WONDERS OF WOOD 
107 
forest maps which they made themselves, and you may 
be sure they are proud of these maps and careful to 
whom they show them. 
How would you like to be such a cruiser? 
Of course, in different parts of the country lumbering 
is done in different ways. But wherever trees grow, 
men are busy cutting them down; they are in such a 
hurry they do not stop to carry away the branches, much 
less to bundle the twigs into fagots for fire-wood like 
the thrifty Frenchmen. Indeed, I am afraid the Ameri¬ 
can woodsmen slash at our forests with little mercy, 
leaving behind them a dreary waste of blackened stumps 
where the birds will never come again. 
The trouble is, we have not forgotten the feelings 
our forefathers had about the forests. To the pioneer 
the forest was an enemy; it hemmed him in on every 
side, for hundreds of miles it stood between him and 
the cities he had left behind. Before he could build 
his log cabin and plough his field he must make a clear¬ 
ing in the forest; what cared he if the felled trees rotted 
on the ground? The forests, he thought, were limitless, 
endless; he would not have believed if someone had 
told him that in a hundred years people would be 
wondering where they could find wood enough to build 
their homes. 
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