1907 DEPARTMENT OF LANDS, FORESTS AND MINES. 225 



in dealing witii agricultural lands and non-agricultural lands respectively, 

 was not merely warranted, but necessitated to insure justice to both these 

 interests. The weakness of the American method, or any system that 

 approximates to it, in including non-cultivatable forest-covered land in the 

 same category as soil capable of profitable tillage, is that in treating the 

 timber as a mere appendage to the land, instead of a feature giving a dis- 

 tinct and specific character to the region producing it, the interests of the 

 public and posterity are almost certain to be sacrificed to the immediate 

 profit of the purchaser. 



Lumhering — An Aid to Settlement. 



To the question, "What effect has the present system on the preserva- 

 tion of the forest, and on the settlement of the waste lands of the Crown?" 

 Mr. Burke replied : "I tliink the present system has a tendency to conserve 

 the pine timber, to spread a local market for the produce of the backwoods 

 settler over the longest space of time, without which the settlement of several 

 hundred square miles of your best territory can scarcely be made. We have 

 an immense fertile territory stretching westward from Bytown to Lake 

 Huron, and north-westward from Nipissing to Lake of the Woods, which, 

 as a whole, is no way inferior to an equal area of some of the Eastern States 

 of the Union. But our territory is a wilderness. In the centre of the coun- 

 try named lies the timber fields of the Ottawa, at present yielding their first 

 crop, which goes to build up the cities of the east and west. Nature has so 

 arranged it, that this pine-producing territory does not possess a fertile 

 soil. Were it such, the axe of the settler would destroy the timber required 

 to make the western prairies inhabitable, or to spread the comforts of civil- 

 ized life over the forestless isles and continent of Europe. This pine ter- 

 ritory has its allotted end, and will subserve; perchance beneath those far- 

 stretching forests repose rich mines of metal to tempt man's arm to delve 

 the earth when the dark green canopy, which shuts out sunlight, has dis- 

 appeared. 



'*But mark this coincidence; surrounding this pine territory and con- 

 tiguous to the great lumber fields, is the large area to which we have 

 alluded, possessing a fertile soil and timbered with hardwood. This timber 

 has not the commercial value of pine, and its destruction is not a national 

 loss. This land is destined to sustain a large body of agriculturists in close 

 proximity to the great timber making centres. It enables us to raise iiie 

 grain, fodder and provisions, consumed in timber making, from eighty to 

 ninety miles nearer the ground of consumption than we now do. While 

 the lumber trade flourishes in pristine vigor population should be intro- 

 duced, but let us not be understood to encourage the wanton, foolish and 

 insane policy of the Crown Lands Department in surveying, a township 

 where nothing but pine and rock exist, or where to get a thousand acres of 

 habitable land, settlers may be thrown in to spread fire and havoc through 

 the pine forests; we go for keeping a fair line of separation between the 

 lumbering and agricultural regions, as nature has laid it down. The whole 

 bulk of the produce consumed in lumbering above Bytown is moved a dis- 

 tance of one hundred and two miles, we can shorten this distance materially. 

 The moving of these supplies costs nearly fifty thousand poimds per annum 

 — it is so much thrown away. Were the lumber market cut off from the 

 people who now command it, immediately after our railways now in hand 

 are completed, the country would be no loser. When good communication 

 with the eastern seaboard exists and the Reciprocity Treaty secures our 



