SURVEYS OF FOREST RESERVES. 139 



to take fire, aud a roaring conflagration followed which burned away a 

 large portion of the tree trunk. It was seldom that an ax had to be 

 used to fell the tree, as the fire almost always ate away a sufficient 

 pprtion of the trunk to cause it to fall. 



These early causes of fires, however, are now matters of history, and 

 need to be taken into consideration at the present time only in so far 

 as they explain the origin of many of the old well known burns that 

 antedate the era of sheep grazing in the Cascades. 



EECEXT FIRES ASD THEIR CAUSES. 



Of the fires of the present period it may be said, in the first place, 

 that they are by no means confined to sheep-grazing areas. Parts of 

 the southern Cascades in which sheep have never been grazed were 

 found to be riddled with fires, and in general it may be stated that 

 forest fires in this region increase proportionately to the increase of 

 human occupancy, whether the occupants are sheep herders, campers, 

 road builders, prospectors, or any other class of men. 



Travelers, campers, and Indians. — It will be of interest to give a 

 somewhat detailed account of the causes of the fires observed .by our 

 party in the course of our travels through the mountains. The great- 

 est number of fires I should attribute to the class of people known 

 as "travelers" — families without a definite place of residence, usually 

 illiterate and poor, who journey about in covered wagon s from one State 

 to another or from one portion of a State to another, grazing their 

 horses on the public lands and occasionally by an odd job earning a 

 little money with which to buy provisions. We repeatedly saw camp 

 fires which had been left by these people, and which under suitable 

 conditions might have caused disastrous forest fires At the time of 

 year when the forest litter and the underbrush are dry, a strong wind 

 suddenly springing up very irequently causes one of these abandoned 

 camp fires to develox) into a highly destructive agency. 



It is clear that a very large majority of the fires in the Ca.scade for- 

 ests are due to carelessness rather than to maliciousness, and the etlbrts 

 of the Interior Department must undoubtedly be chiefly directed rather 

 toward preventing carelessness in handling fires than toward the 

 detection of malicious fire setters. From the people who showed a will- 

 ingness to give information as to the causes of fires it was extremely 

 rare to learn of a case in which a fire had been known to be set mali- 

 ciously, though tires known to have been due to carelessness were mat- 

 ters of everyday comment. 



Camping parties, particularly those made up of young and inexpe- 

 rienced people from towns, are a fertile source of forest fires. These 

 parties commonly go into the woods for a summer outing, often making 

 the chief object of their pleasure the hunting and fishing afforded by 

 the region. Some of these parties are made up of young men who go 

 into the woods for the special purpose of hunting, but who have little 

 experience in woodcraft and no knowledge of the proper method of 

 handling a camp fire. They are often referred to as hunters, but it is 

 known that real hunters of experience and that old campers of expe- 

 rience are extremely careful in these matters. Perhaps the designation 

 "alleged hunters,"' applied to them by an old rancher and woodsman of 

 eastern Oregon, will sufficiently distinguish them from real hunters. 



The Indians from the two Indian reservations at the east base of the 

 mountains — the Klamath Eeservation and the Warm Springs Eeserva- 



