Page:Boy scouts in the White Mountains; the story of a long hike (IA boyscoutsinwhite00eato).pdf/137

 "Oh, why do they allow it!" cried Rob. "Why, they haven't planted a single new tree, or let a single old one stand. They've just stripped it."

"Yes, and spoiled the soil by letting the sun bake it out, too," said Lou.

"We aren't such a progressive people, we Americans, as we sometimes think we are," the Scout Master replied. "In Germany they'd have taken out only the big trees, and planted little ones, and when the next size was bigger, they'd have taken them out, and planted more little ones, and so on forever. And we Scouts could be hiking down there, beside a rushing little river, in the depths of a glorious forest."

"I'm never going to read a Sunday paper again—'cept the sporting page!" Peanut answered.

"Do you read any more of it now?" Art asked.

"It wasn't the Sunday papers which stripped that region," said Mr. Rogers. "It was a lumberman, who made boards and beams of the timber. What did he care about the future, so long as he got rich? Still, I blame the state and the nation more than I blame him. He should never have been allowed to lumber that wasteful way—nobody should. Look, boys, there's a cloud on Washington again."

The boys had almost forgotten Washington in their interest in the stripped forest below them. They looked now far off to the northeast, twenty