Page:Looters of the Public Domain.djvu/23



from the timber on the claim, the size of each cabin being 12 by 16 feet and 7 feet high, one window, board floor and wooden fireplace. There were no other signs of habitation or cultivation whatsoever, the building of the cabin being the only improvement made on a pre-emption or homestead claim in those days. The entrymen hardly ever slept over night there, although they made final proof within eight or ten months from the date of filing, wherein they alleged a continuous residence.

Soon after proof was made, I negotiated the sale of this tract to a Eureka capitalist for sums ranging from $800 to $1200 per claim. Later, the purchaser sold to the California Redwood Company for $25 per acre. The latter corporation transferred the tract to the Humboldt Mill & Lumber Company, which erected sawmills and commenced the manufacture of the timber into merchantable lumber. At the present time, the timber on these lands possesses an intrinsic value of from $200 to $300 per acre.

I gradually learned the business from the felling of a tree down to the rolling of a log from the landing into the mill pond. I worked in the redwoods, logging for some ten or twelve years, part of which time I engaged my services to others, while for several years I contracted on my own account and personally drove a twelve-horse team, hauling logs on a skid road to the landings.

The first big fraud under the Timber and Stone Act of June 3, 1878, that ever occurred on the Pacific Coast, was consummated in Humboldt County, California, during 1882-3. In 1876, Mr. Forman, the Deputy United States Surveyor for whom I had formerly worked, took a contract to survey a number of townships covered with a dense body of redwood timber in the northern part of Humboldt County. As soon as the land was surveyed and thrown open to entry, the California Redwood Company, with offices in Eureka, began to hire men to file on the entire tract under the Timber and Stone Act referred to. At that time, the persons desiring to avail themselves of .its provisions, were not required to make a personal examination of the portions they wished to file on, nor were they obliged to go to the land office to make final proof. All that was