544 DISCUSSION: FORESTS, RESERVOIRS, AND STREAM FLOW 
Mr. Chitten- banks high enough to hide both the horse and rider many times over 
den. 
if they should chance to break through. It is this which has changed 
the opinion of four settlers out of five along the eastern base of the 
Sierra Nevadas, where the timber has been cut for the Comstock 
mines. Over half a billion dollars in treasure have been taken from 
that one lode, and it is said that for every ton of ore taken out the 
equivalent of a cord of wood has gone either in the shape of timber 
or of fuel. The whole mountain side for a distance of thirty miles 
has been cut over, covering the heads of such streams as Hunter’s 
Creek, Galena, White’s Canyon, Thomas Creek, Steamboat, and other 
small rivers, which have furnished water for irrigation since 1860 to 
the owners of probably twenty thousand acres of land in the valleys 
below. The consensus of opinion among this class of citizens, 
intelligent American farmers all of them, is that there is virtually no 
diminution in the supply of water that reaches them from the hills. 
James Mayberry had charge of two men who cut over twelve 
thousand acres in the early ’70s. He is of the opinion that Hunter’s 
Creek, with which he is most familiar, has a more certain flow and 
somewhat more water than before. John Wright has lived thirty 
years on Steamboat Creek. It was dry in 1864, when the timber was 
standing, but never has been since, and has furnished water for a 
constantly increasing settlement. Robert Jones lives on low land, 
and says he has had more crops killed by flooding in the ten years 
after the timber was cut than in the ten years before it was touched. 
G. R. Holeomb says the supply is equally certain if not more so and 
attributes it entirely to the drifting of the snows. Several made an- 
swer that the water melted earlier and ran off sooner and said anyone 
would know that, but failed to convince even themselves that they 
were lower than in former years. 
“Hon. Ross Lewers, of this country, read a paper before the Ameri- 
ean Horticultural Society a few years ago in which he said: “There 
are certain peculiar conditions that prevail in Nevada that I think 
worthy of notice. One of them is, that wherever the forest timber has 
been cut off, a new growth has sprung up much thicker, and none of 
the young trees will start until the old ones are gone. Another is, that 
the water supply from the mountains is greater and more permanent 
now than it was before the timber was cut off. The reason for this 
is, that the wind has a more unimpeded course, and as all the snow 
storms come from nearly the same point in the south, the snow is 
blown over the ledges on the north sides of the ridges where it is 
piled deep in drifts, and not being exposed directly to the sun’s rays 
it melts very slowly and thus affords a more permanent supply. Spring 
floods are less frequent and for the same reason. I do not pretend to 
decide how much, if any, the presence of the trees induces precipitation. 
They may moisten the air, but the humidity is all taken out of the 
ground by the roots, and I observe that the undergrowth and grass 
is more luxuriant since the timber was cut off,’ 
“As I have laid much stress upon this matter of evaporation, 
which some may think hardly applies to snow, I will say that a con- 
siderable body has been known to disappear from our streets without 
making a particle of mud, leaving the ground dusty, showing that 
none of it melted, but that it all went directly into the air. And this 
