50 



primeval forests. Others are partially cut over and partially 

 denuded and burned over. Ten lots or parts of lots were found 

 to be denuded by axe and fire, or to be marsh land. The great 

 Madawasca marsh covers several parcels, and renders them value- 

 less. Lots 61, 62, 64 and 66, containing in all 296^ acres, of 

 which ten acres only have their original growth of timber standing, 

 we valued the ten acres of forest at two dollars per acre and the 

 balance at one dollar per acre. In fixing the value upon each parcel 

 we have been governed by its size and condition, the cost of building 

 necessary roads for removing the timber and its remoteness from or 

 accessibility to water courses. The cost of mating a road to an 

 isolated lot of thirty-five acres is as great per mile as though it were 

 built to transport the timber from a lot of ten times its size. The 

 State lands in this township aggregate 5,001 T ^ T acres, of which 

 3,219^^ acres we have appraised at one dollar and sixty-six and 

 two-thirds cents per acre, the lots varying in valuation from one dol- 

 lar and fifty cents to two dollars and fifty cents per acre, according to 

 size and location. In this township 1,035^-%^ acres have been cut over 

 by lumbermen and we placed a valuation of one dollar per acre upon 

 such, while 745^/^ are either marsh or denuded lands and of no value. 

 The lots lying most convenient to the St. Regis river were assailed years 

 ago by predatory lumbermen and shinglemakers who cut away the 

 best trees. The timber being on the State land, no especial care was 

 formerly taken to preserve this timber. Since the creation of the 

 forest commission and the appointment of Chief Warden G-armon, 

 the State has been reimbursed in the sum of $5,000 for trespass upon 

 the lands in township 14, and the lands thus lumbered are included 

 in the lots enumerated in this township. The watchf ulness and vigor 

 with which "Warden Gannon has performed his duties has had a salu- 

 tary effect on trespassers, who, formerly, by accident or design, 

 despoiled the lands of the State. Of the lands lying in Hamilton 

 county, and offered by the Everton Lumber Company ia exchange for 

 State lands in Franklin county, we first visited the lots in township 9 

 and in the Oxbow tract. Lot 223 is situated in the northwest corner 

 of Piseco lake and has a frontage on the lake of more than a mile, its 

 shores are bold and the lands slopes back to the northwest to the foot 

 t)f rugged. hills that, in common with the table land just back from 

 the lake, is covered with a noble growth of hard timber, from which 

 the soft-sawing timber was removed several years ago, and the dan- 

 ger of fires, resulting from lumbering operations, has passed. The 

 foliage of the hardwood timber, interspersed with the dark foliage of 

 the young and thrifty evergreen timber, left by lumbermen, because, 



