40 JOURNAL AND PROCEEDINGS 
was above such low pursuits and in his generous nature allowed 
the squaw to do all the work. Fire was the most important dis- 
covery of the Indian and he soon learned to apply it. He thus 
reached the starting point of a whole civilization whose further 
development was broken in upon by the coming of the white man. 
The next conquerors of Canada were the Frenchmen. 
Shrewd as the Indian and possessing great advantages in the gun, 
the steel axe, and tools and implements of metal, they became 
very proficient with the canoe on the numerous water stretches 
and as runners of the forest, and explored the whole country as 
far as the Rocky Mountains. The lecturer said the enterprise 
of the early French was really marvellous. 
He next told of the conquest of the country by the English 
as being of an entirely different kind. There were no clearings 
except beaver meadows and Indian gardens. He described the 
war against trees in overcoming the great hardwood forests, 
which he said were the finest in the world and whose destruction 
he deeply regretted; vast quantities being burnt for ashes, which 
yielded the only available article of export in early times. 
He told of the early settler’s shanty, constructed without 
nails or metal in any form, with its scoop roof and clay fireplace; 
described the hardship and privations of the pioneer life and 
means of communication by killhorse roads up hills 400 or 500 
feet high, over which it was necessary to go sometimes forty or 
fifty miles to a flour mill. 
Later, when timber became a marketable article, the lumber- 
man controlled the forest with his log rollway, snow road, ice 
road and  watersleigh, on which the load sometimes 
contains twelve cords of logs. He introduced the pointer, made 
of heavy plank, long, narrow and flat-bottomed, to replace the 
frail canoe. He devised the timber raft, with its detachable 
sections for passing rapids, as a means of conveying his timber to 
shipping ports. 
Professor Coleman referred to the great havoe wrought by 
the forest fires, describing some he saw that extended over fifty 
miles of forest, and made the remarkable statement that one-half 
Canada’s timber has gone up in smoke. 
