[10] 



Washington. The condensed report is published in the special report on 

 the sheep industry of the United States, bureau of industry, 1892. Ten 

 letters of California sheep growers are therein quoted, all protesting against 

 the charges of setting out forest fires by sheep herders. They are samples 

 of scores of letters of the same tenure, from which I gathered that, unless 

 fires were started designedly by the basque herdsmen ( who were really 

 nomadic in their methods and had largely superseded the Americans in 

 southern California ) the charge was untrue against the sheep industry in 

 that state. It never had a particle of truth in it as to the state of Oregon, 

 so far as I know, nor in Washington. In British Columbia, the most re- 

 cent government reports contain thirty-seven answers, giving causes of 

 forest fires. Not one mentions the sheep industry as being the cause, yet 

 there, as in western Washington and Oregon, the clearing of thinly set 

 timber lands for homes, in which sheep can be utilized to some extent, is 

 increasing as population increases. 



Mr. Fernow is quoted as saying that the smoke he found an annoyance 

 in Oregon will deter tourists from visiting this state. Well, Oregon as a 

 a community has not yet come down to the show business. The smoke is 

 not the evidence of forest fires by incendiaries. It is in the main evidence 

 of burnt offerings to nature's God by the home builders of western Oregon 

 and Washington, who believe that: 



" To make a happy fireside clime 



For weans and wife. 

 Is the true pathos, and sublime, 



Of human life." 



Sometimes fires get beyond the control of homebuilders, though not 

 often. Carelessness of summer vacationists, hunters, berry-pickers, travel- 

 ers through unsettled mountain timber districts, and road makers, is the 

 most common cause of forest fires. The Hon. D. P. Thompson, who has 

 had great experience in the timber lands of Oregon as a surveyor, believes 

 he has knowledge of two instances where fires occurred spontaneously 

 probably by the rays of sunlight shining through clear turpentine exuda- 

 tions. This may account for some fires on the east slopes of the Cascade 

 range where the yellow pine exudes turpentine very freely. But it must 

 not be forgotten that the Warm Springs Indian reserve is bounded on the 

 west by the summit, and the Indians have the rights of hunting and graz- 

 ing their ponies on the entire range, to which many of them resort ev*y 

 season, when (by custom from which they see no reason to desist) they re- 

 new the old berry patches and coarse grasses of the dry lake beds by fires. 



I would estimate seventy-five per cent, of the smoke obscuring the 

 views of the September visitor in Oregon or Washington as the result of 

 land-clearing for homes. The employment by the state of five or six active 

 young men from the first of July to the last of October of each year would 



