CHAPTER I.

DISCOVERY AND EARLY SETTLEMENT.

Civilized man lives in houses, and as the house that does not contain wood in some form is practically unknown the lumber industry accompanies civilized man in all his migrations and progress. It was, in fact, a condition of his migration and advancement until the railroad brought forest and prairie together and made habitable. the barren places of the earth. A treeless world might not be uninhabitable, but it is a historical fact that migration, racial progress and growth of population have been guided by the forest distribution of the world-modified, of course, by other conditions, but having that as one of their chief controlling influences.

The early history of civilization proves that countries which are now treeless and, therefore, thinly populated were once blessed with for

The history of ancient Persia, Assyria and Canaan would be vastly different from what it is if those countries had been in their early days in the forestal condition they are now; or it might be more correct to say that they would have had no history. The disappearance of the forests led to the disappearance of the people; and, as today they are barren and almost depopulated because of the absence of the forests, if the forests had never existed their prominence in the history of civilization would have been withheld from them.

Wherever the cradle of the Aryan peoples may have been, their migrations led them by forest routes to forest countries, and it was not until recent times that the plains attracted them. This is true because shelter and fuel were necessities, which only the forest could furnish. As history goes, the discovery of coal is but of yesterday. Coal was undoubtedly known to the ancients, but it became an article of commerce not more than eight hundred years ago, and it was not until the discovery of the steam engine in 1705 that coal mining assumed important proportions. Until the Nineteenth Century coal in most countries was either a luxury or was used for industrial purposes, while the fuel of the people was wood. Therefore there was an im

mediate dependence upon the forests which relaxed only when transportation-ample enough and cheap enough-linked the forests and the plains together. It was the railway that finally made habitable the treeless portions of the earth.

Dreamers have wondered what would have been the history of North America if the location of the forests and treeless plains had been reversed-if the discoverers and explorers sighting the shores of the Atlantic and the Pacific had found nothing but prairies, no matter how rich the soil-whether settlement would have awaited the invasion of the railroad. Happily such was not the case, but however inhospitable the climate and severe the aspect of the rockbound shores of New England in other respects the trees waved a welcome and promised shelter and warmth. So, whether the early discoverers were English, French, Spanish or Dutch, they found habitable shores and were able to establish their colonies in Florida and Virginia, on the Hudson, on Massachusetts Bay, on the St. Lawrence, on the coast of Nova Scotia, at the mouth of the Mississippi, in Central and South America and later on the Pacific shores.

From the coast, migration and settlement drifted inland, following the course of the rivers or striking boldly across the country, but always protected and supported by the forests. Whether we consider the individual pioneer with his family or the congeries of population, the villages and cities, all were in earlier days absolutely dependent upon the forests and endured separation from them only by the aid of com

merce.

The first colonies in North America were, for the most part, made up of men of every trade and profession, but their development and the extension of their boundaries must be credited to the pioneers who struck off into the forest, a little removed from their fellows, and there hewed out their homes. These men combined in themselves all of the practical trades. They were hunters and fishermen as well as farmers; they were their own carpenters, blacksmiths, millers, tanners, shoemakers and weavers, and all of them were emphatically, at the beginning of the settlement, directly dependent upon the forest which gave them their material for building and for the simple implements of the time, their fuel and even their food. Yet, in a sense, the forest was their enemy, for they had to clear it away to make room for wheat and corn. The settler on American shores was the first American lumberHe was a lumberman by necessity, as he was a carpenter, shoe

man.

maker and weaver.

So the history of the lumber industry-for the lumber trade as a branch of commerce was a later development-is the history of progress, of settlement and of civilization.

As population increased and as the centers of population enlarged in importance, there came about a sharp differentiation and a natural apportionment of work; and so the lumber industry, which at the beginning merely supplied the needs of the individual settler in the forest, came to supply the requirements of the young towns and the cities of the continent. This was, however, a small matter, for all along the Atlantic coast, the shores of the Gulf of Mexico and on the banks of every tidal river the trees grew in profusion. Every village could be supplied from its own immediate resources. It was only when the increase in population made the requirements so great that local supplies were exhausted that a lumber industry that looked beyond the immediate neighborhood of its mills for the disposal of its product was either needful or possible. As the first settlers were the first lumbermen, so the first settlement was the first site of the lumber industry in America.

From the date of Columbus' first voyage in 1492, for more than a hundred years the process was discovery and exploration and conquest. rather than genuine settlement. By the end of the Fifteenth Century the eastern coast of the three Americas had been roughly outlined. Columbus, the Cabots, Pinzon, Cabral, Cortereal, Vespucci, Balboa and others had cursorily examined the coast all the way from Hudson Strait to the vicinity of Bahia, on the eastern coast of Brazil. The lands discovered were usually claimed for the crowns which the voyagers represented and some of these claims were made good by colonization.

The next century was one of combined discovery, exploration, conquest and occupation. By its conclusion the coasts of both oceans had been well outlined and the general character of the countries determined. However, as late as 1600 there had been little genuine colonization, the only successful attempts at occupation being by the Spaniards and Portuguese, and these accomplishments were confined chiefly to the West Indies, Central America, the Isthmus of Panama and isolated portions of South America.

Until the Seventeenth Century, North America, which was destined to exceed all the others in population and wealth, remained practically virgin soil. For example, the Gulf of St. Lawrence was entered by Gaspar Cortereal in 1500, and Cartier voyaged up the St. Lawrence as

far as Montreal in 1535, but it was not until the middle of the century that any attempt at colonization within the present limits of Canada was made and not until 1608 that Quebec was founded.

A brief summary of some of the leading dates and names during the period of exploration may be pardoned. Columbus' first voyage, in 1492, resulted merely in the discovery of some of the West Indies, including Cuba, which he thought to be mainland. In 1493, seven weeks after the return of Columbus to Spain, Pope Alexander VI. assigned the lands discovered and to be discovered west of a certain line to Spain, and east of the same line to Portugal. This line was a great circle passing through the poles, and the following year was defined as passing 370 leagues west of the Cape Verde Islands. This edict was the basis of the Portuguese claims in the eastern part of South America and led to the Portuguese sovereignty over Brazil and its colonization by that power. It also led to a division of authority in the antipodes. The second voyage of Columbus, in 1493, resulted in further discoveries in the West Indies, including Jamaica. In 1498, on his third expedition, Columbus discovered Trinidad and coasted along the delta of the Orinoco and thence to the west. He set out on his fourth voyage in May, 1502, and during the following year he studied the coasts between the gulfs of Honduras and Darien.

In the meantime other navigators had been at work and other governments than that of Spain became interested. The English were early engaged in western explorations, and in 1497 Henry VII. sent out John Cabot, an Italian navigator, accompanied by Sebastian Cabot, his son, who planted the English flag on an unknown coast supposed to have been that of Labrador. The following year the two sailed as far south as Cape Florida and are supposed to have been the first to see the mainland of America. Nearly thirty years thereafter, in 1526, Sebastian Cabot, in the employ of Spain, began a voyage during which he discovered La Plata River and erected a fort at San Salvador, now Bahia.

In the same year that the Cabots began their work of exploration, 1497, Pinzon, Vespucci and others sailed from Cadiz. They are supposed to have first touched the coast of Honduras, whence they followed the coasts of Mexico and the United States, rounding Florida, and are believed to have sailed as far as Chesapeake Bay. In 1499 Vespucci with others followed the northern coast of South America for a long distance, including the coasts of Venezuela, the Guianas and part of the