84 OUR FEDERAL LANDS 



boriously cleared away for fields to raise their corn. 



It is no wonder that the early American colo- 

 nists considered the forest a mixed blessing, and that, 

 as is recorded, forest fires were often welcomed be- 

 cause they saved some of the labor of clearing farm 

 lands. Sometimes fires were lighted to drive game 

 to better shooting grounds. If also the fires de- 

 stroyed mountains of timber, what of it ? Was there 

 not forest enough on the levels to furnish timber for 

 thousands of years? Would trees not grow again? 

 For centuries the forest was considered inexhausti- 

 ble. Even in the eighteen eighties few but special- 

 ists doubted it. Even at the birth of the present cen- 

 tury, there was little real belief that the depletion 

 which exists to-day could possibly occur for many 

 generations, if at all. 



Originally there were 1,064,528 square miles of 

 solid forest between the Atlantic and the prairies 

 within what is now the United States; and in the 

 West, in the Rockies, the Cascades and the Sierra, 

 and on the high plateaus, there were 220,062 square 

 miles more; these in a total area of 1,284,590 square 

 miles. Between the forests of the East and those of 

 the West lay a million and three quarters square 

 miles of prairie, unf orested plateau and desert. 



To-day, we have 733,554 square miles of for- 

 ested lands left, which is somewhat more than half 

 the original area. But this includes 390,804 square 

 miles which have been cut over once or oftener and 

 can be restored only by scientific fire control and re- 



