RIVER LIFE, 223 



The reader may inquire with some curiosity, " Where docs all 

 this lumber find a market?" "We may remind such that Maine 

 has furnished, in times past, the principal part of the lumber con- 

 sumed in the United States and the West India Islands, though 

 other states in the Union possess immense tracts of fine timber 

 land, which, as the lumbering interests of Maine diminish, will 

 be cut and brought into market. Indeed, such movements have 

 already become quite common in the western part of the State 

 of New York, and also in Pennsylvania and Georgia, as weU as 

 in other portions of the country where there are large tracts of 

 timber land, much of which has already been bought up by East- 

 ern lumbermen. 



In regard to the consumption of lumber, we may observe that 

 the island of Cuba alone consumes forty millions of feet per an- 

 num for the one article of sugar-boxes. The city of Boston is 

 supposed to make use of the same amount per annum for build- 

 ing and cabinet purposes. 



Persons unacquainted with the resources of the Penobscot are 

 continually anticipating a decrease in the amount of lumber from 

 the great tribute under which our forests have been already laid ; 

 but those who are best qualified to judge estimate that there is 

 now timber enough standing in the forests, on territories through 

 which the waters of the Penobscot pass, to maintain the present 

 annual operations, vast as they are, for fifty successive years, aft- 

 er which it is thought the amount will diminish about one tenth 

 per annum until its final consumption, when, doubtless, the pur- 

 suits of the lumbermen will give place to the labors and rewards 

 of husbandry, and to the working of the various vems of mineral 

 deposits already known and yet to be discovered. 



A period not as long, probably, as from the landing of the Pil- 



gated : Mr. S. Hairis, of the surveyor general's office ; Rufus Dwinel, Esq., 

 and Mr. Taylor, of Bangor ; also A. W. Babcock, Esq., and several other gen- 

 tlemen of Orouo. 



