Page:U.S. Department of the Interior Annual Report 1877.djvu/21

Rh for this the department affords them an opportunity until by proper legislation they are enabled to obtain the necessary supply of timber and fire-wood in a legal way.

Moreover, nowhere is a wasteful destruction of the forests fraught with more dangerous results than in mountainous regions. The timber grows mostly on the mountain-sides, and when these mountain sides are once stripped bare, the rain will soon wash all the earth necessary for the growth of trees from the slopes down into the valleys, and the renewal of the forests will be rendered impossible forever; the rivulets and water-courses, which flow with regularity while the forest stands, are dried up for the greater part of the year, and transformed into raging torrents by heavy rains and by the melting of the snow, inundating the valleys below, covering them with gravel and loose rock swept down from the mountain-sides, and gradually rendering them unfit for agriculture, and, finally, for the habitation of men. Proper measures for the preservation of the forest in the mountainous regions of the country appear, therefore, of especially imperative necessity. The experience of parts of Asia, and of some of the most civilized countries in Europe, is so terribly instructive in these respects that we have no excuse if we do not take timely warning.

To avert such evil results, I would suggest the following preventive and remedial measures: All timber-lands still belonging to the United States should be withdrawn from the operation of the pre-emption and homestead laws, as well as the location of the various kinds of scrip.

Timber-lands fit for agricultural purposes should be sold, if sold at all, only for cash, and so graded in price as to make the purchaser pay for the value of the timber on the land. This will be apt to make the settler careful and provident in the disposition he makes of the timber.

A sufficient number of government agents should be provided for to protect the timber on public lands from depredation, and to institute to this end the necessary proceedings against depredators by seizures and by criminal as well as civil action.

Such agents should also be authorized and instructed, under the direction of the Department of the Interior or the Department of Agriculture, to sell for the United States, in order to satisfy the current local demand, timber from the public lands under proper regulations, and in doing so especially to see to it that no large areas be entirely stripped of their timber, so as not to prevent the natural renewal of the forest. This measure would enable the people of the mining States and Territories to obtain the timber they need in a legal way, at the same time avoiding the dangerous consequences above pointed out.

The extensive as well as wanton destruction of the timber upon the public lands by the willful or negligent and careless setting of fires calls for earnest attention. While in several, if not all, of the States such acts are made highly penal offenses by statute, yet no law of the United States provides specifically for their punishment when committed upon the public lands, nor for a recovery of the damages thereby