118 Industrial Experiments in Colonial America. 



strong had recently seized 200 logs which the people had tossed 

 into the rivers and floated down to the mills. ^ This was one 

 of the wiles by which the loggers sought to outwit the sur- 

 veyors and make it impossible to prove where the trees had 

 been cut. 



When Armstrong offered the condemned trees for sale on the 

 king's account, no one appeared to buy them, so that the ex- 

 pense of the condemnation fell on the Crown.- The history of 

 this seizure illustrates the spirit which prevailed on both sides. 

 No sooner was the deputy's back turned, than the "country fel- 

 lows" cut up forty of the finest of the condemned trees and car- 

 ried them off. This so exasperated the surveyor that he went 

 to all their saw-mills (more than one hundred) and seized 1,300 

 logs, some of which were forty inches in diameter, beside 280 

 white pines not yet cut up into logs. Dunbar also seized 94 

 logs in Berwick. He reported that scarcely any trees were left 

 standing, within six or seven miles of the waterside, between 

 Boston and Kennebec.^ "I have showed the people the direc- 

 tions for making hemp, pitch and tar," he wrote, "but while 

 they can cut pine trees and steal them, they don't think it worth 

 while to do anything else, and are inclined to laugh at us for 

 proposing it."* 



Matters were becoming daily more serious, and the Board of 

 Trade felt that drastic measures were imperatively necessary, 

 and they wrote to the Treasury to that effect. The Treasury 

 replied that if remedy could not be had, save by a new law, the 

 Board might prepare a draft for such an act.^ A bill was, ac- 

 cordingly, drawn up, which, with some slight modification, 

 passed in April, 1729.*' The act stated that, whereas, since the 

 passing of 8 Geo. I., c. 12, great tracts of land, where trees fit 



iDeputySlade to David Dunbar, B. T. America and West Indies 

 i: 147. 

 ^Deputy Slade to David Dunbar, B. T. New Eng., Z: 49- 

 sjeremiah Dunbar to David Dunbar, B. T. New Eng., Z: 51. 

 "Ibid. 



^Treasury to the Board of Trade, B. T., New Eng., Y: 73. 

 ^2 Geo. II, c. 35. 



