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" As a match to the timber wealth of British Columbia in the west, there have been 

 lately discovered at the extreme east of British > North America, in the recent explorations 

 through the hitherto unknown interior of Newfoundland, magnificent forests. Let us 

 hope that, before long, they will take their place among our Canadian forests. 



" 1 will now return to the Great Canadian Forest, our great pine country, with its 

 wonderful network of streams, and its three great arteries, the Ottawa, the St. Maurice, 

 and the Saguenay. 



"Does it begin to show signs of exhaustion?, Is it possible that, in such a short 

 time, man has been able to make an impression upon those millions and millions of acres 

 of forest ? 



" If there is no sign of exhaustion, what is the meaning of the complaints that come 

 over the seas to us, every year louder and louder, about the falling off, in quality and 

 size, of our pine, hitherto considered the finest in the world ? Are they no more than the 

 ordinary complaints of the purchaser ? I leave it to our lumbermen to answer. 



" But, before they answer, I will ask them why are they compelled to go now to .such 

 enormous distances for the really superior quality of pine they used to get so much nearer 

 home a few years ago ? 



" Look at the map of that great region, and you will see how little of it is now left 

 untouched. On the Ontario side, all the most accessible tributaries of the Ottawa, the , 

 Madawaska, the Bonnech^re, Mississippi, Petewawa, and others, have been worked for 

 years ; the lumbermen are now round the eastern end of Lake Nipissing, with the Mata- 

 wan for an outlet to the Ottawa, that can only be reached by a land road ; they are still 

 much farther north on the shores of the Montreal Kiver. 



" On the Quebec side, they have nearly reached the head waters of all the great 

 tributaries of the Ottawa, the Riviere Rouge, the Rivifere du Lifevre, the Gatineau, with 

 the Jean de Terre and Lake Kakebouga, and the Lac des Rapides ; they are now working 

 three hundred miles higher up than Ottawa, as the river runs on Lake Temiscamingue 

 and the Keepawa. 



" On the St. Maurice, they are as far up as Lake Manooran, on the western side of 

 the river ; its great tributaries on the eastern side, the Bostonnais and the Rivifere Croche, 

 have been deprived of the greatest part of their fine pine ; it is now sought at the head 

 waters of those rivers. 



" As for the Saguenay region, it still contains a good deal of spruce, but there is only 

 a limited extent of pine still untouched, or nearly so, south of Lake St. John, between 

 the Meetabetchonan and the head waters of the Rivifere Croche, near Oomissisoners Lake 

 and Bouchette's Lake. There is a little pine left north of Lake St. John, and a certain 

 quantity on the River Shipsha, and in the lower Saguenay on the Ste. Marguerite and 

 Petit St. Jean, etc. As for the large rivers that flow into Lake St. John, the Chamou- 

 chona, Mistassine and Peribouca, the pine that was on the lower part of those rivers has 

 been nearly all cut, and the remainder of their course, from their distant northern 

 sources, is through an immense burnt up wilderness, where the vegetable soil has been 

 consumed by fire. 



" That huge tract of lumber country, between the Ottawa and the St. Maurice, that 

 separated (or, rather, appeared to separate), the lumbermen working on those two rivers, 

 by what seemed an inexhaustible and endless forest, — that huge tract is tapped through 

 and through, and the Ottawa lumberman has met the St. Maurice lumberman on the 

 shores of Lake Manooran. A glance at the map will show what that means. 



" Those who think that there will never be an end to our timber may say, ' We can 

 still go north.' 



" Not very far north. From Lake Temiscamingue and the Montreal River, on the 

 shores of which the lumberman is plying his axe at this very moment, they cannot go 

 very far north before they strike the height of lands dividing the St. Lawrence watershed 

 from the Hudson's Bay, and the country is generally poor and barren. There is still 

 some fine pine there, in what quantity is not known, along the head waters of the Ottawa, 

 but it cannot be brought down to market, at least as square timber, until very extensive 

 and costly works have been executed for the improvement of the great Rapide des 

 Quinze. 



