54 Forest Club Annual 



they make no stops except to take their meals and camp for 

 the night. Each party is equipped with a canvas canoe, tent, 

 two sleeping bags, cooking utensils, shovel, two axes, and two 

 canvas water buckets. Their duty is to put up fire posters, 

 look out for any signs of fire, such as abandoned camp fires, 

 ground fires and smudges, warn the trappers, hunters, and the 

 settlers who become very careless at times, and explain to every- 

 one who passes through or lives in the territory, why and how 

 fire protection should be practiced and what the penalty is in 

 case any one disregards the fire laws. 



Most of the settlers have complied with the regulation and 

 take all necessary precautions to prevent any damage while they 

 are burning brush on their little farms. During the season of 

 1908, only three fires occurred, none causing much damage. 

 Whenever a forest fire breaks out all able-bodied men in the 

 community are expected to fight it. The Canadian government 

 has provided for this in its laws. The fire rangers, who are 

 invested with the powers of a justice of the peace, have the 

 right of arresting and fining any one who disobeys their in- 

 structions and refuses to help. Only one case of a refusal to 

 fight forest fire was recorded for the season. The fire is usually 

 extinguished with sand and water, or beaten with spruce and 

 balsam boughs. 



The third important problem of the forester was to make 

 a valuation survey and ascertain the quantity and quality of 

 the timber. The regular strip method, adopted by the United 

 States Forest Service, was used. Strips were run from stream 

 to stream, lake to lake, or stream to lake, as water courses are 

 at present, the only practical limits. The strips were run in 

 gridiron fashion, one mile apart at right angles to the general 

 axis of the streams so that all types were usually included and 

 a fair average condition was obtained. When the distance be- 

 tween stream and lakes could not be covered in two or three 

 days the strips were run inland for a distance of from one to 

 three miles. Longer strips in such cases were abandoned on 

 account of the la^k of knowledge of the actual distance and 

 the loss of time in traveling back and forth along the strip, as 

 the party usually returned at night to the same camp. Traveling 

 in the Canadian virgin forest is by no means easy and it may 

 be safely said that every mile requires one hour of hard crawl- 

 ing, climbing, stumbling, and sliding. In a few cases only, the 

 party moved the camp two or three times along the same strip. 



The valuation survey party usually consisted of three men, 

 sometimes of only two. When three men were employed one 

 ran the compass line and blazed the trees, another estimated 





