194 Canadian Forestry Journal. 



In all of these respects the Coast District of British Columbia 

 has largely contributed, and the improvement of general con- 

 ditions on the Coast is very greatly coincident with the expansion 

 of the Lumber Trade. 



The first mills in the Province were at Esquimault and Sooke, 

 on Vancouver Island, and were only for the requirements of the 

 early settlers. The first mill of any size intended for the pro- 

 secution of export business was established at Alberni on the 

 west coast of Vancouver Island about 1861 or 1862, but the 

 business did not prove successful and was in operation but a few 

 years when it was closed, and the machinery sold to some of the mills 

 on Puget Sound. There was a small saw mill at New West- 

 minster in 1862, catering to the local trade, and which shipped 

 I think one cargo abroad. Parties who had been connected with 

 this enterprise started the first mill on Burrard Inlet a year or 

 two afterwards at Moody ville, which was followed by the build- 

 ing of the Hastings Mill on its present site in 1865, and with the 

 erection of these mills the foreign lumber trade of British Col- 

 umbia may be said to have commenced. For a number of years 

 the foreign trade of the Province averaged from 25 to 35 million 

 feet annually, until the Chemainus mill came into operation, 

 since when the trade has varied from fifty to eighty million feet 

 per annum. This year the Fraser River mill has joined the ex- 

 port shippers, and the foreign shipments will probably reach 85 

 million feet, the largest volume since the inception of the business. 



Until the construction of the Canadian Pacific Railway there 

 was no market available but the foreign, and large quantities of 

 lumber that, under other conditions would have found a sale, 

 used to be burned as the only way for its disposal. The advent 

 of the Canadian Pacific Railway opened a market to the east, 

 and mills began to multiply. It was a long time before our 

 Douglas fir established itself, but it crept further and further 

 east until now we have customers even on the seaboard of the 

 Atlantic provinces, and the quantity being shipped in that 

 direction is ever increasing. Our export trade is distributed 

 all over the world, shipments being made to Australasia, China, 

 Japan and occasionally to India, Central America, Peru, Chile 

 and the Argentine Republic, the United Kingdom, France and 

 Germany; it has even penetrated to Baltic ports, which might 

 appear like sending coal to Newcastle, and is being used in the 

 modern development of that ancient country Egypt, and aiding 

 in the building of Johannesberg and the winning of gold in the 

 Rand mines of the Transvaal. 



In several of these markets however, our wood is not in 

 general use, but only taken in the form of special sizes and 

 lengths that cannot be obtained elsewhere, our great distance 

 from the points of consumption and costly transportation mili- 



