116 



" Once over the heights that divide the St. Lawrence and Hudson's Bay watersheds 

 one from another, the streams, without which timber cannot be brought to market, all 

 run north to St. James' Bay and Hudson's Bay. Those regions are generally represented 

 as a huge barren wilderness, with little timber and that mostly of a stunted growth. 

 There is, doubtless, some good timber, but the idea of driving it down the Notway, the 

 Rupert, the Harricanaw, and all those long rivers to the shores of St. James' Bay, and 

 taking it home down Hudson's Bay, eight hundred miles long, and through the dangerous 

 Hudson's Strait, does not appear very practicable. Whatever timber is there may as well 

 be considered as out of our reach for the present ; in the course of time the scarcity of 

 timber fit for export may become so great as to encourage the lumbermen to turn their 

 efforts in that direction, but that region may safely be left out of our reckoning of the 

 present available timber supply. 



" In a very short time, since the beginning of this century, we have overrun our 

 forests, picking out the finest pine, and we have impoverished them to a serious extent, 

 and what makes it worse, impoverished the country too, for, owing to the force of cir- 

 cumstances which we shall consider later, our timber export trade has not given Canada 

 such a return as she had a right to expect. There still remains to us a great deal of 

 spruce and second-rate pine, which for generations to come will be in excess of our local 

 wants, if we are pareful ; but the really Jins pirn, required to keep up our great timber 

 export trade to its present standard, is getting very scarce and inaccessible, and I fear 

 that we must prepare for a sudden and considerable falling off. 



" While every one admits the great value of the timber trade to Canada, no one 

 would complain in a new and scarcely peopled country like ours, if the finest pine forests 

 were to disappear and make room for fine farms. But, unfortunately, we cannot com- 

 fort ourselves with such hope ; the soil of the pine region is not generally favourable to 

 agriculture, and when the pine disappears, the farmer does not often take its place. 



" Men are the same all over the world ; they never set much value upon the free 

 gifts of Providence, and disregard them in proportion to their abundance — timber, fish 

 and game have been destroyed everywhere in the same way. When what appeared to be 

 inexhaustible becomes exhausted, it then begins to be valuable ; we must pay for our 

 experience. 



" Our neighbours, in the United States, have applied to the destruction of their for- 

 ests their superhuman activity and energy, and they are now worse off than we are for 

 timber. But their eyes are being opened ; the President, in his last message, has ear- 

 nestly drawn the attention of Congress to the subject, and the following quotation from 

 the last Annual Report of the Secretary of the Interior, shows how thoroughly they ap- 

 preciate the gravity of the situation : — 



" • The rapidity with which this country is stripped of its forests must alarm every 

 thinking man. It has been estimated by good authority, that if we go on at the present 

 rate, the supply of timber in the United States will, in less than twenty years, fall con- 

 siderably short of our home necessities. 



" ' It is the highest time that we should turn our earnest attention to this subject, 

 which so seriously concerns our national prosperity.' " 



Concerning the ravages of fire in our forests, Mr, Joly says : — 



" It is estimated by those who are most competent to form an opinion on the sub- 

 ject, that more pine timber has been destroyed by fire than has been cut down and taken out 

 bi/ the lumberman ; not only is the large ripe timber destroyed by fire, but all the young 

 trees too, upon whose growth we must depend for the restocking of our forests. It is not 

 practicable, in our Canadian woods, to plant trees to take the place of those that are cut 

 down. 



"The difficulty of guarding against fire in such immense and distant forests as ours 

 is enormous, and as for extinguishing it when once fairly started, the power of man cannot 

 do that. It will swSep onward as long as it can find food, leaping at one bound like a 

 giant over such rivers as the great Ottawa and Miramichi, and will only stop when 

 brought to bay by large lakes, or when it reaches rocky or barren ground with nothing to 



