336 OUR NATIONAL PARKS 



and cornfields. In the settlement and civiliza- 

 tion of the country, bread more than timber or 

 beauty was wanted ; and in the blindness of 

 hunger, the early settlers, claiming Heaven as 

 their guide, regarded God's trees as only a larger 

 kind of pernicious weeds, extremely hard to get 

 rid of. Accordingly, with no eye to the future, 

 these pious destroyers waged interminable forest 

 wars ; chips flew thick and fast ; trees in their 

 beauty fell crashing by millions, smashed to confu- 

 sion, and the smoke of their burning has been ris- 

 ing to heaven more than two hundred years. After 

 the Atlantic coast from Maine to Georgia had 

 been mostly cleared and scorched into melan- 

 choly ruins, the overflowing multitude of bread 

 and money seekers poured over the Alleghanies 

 into the fertile middle West, spreading ruthless 

 devastation ever wider and farther over the rich 

 valley of the Mississippi and the vast shadowy 

 pine region about the Great Lakes. Thence still 

 westward, the invading horde of destroyers called 

 settlers made its fiery way over the broad Rocky 

 Mountains, felling and burning more fiercely 

 than ever, until at last it has reached the wild 

 side of the continent, and entered the last of 

 the great aboriginal forests on the shores of the 

 Pacific. 



Surely, then, it should not be wondered at 

 that lovers of their country, bewailing its bald- 

 ness, are now crying aloud, " Save what is left of 



