34 



Sierra Club Bulletin. 



The man who first entered the forest had none to ask 

 whether he could girdle the timber and wantonly destroy 

 it, or fell it for some use. Nature had set out those 

 woods, and man had arrived to appropriate them. But 

 as soon as land laws were laid down ownership began, 

 and the sawmill man set up his rights. As long as choice 

 timber was to be had for the cutting he had to press for- 

 ward. In his trail followed the miner, who was glad to 

 take what had been culled over. But for him, too, certain 

 requirements ruled, and he left what proved below his 

 standard. Under such attacks only select timber was 

 taken, inferior claims and odd quarter-sections never 

 were filed upon. If the latter contained spots of grand 

 stands of trees, the loose conscience of man never hesi- 

 tated to appropriate what could be grasped with ease by 

 the lumbering methods of the woodsman. The next 

 " owner " of such lands never intended his entry at the 

 land-office to be more than a mere filing. He hires a set 

 of nomadic wood-choppers to bring down in the shortest 

 time possible what was fit to be slain for cordwood, and 

 the squeak of the brake on his last load is the last sound 

 from him that disturbs the stillness of the landscape. 



Under such reckless management of three distinct 

 owners some fifteen or twenty years have passed by. 

 A settler of different trend has now arrived — the home- 

 seeker. Nobody opposes him when he sets to work to 

 establish a homestead and strands his wire around the 

 one hundred and sixty acres. But what is it that he finds 

 on the ground where once a dome of graceful build 

 spread over the first-comer? Mighty stumps are scat- 

 tered through the thicket of spiny shrubs and second- 

 growth timber ; gullies are washed across the gentle slopes 



