GRAZING. 21 



steeper areas already cleared should be at once reforested in order to prevent 

 their ruin. All lands remaining cleared for farming purposes should be kept in 

 the highest state of cultivation, and even those on the gentler slopes should be 

 carefully terraced and as far as possible kept in grass or orchards. 



The effect of exposing mountain lands to the full power of rain, running 

 water, and frost is not generally appreciated. During heavy rains the earth of 

 freshly burned or freshly plowed land is rapidly washed away. The streams 

 from such lands are often more than half earth, and the amount of soil thus 

 eroded every year is enormous. 



The individual owners are to a great extent helpless in preventing these 

 unwise cuttings, clearings, and forest fires. Some of them can care for their 

 own lands, but they can not, owing to their small holdings and small incomes, 

 regulate the policy which controls adjacent areas. Only cooperation on a large 

 scale, such as government ownership could provide, can stop these forest fires, 

 check this reckless clearing, and preserve these resources to the best advantage. 



The question of grazing is a very important one. Even woodsmen and 

 herders acknowledge that great damage is done by it. The ground is hardened 

 by the tramping of cattle, while the roots of the trees are bruised and broken by 

 the stamping of the animals in fighting flies or crowding around watering places. 

 Where such conditions have prevailed a long time the forest is decrepit and 

 sparse. Young growth has been prevented, and the hardening of the ground 

 and the removal of debris and humus have promoted a rapid run-off of rain 

 water and prevented its percolation into the ground as a reserve for dry times. 



On the other hand, grazing is one of the chief means of subsistence of the 

 people of the mountains and of the surrounding regions. Cattle, sheep, and 

 horses furnish almost the only cash income of the mountaineers, who usually 

 have some to sell every fall. These are turned loose in the mountains to 

 roam at large. Except for the time used in finding them and salting them about 

 once a week they are raised at little cost. When the range is good and near at 

 hand the care of the stock is not usually great, but when it is far away or so 

 poor as to render the stock discontented, the time necessary to find and keep 

 them together would often amount to more than they are worth, if time and 

 labor were properly valued. 



In much of the Smoky Mountain region ranging at large is still profitable. 

 But southward, along the Blue Ridge, the range has been so reduced that most 

 farmers and stockmen prefer to fence their pastures, and they favor the so-called 

 " no-fence law," which prohibits cattle from running at large. The amount of 



