CHAPTER XVII.

THE ADIRONDACK REGION-A WARNING TO THE DESTROYER-A PLEA FOR THE PERISHING.

THE Adirondack region is an uneven plateau, having an average elevation about eighteen hundred feet above the sea-level, in area nearly equal to the three States of New Hampshire, Vermont, and Massachusetts. Its crystalline rocks preceded, its sandstones witnessed the dawn of animal life upon the Western Continent. Its mountains are loftier than any east of the Father of the Waters. Its rivers are numbered by fifties, its lakes by hundreds. Away back in primordial times the forces of nature raised its. surface into the dominion of monthly frosts, unfitted it for agriculture and pasturage, and restricted it to the growth of evergreens and deciduous trees, dwarfed upon its peaks but reaching an average height in its valleys and on its sheltered plains. God made it, not for the habitation of man but for that of the natural occupants of the forest, lake, and river. In his economy it was most useful to man when its original condition was maintained. If the great cities of a numerous people were to be built on the waterways of a mighty commerce, all the greater necessity that here should be a great preserve in fact as well as in name. It was the natural home of all the land and fresh-water animals of the fortyfifth parallel. The call of the great moose was com

mon in the swamps and marshes-the red deer would have exhausted the grasses and tender shrubs had not their numbers been repressed by the panther and the gray wolf. The black bear fattened upon the beechnuts. The industrious beaver built his dam upon streams fished by the mink and the otter. The fisher, the pine marten, the fox and other fur-bearing animals ranged the more elevated lands; ducks and geese of many species and other migratory birds made their semi-annual visits, and some remained to raise their young. The partridge drummed upon the fallen tree-trunks, flights of passenger-pigeons obscured the sun. The lunge fattened on the freshwater shrimps, the savage pike and omnivorous pickerel pursued the beautiful brook trout up the silvery streams. The smaller animals and birds abounded. As a rural poet sang in those early days

"The pigeon, goose and duck, they fill our beds, The beaver, coon and fox, they crown our heads,

The harmless moose and deer are food and clothes to wear, Nature could do no more for any land."

In the economy of nature this region had another and an inestimable value. It was the water reservoir for a part of the St. Lawrence and Champlain valleys, but especially for the Hudson River and the great cities which were to rise upon its banks. And it was as complete as the works of the Great Architect always are. The vapors borne against the flanks of its numerous mountains were condensed and precipitated in the daily rains of summer and the snows of winter. The surface was shaded and covered by forest trees everywhere throwing out rootlets, which,

penetrated and swollen by frosts, widened the crevices in the rocks below. The decaying leaves of successive seasons spread a soft, thick cushion over the soil. The snows fell to great depths; protected from wind and sun, they remained for a long time, and when they slowly dissolved followed every fibre and rootlet down to the lowest depths of every rock fissure or cavity. The soil became a gigantic sponge, saturated with moisture, expelling its surplus waters, not in destructive inundations, but by slow percolation, into the streams, maintaining them at full banks, and finally creating the noble river which might be navigated for sixty leagues by the navies of the world.

Forty years ago was there no New York legislator who had heard of the Roman marshes, those deadly fever beds where once was grown the breadstuffs of Rome when she was mistress of the world? Was there no student of history who knew that where the Roman farmer bred his son to wield the Roman short-sword he would now perish by a night's exposure? Had no traveller seen the naked rocks after the vineyards of Southern France had been swept into the sea? Was there none who knew of the foresight of Holland when she made herself poor to build her dykes and control the waters of the North Sea? No! no! The pen hesitates to tell the story of their negligence or to record with what silly contempt they spurned, threw away, and refused to preserve the blessings of Almighty God.

The vandalism originated in the Champlain Valley. Far up the Ausable, on a little stream that came down from the mountains, there was a small furnace which used charcoal as a fuel. The country black

smiths began to use its iron. It was almost as good, they said, as Swedish iron. They made it into horseshoes; then into nails for the horse-shoes. Then it was made into nails for ordinary building purposes, and there proved to be not an insignificant profit in its manufacture.

The reputation of the charcoal iron spread, new furnaces were built, and the small village of Clintonville became the great nail factory of the north country. The smoke of coal-pits covered the land. The trees were swept away as if some gigantic scythebearer had mowed it over. In a few years there was no charcoal to be had at paying prices. Then the furnaces ceased operations, and where the forest had stood were huckleberry plains, where the berries were picked by Canadian-French habitans. One may travel now for miles in that region and not find a tree large enough to make a respectable fish-pole.

Next came like an army of destruction the first invasion of the lumbermen. Pine lumber increased in value. These lands could be cheaply purchased at the sales for taxes, stripped of their accessible pines and then abandoned to the State for another tax sale. Only the best trees were felled; their tops and branches were left where they fell. The logs were run down to the mills in the high water of spring.

The pines near the rivers were quickly exhausted. Then some enemy of the region put a scheme into the minds of the lumbermen, which resulted in incalculable injury. It was to dam the outlets-raise the water in the lakes so as to reach the pines upon their shores. The first dam was upon tho Raquette River to raise the water in Big Tupper Lake. Dams at the outlet of Long Lake, Blue Mountain, Uta

wanna, Raquette, and many others speedily followed. There was a noble grove of pines on the high west bank of Long Lake just above the outlet. The year after the dam was built their trunks had disappeared. Their tops and branches were left on the ground to die and to decay.

It has been stated elsewhere that the arboreal growth of the lakes quite down to the ordinary waterlevel constituted one of the principal beauties of the virgin landscape. The lake shores were generally precipitous and the natural rise and fall of the waters produced almost no effect upon the vegetation. The silvery waters everywhere appeared to be framed in a setting of vivid green. But there were places along the rivers as well as the lakes where there were marshes covered with trees, the surface of which was overflowed by a slight rise of the waters. When the dams were constructed the water was permanently raised so as to overflow these marshes and a narrow piece of even the most precipitous shores. This permanent overflow destroyed the life of every tree and shrub where it existed. The setting of emerald green was replaced by dead trees which covered the marshes or stood around the lake, white and deathly, like armies of grinning skeletons, presiding over new sources of contamination and decay.

Great injury to the whole region swiftly followed these obstructions. That caused by fires was the most extensive. The tree-tops and branches left by the lumbermen became dry and combustible. Careless visitors left the fires burning in their temporary camps, which spread over townships, destroying the whole arboreal growth. The fires followed the dry roots deep into the ground and rock crevices, and