326 



AMERICAN FORESTRY 



THE WOODEN SHIP OF EARLY DAYS WAS THE FORE- 

 RUNNER OF OUR MIGHTY NAVAL AND MERCANTILE 

 MARINE. 



mountains and found the Blue Grass region of Kentucky, 

 were the first to bring back the news of an open country. 

 But that was more than a hundred years after the first 

 settlers had come, and long after the success of the enter- 

 prise was well assured. Many of these colonists had 

 come with dreams of gold and vision of fabulous wealth 

 and great fortunes lying 

 ready to be plucked, and 

 they found instead a forest. 

 Wealth indeed, far greater 

 than the fortunes of ' their 

 dreams, but so abundant that 

 its real value was lost to view, 

 and so beset with thorns that 

 its plucking seemed an ill paid 

 task. 



Small wonder that these 

 poor, wood-starved children 

 from an all too closely re- 

 stricted home should have be- 

 come reckless spendthrifts in 

 this forest land ! 



Before a man could build a 

 home, plant a garden or seed 

 his little patch of Indian 

 maize he had to cut the timber. 

 Whether he would or no, each 

 man was forced to be a lum- 

 berjack. No matter what 

 high station he was destined 

 to fill later on, he had first 

 to be a lumberjack that he 

 might live. The finest timber 

 of the Eastern continent was 

 his for the taking, but who 

 was there to buy when all 

 would sell ? And yet, he who 

 would buy must sell, and these 



struggling colonists continually found themselves in dire 

 need of many things from the old country. He foimd 

 littl of the gold of his dreams, but the timber was there, 

 untold acres of it, and none knew better than he that 

 timbers were needed in his old time home across the sea. 



So it was that the export trade of what would some 

 day be the United States began with the shipment of the 

 finest unblemished white pine deals that ever grew 

 and great hewn planks of unknotted oak. The deals 

 were bulky and the ships from home were few and 

 far between, but such as came were quickly filled and in 

 return they brought the colonists the wherewithal to live. 

 Within twenty years of the landing of the Pilgrims the 

 first sawmill in America was buzzing in the great white 

 pine forests of Massachusetts if, indeed, a jigsaw run 

 by an overshot waterwheel may be said to buzz and the 

 mightiest timber industry the world has ever known 

 was under way. 



It was a small beginning for buyers were few and 

 hard to reach. But it was a beginning and it grew. When 

 all of a man's time was no longer needed to wrst from 

 the stingy soil a mere existence, specialized trades grew 

 up, and with the development of these trades came the 

 inevitable barter of products, the growth of domestic 

 commerce. Wood was by far the most plentiful of the 

 colonial commodities and therefore the cheapest. Hence 



PURE HEMLOCK IN NEW YORK TO WHICH STATE THE CROWN OF LEADER- 

 SHIP PASSED FROM NEW ENGLAND ABOUT 1840. DUE TO HER GREAT PINE 

 AND HARDWOOD FORESTS, HER CANAL AND RAPIDLY GROWING RAILROADS 



