So-C ailed Settlement in Forest Areas. 109 



operations are now carried on. This means that our pine 

 supply is by no means "inexhaustible," as so many are apt to 

 think. At the rate at which destruction now goes on, the pine of 

 eastern Canada will, in time, follow the pine of Michigan, which 

 as many will remember, was spoken of as "inexhaustible" 

 not so very many years ago. The more the waste by fire is pre- 

 vented the better chance we shall have to keep our spruce as 

 a perpetual source of revenue and to prolong the returns from 

 our pine. And, if fires are to be prevented, it is not enough to 

 maintain a fire-ranging system to put -out fires, — the man 

 who most frequently starts the fires, the pretended settler, 

 must be eliminated. 



Though I have dwelt upon the saving of the standing 

 timber, that is not, by any means, the only point to be con- 

 sidered. No matter how valuable the standing timber, it 

 would be disastrous to the country to turn it all into money. 

 Upon the maintenance of the forest depends the proper balance 

 in the flow of our waters. This is a vital point in agriculture 

 and in all the industries based upon agriculture. But the point 

 of immediate importance is the maintenance of our water- 

 powers. Considering their force, their wide distribution and 

 the ease with which they can be developed, the water-powers 

 of Canada, I believe, are second to none in the world in im- 

 mediately prospective value. People used to smile when they 

 heard me say, some years ago, that, because of its timber and 

 its water-powers, the Province of Quebec must soon be regarded 

 as richer than any other Province or than any State of the 

 American Union. Industry has now reached the stage of 

 development at which the value of the rivers in Quebec that 

 rush down from the mountains to the sea is about to be gen- 

 erally realized. Take away the forest and you take away these 

 water-powers as commercially useful agencies, — the water may 

 still flow, but it will be in the form of freshets in the spring and 

 rivulets in the autumn, a form which could no more be made use- 

 ful than the cyclones of Dakota can be made useful. There is 

 no danger that lumbering, as it is now carried on by the best 

 firms, will denude the country so as to unbalance the regular 

 flow of the streams. The trees taken off are those which, while 

 they are most valuable in the market, can best be spared from 

 the forest. They are quickly replaced by younger growths 

 which prevent the too-rapid melting of the snows and preserve 

 the forest floor which acts as a vast sponge in keeping back 

 the too-rapid outflow of the waters. 



The problem of our forest wealth can be answered by 

 keeping down the ravages of fire ; and the problem of keeping out, 

 or putting down, fire can be answered by our present methods 

 together with the elimination of the timber pirate who operates 

 in the disguise of a settler. 



