the rest of the body of the American people. Montani semper liheri. 



