APPALACHIAN NATIONAL PARK 25 
clear away the pine needles, and thus help the grasses 
and tender herbs to spring up as food for his cattle. 
For these reasons the young trees were killed, and 
the heavy growth of virgin timber in time gave place 
to the present open woods. Yet the forest was not 
destroyed; it contended bravely with this strange 
new foe. 
As generations passed, the clearings grew larger 
and more numerous. Denuded slopes appeared, be- 
came gullied and washed, the streams thickened, they 
grew shallower and lost their crystal clearness as 
soon as they got to the settled country. The balance 
between man and the forest was being disturbed. 
But the forest yet contended bravely with the de- 
stroyer, and there was always that background of 
inaccessible high mountains, the birth-chambers of 
the streams, where the forests fulfilled their saving 
mission without hindrance. 
Then came the lumberman with his portable saw- 
mill, entering into the very heart of the forest ex- 
cepting the highest and wildest places, taking the 
largest trees, but leaving the top branches and half 
the trunk to cumber the ground and offer food to the 
fires that invariably broke out, fires immeasurably 
hotter and more destructive than the ordinary forest 
fire. Deeper and deeper into the wilderness pushed 
the lumberman, taking a small fraction of the forest 
and killing the rest. Nature gave quick warning. Fer- 
tile valley bottoms were overflowed, and the work of 
man's hands was often destroyed. After seasons of 
flood came seasons of low water, when the rivers 
