198 



THE FORESTER. 



August, 



the mighty forest of Lebanon. The change 

 in the face of nature caused by that action 

 has permanently impoverished the entire 

 region, the Judean valley was rendered 

 arid, and Palestine to-day can support but 

 few people because her water courses 

 have been dried up and the great trees 

 which sheltered the snows and kept the 

 pitiless sun from reaching into the heart of 

 the springs have been destroyed utterly, 

 without a successor. Our need in the fu- 

 ture shall be not so much a few trees about 

 our homes, as great areas of trees all up 

 and down this beautiful State, protecting 

 head waters of our rivers, making use of 

 our unfertile sands, giving variety and 

 beauty to our gentle hills and refreshing 

 the weary, whether human or otherwise, 

 with nature's quiet cathedrals. Some time 

 it may be, our State shall be so ruled by 

 men of vision and men of taste some- 

 time, it may be fondly hoped, our legisla- 

 ture shall have the leisure from the im- 

 mense burdens of petty politics and the 

 strident voice of the lobbyist and the crank 

 to turn its attention to the State of Michi- 

 gan to renew its waste places with forest 

 life to make this peninsula, which is 

 bound to shelter 10,000,000 of people, as 

 beautiful as God intended it to be." From 

 a sermon by Rev. D. F. Bradley, of 

 Grand Rapids, quoted in the latest pam- 

 phlet of the Michigan Forestry Commis- 

 sion. 



J* 



The Minnesota Park "An allotment of 

 and the $2,250,000 has uist 



i. ssl ssippi. been made for the im- 

 provement and deepeningof theMississippi 

 River. A further amount of $8,000,000 

 i- asked from the River and Harbor Com- 

 mission for rendering this river more nav- 

 igable at certain shallow places. 



Now, at this river's headwaters in the 

 northern part of Minnesota is an Indian 

 reservation already ceded to the Govern- 

 ment tinder the Rice Treaty with the In- 

 This reservation is known as the 

 Leech Lake Chippewa Reservation. 



'In this tract are 830,000 acres, of which 

 20 o.ooo are water. Within its boundaries 

 ;nx- the three great lakes of Leech (with 

 540 miles of shore line), Winibigoshish 



and Cass, .besides seventy smaller lakes 

 connecting with . the infant Mississippi, 

 making one great checkerboard of forest 

 and water. 



" It is said that vipon this reservation is 

 to-day the greatest body of White and Nor- 

 way Pine to be found in this country. 

 Conservative estimates give 2,000,000,000 

 feet of standing Pine, exclusive of some 

 hard woods and Jack Pine, making alto- 

 gether a great watershed and filter bed for 

 the Mississippi River. 



" Some prominent citizens of the North- 

 west are doing their utmost to have this 

 land reserved as a National Forest Park 

 by the Government instead of having it 

 sold to the lumbermen. 



" Upon this tract are tribes of Chippewa 

 Indians numbering in all 1,500 souls. It 

 is proposed that the Indians be left where 

 they are instead of being driven away to a 

 foreign reservation. 



"The intelligent, thinking person must 

 realize the effect upon the flow and quan- 

 tity of the water in a river with its timber- 

 covered headwaters denuded. A flood in 

 the early spring and midsummer and low 

 water for the rest of the year is the history 

 of every stream after its headwaters have 

 suffered at the hands of the lumbermen. 



" The mean depth of the Mississippi 

 would undoubtedly be greatly lowered 

 were the timber to be cut from this great 

 watershed. This being so, to keep the 

 river navigable its entire length from St. 

 Paul to the Gulf would require the expen- 

 diture of many millions annually. In- 

 stead of a request of eight or ten millions, 

 a hundred millions would be asked for. 

 To do that which would lower this great 

 river two or three feet would prove a ca- 

 tastrophe to the whole Mississippi River 

 Valley with its more than 30,000,000 in- 

 habitants."- -From a letter to the New 

 York Sun by Charles Christodoro, of St. 

 Paul. 



" A buyer of timber 



SCardt <Lk fWhite land who has been 



... 

 operating in the south 



country for two or three years past says 

 the White Oak stumpage of that section 

 is rapidly disappearing, and predicts 



