1899. 



AMERICAN FORESTRY ASSOCIATION. 



225 



grim grandeur of massiveness and mag- 

 nitude, it will be but a desolation of 

 slabs and stumps and moss-covered 

 charcoal in less than a decade if timber 

 rapacity is not repressed. The move- 

 ment now being made has forest preser- 

 vation as one of its objects, and if an 

 act of Congress can be secured to make 

 national property of this splendid do- 

 main, the timber thief, the fire fiend, 

 and some other repellant annexes to 

 camps and saw mills, will give up the 

 ghost or quit the country. The regulat- 

 ing of timber cutting willjavert the cli- 

 matic catastrophes that follow the whole- 

 sale destruction of forests the wide world 

 over, and will give the people of the 

 Mississippi Valley a domain as large as 

 an ancient kingdom, where the debili- 

 tated can renew their strength, feast 

 their eyes on landscapes tranquilizing 

 and superb, or carry out their Nimrodic 

 instincts to the haunt of the wolf and 

 the den of the bear. It would seem 

 that public opinion would be a unit in 

 this movement, but, while it is not unani- 

 mous, there is sufficient weight and mo- 

 mentum to give the project a reasonable 

 hope of success. 



In the establishment of forest reserves 

 and national parks the Government of 

 the United States has confined itself to 

 the Pacific coast and the extreme West, 

 the whole making an aggregate of 40,- 

 000,000 acres. The Mississippi Valley 

 has not had a Lazarus crumb from the 

 tablecloth of Dives. It may be the 

 country has grown too fast, and has 

 ribbed out an empire before its juvenile 

 mouth was filled with second teeth. It 

 is no longer a stripling. It is now the 

 commercial spine of a nation. It has 

 turned the sod of the prairie, and made 

 a patchwork of orchards and fields of 

 the wilderness. It teems with life. The 

 church is on the hill and the school house 

 in the valley. The throats of furnaces 

 breathe like Vesuvius. The chasms are 

 bridged, the streams spanned, and steel 

 rails spread a web of blue-white lines on 

 mountain slopes and from sea to sea. 



From the valley of the American Nile 

 crowds of men and women make their 



annual trips to the hills of New Hamp- 

 shire, the rock-ribbed slopes of Old 

 Maine, the gorges of the Adirondacks, 

 the crags and woods of the White Moun- 

 tains, to the Yosemite and the Yellow- 

 stone, and the white and yellow sand- 

 lines of two oceans. What about a 

 Minnesota diversion for Nimrods, Wal- 

 tons and tourists? It is within twenty- 

 four hours' reach of twenty millions of 

 people, who, if rigid and forceful in their 

 several avocations, are as eager and in- 

 tent in their once a year go out for health 

 or rest, or in man-like quest of some sport 

 or other that shakes the sawdust out of 

 brains, and nerves the hand for the gun 

 or the fishing-rod. 



In a commercial sense, aside from all 

 other considerations, a home park for 

 the tribes of the Valley would baa mag- 

 net for the largest dollar ever made. It 

 has been a matter of dispute with some 

 as to whether or not this privilege would 

 be abused. Would it become a monop- 

 oly, or a whole mob of monopolies, as 

 has been the traditional practice of some 

 sportsmen's clubs in securing the control 

 of hunting and camping grounds? In 

 this instance exclusiveness would be im- 

 possible. The Minnesota National Park 

 would be for all the people. It will have 

 no necktie or club button privileges, if 

 the program as on the card is lived up 

 to. Such an outing place as is pro- 

 posed, if anywhere near the descriptions 

 given of its natural characteristics, and! 

 if free from that yellow paint that too' 

 often gets on scenic maps, the Park of 

 the Valley would be a godsend to its. 

 people and an honor to the nation. 



The last of the great Pine timber tracts 

 of the Northwest lies in the upper por- 

 tion of Minnesota, a vast region of many 

 thousand square miles which was once 

 too remote from transportation to make 

 the marketing of its lumber easily prac- 

 tical. Out by the port of Duluth, and. 

 south by the highway of the Mississippi 

 River, and out also from the stations of 

 the railroads which have been steadily 

 invading that region, there have long 



