Lake Umbagog
1907
August
Primitive Forest.
  Mr. Jonathan P. West who
was born in Upton in 1832 can remember when the
forests about the lake were made up chiefly of large coniferous
trees and when they were very generally free from
undergrowths. As he expressed it "a man could then breathe
freely in the woods and see about him for considerable
distances in every direction. Now the ground is so choked
with bushes and fallen tops that he seems to be
suffocating and a Deer or Moose may stand within
a few rods of him and yet remain unseen." The 
change began long before my time for when I first
visited the region in 1871 the lumbermen had been at
work there for upwards of thirty years. Although they
had removed only the pines and the larger spruces
sufficient sunlight had been let in by this thinning to
induce, in very many places, a rank growth of shrubs and
young trees of various kinds. Still later cutting, especially
that of the merciless kind so general within recent years,
has changed the character of the forest even more
radically until now there are extensive tracts bordering
on the lake where the conditions are not unlike those
in our so called second growth woods in eastern
Massachusetts.