363 



Q. What do you say with reference to the difficulty of obtaining 

 evidence and with regard to the difficulty of obtaining verdicts of 

 juries in that locality where the trespasses are committed ? 



A. It is very difficult to obtain evidence; it is almost impossible to 

 obtain evidence against any individual in a locality unless there is 

 some man in that section who has some ill will against him; if they 

 are all friendly it is almost an impossibility, because the persons 

 who go there, the State officials, are strangers; the' men who 

 live in the locality expect no favors from them and if they tell 

 what they know in regard to these trespasses to the State 

 officials they subject themselves to the annoyance and to the ill 

 will of their neighbors and it makes their life unpleasant for them at 

 home when they gain nothing by it; the most they could possibly 

 gain would be the pay for their day's labor and perhaps leave them, 

 the men whom they reported against, their enemies for life; very 

 many cases, or some cases by making a fair statement to the men that 

 we proposed to look up the trespass, these men have gone on the lots 

 themselves with me and shown me just where they cut, but we always 

 never depended entirely upon that; we satisfy ourselves as to what 

 the actual cutting was from our own personal observation and investi- 

 gation. 



Q. Where. you depended upon them was where it had been done by 

 cutting over the lines, or something of that sort mainly? 



A. Yes; of course. 



Q. Where are different characters' of trespass, that -is, those which 

 are malicious with, the intent of cutting the State timber, and those 

 which arise from a mistake with regard to lines which are mistaken ? 



A. Yes, a great many of that kind; I have in mind one now which* 

 was— the trespass occurred at the corners of three lots; the man 

 who did the cutting had brought a surveyor there and had two or three 

 corners which met at that point surveyed out, had spent two days in 

 there with that surveyor, when he came to run the third corner just 

 before they reached, I mean the third line which made the corner, just 

 before they reached that corner they came to a pond, they stopped 

 there, it was in the summer time, they couldn't cross it very well; they 

 stopped there and sighted over across and pointed out to this man 

 and said, " That clump of trees will be on your land;" he cut them 

 and they proved to be a half of them upon State land; the surveyor was 

 at fault; they didn't finish out the line, it was only two or three 

 or four or half a dozen, not more than half a dozen rods on the other 

 side of the pond, where if he had gone over there he would have 

 established the corner; it was difficult to establish the corner; we 



