THE ADIRONDACK FOREST.

By MR. VERPLANK COLVIN, Albany, N. Y.

It is nearly twelve years since, by request of the then Governor of this State, I addressed the first American Forestry Congress, at the first meeting in Cincinnati. At that time the presence of Governor Cornell and Ex-Governor Seymour (both earnestly interested in forestry) had been hoped for, but the official duties of the one and the delicate health of the other prevented their attendance. Many of the practical questions of governmental forestry were then matters of doubt, if not of dispute.

Even the propriety or feasibility of State care of forests was questioned by some public men; but the demand of the people for forest preservation has enforced the trial of administrative plans. The legislation establishing the Adirondack Reserve is so recent and accessible in the statutes that it need not be recited. Your request that I should address you means that you wish me to communicate some of my personal observation and knowledge relative to the great Adirondack forest acquired during the quarter of a century that I have devoted to the surveys in this region.

Shall I tell you of these forests as they were? As they are? As they should be?

As they were when I began the exploration of the remote portions of the wilderness at the close of the civil war-I cannot think of them without regret for their then grandeur and beauty. At the close of the civil war the Adirondack region was a wonderful forest-a cathedral of trees. A great portion of the forest was then practically unknown. Its thousand lakes were supposed to number only one or two hundred. Whole valleys and mountain ranges of primeval forest existed—yes, valley after valley, and range after range-which had never echoed to the sound of a lumberman's axe. The moose was not yet extinct. The wild trumpeter swan sunned his snowy plumage on the shallows of the northern rivers. The wild pigeons, in flocks that darkened the sky, made here their nesting ground, breaking the limbs from the trees by the weight of their tumult

uous masses. Eagles, hawks and owls fattened on rich food. Partridges or ruffled grouse and the black or Canada grouse, and other rare and beautiful birds, were here. The beaver cut down trees and built log dams and houses of brush and mud. Wolves, bear and panther were frequently met with, the wolves, indeed, so audacious and dangerous as to venture out into the settlements, killing sheep and howling near the cabins of frontiersmen. The true source of the Hudson river was unknown, and other Adirondack rivers were indicated upon maps by dotted lines, representing a "supposed course" of the stream. So wild, so magnificent, so untouched and unknown was the interior of this great forest as late as 1865.

Forests of majestic pines yet grew upon the banks of the Upper Hudson. The pine was yet the chief sought timber of the lumbermen. Magnificent trees, towering above all the forest, stood masters among the dark spruce and Hemlock forests, which, below, were embowered in unbroken masses of hardwood or deciduous timber. The lake shores for miles were symmetrically margined with perfectly-formed forests of Arbor Vitate (the “white cedar" of hunters and guides). The great Sphagnum swamps were decorated with dark-green Balsam trees, surprisingly uniform in shape, as though trimmed by artifice of man to the form of spires of innumerable chapels. Except near settlements, forest fires had left hardly a scar on the sides of the richly-timbered mountains. There were no railroads in the Adirondacks in those days, nor on either side of it. Even the shores of Lake Champlain and the valley of Black river had yet to hear the roar of the railway train. Stages, as open wagons were called, went to some settlements on the borders of the forest once or twice a week. These "stages" traveled night and day on a journey over fearful roads, and the wearied traveler felt happy that only one day in the week was stage day. Corduroy roads, rudely made of logs, rarely having any covering of earth, were the causeways through the swamps, and over the hills the wheels struggled with huge boulders for the right of way. Each stage driver had his axe, for trees, fallen across the road, had frequently to be cut away.

I remember, in 1870, traversing the new road from North river to Indian lake, then recently opened. It was October. On either side was a dense forest of trees of enormous size.

Between these was only the single track of the new road, so deeply sunken into the soft "wooden soil" as to reach the hubs of the vehicles. At 2000 feet above the sea the pines had mostly given place to the Black Spruce and Balsam, decorating a leafless forest of gigantic Yellow Birches and huge Beech trees. The mightiest Hemlock trees were dwarfed by comparison with the great uplifted columns of the spruces, and the rough, scaly trunks of those Yellow Birches supported topmost branches which fairly swept the clouds.

Six years later I passed that way again. Only by the topography could one recognize the country. The great trees were chiefly gone. Forest fires had followed the axe, and tall, blackened columns-the lofty and horrible head-boards of the dead forest-were the chief reminder of what had been. Bad management, or lack of management, had permitted this section of the great forest to be destroyed, for the giant hardwood trees. had not been cut or lumbered. They had been wasted by fire because there was no one to save them or prevent it. It is not known how these fires originated. It is more likely from hunters' camp-fire than from a lumberman's carelessness. However it happened, they are gone! There was no forest manage

ment.

Ten years more pass away. The dead and blackened trunks of the old forest have mostly fallen or are more solitary, and have grown gray with many winters of exposure to the storms. But the area of burnt forest has increased vastly. How or why no one can explain or understand. Hundreds of square miles are now bare of forest, showing the rough, grizzly ledges of native rock. At midsummer, here and there, columns of smoke are seen to rise one mile, three miles, ten miles away— a dozen of them-where there is still forest, and you are told "some hunter has made a smudge," or "probably someone with a shotgun and wadding of paper" has unconsciously fired the forest.

Such is the Adirondack forest as it was and as it is in the lowlands and accessible portions-chiefly lumbered over now, and the remnants in many places burnt away. Yet in the interior and mountain districts there remain vast sections still untouched by lumbermen and undevastated.

It was in a remote interior valley, where the symmetry and beauty of the forest was most remarkable, a region free from underbrush, with beautiful, open, sunshiny glades, naturally planted with clusters of small but well formed evergreens, where crystaline trout streams led through dark forests or wild meadows to beautiful lakes, that I first (thirty years ago) thought of the Adirondack park and forest reserve. Since then I have urged it, written of it, spoken for it, and today it is a reality.

In my report to the Legislature on the Adirondack Survey in 1873, I especially urged the acquisition by the State of those forests at the sources of the Hudson, which include the high Alpine district of our mountains.

This portion of the Adirondack forest is unique. The spruce, the balsam, the birch, which grow in such dense forests upon these Alpine slopes, had they memories, could tell of days when George the Third was King; when Washington was unknown; perhaps of times before either Indian or white man had climbed these peaks. Yet these trees are scarce three or five feet high, but aged and gray-the patriarchs of the forest-spreading out their interlaced boughs, matted together in impenetrable chaparal, where the explorer must walk upon the tree-tops if he climb at all. Higher the air is thin, and cold and piercing. A mile above sea level the forest trees have shrunk to shrubs. Arctic willows, Lapland lichens and Greenland mosses and small boreal plants are the only evidences of plant life that remain.

But in the deep valleys, half a mile below, where the white billows of the clouds go floating, are forests where, if the trees are small, they are, nevertheless, densely set, twenty-five feet in height, but scarce a foot apart, so close at times that a dog can scarce make his way among them, while the ground is one mass of humus soil, soaking with rain and the moisture of the clouds, frequently knee-deep with bright green sphagnum-a peat moss so soaked and saturated with water as to justify the name of hanging-lakes to these mosses on the mountain sides.

This is the Alpine and Sub-Alpine forest, the preservation of which I so strongly recommended in my report of 1873 and since.

This section of the forest has not greatly changed. The lumbermen have penetrated into the upland valleys, but have not reached any of the high peaks. Only the large timber has as yet been taken. In 1873, between the Schroon and Raquette rivers, North Elba and the Boreas or Old Carthage road, there was nearly 500 square miles of primeval forest. There still remain nearly 100 square miles of these Adirondack Alps unharmed by the fire or by the axe. This, with the Whiteface mountain district, preserved by a private club or association, covers nearly all the Alpine forest of New York, but this Mount Marcy district has chief value as containing the sources of the Hudson.

There should be no delay now in the preservation of this rare forest and its springs of living waters.

Of the forests of the lake region, it may be said that of those located above 1500 to 1700 feet above the sea, the choicest portions are now either in the hands of the private parks or clubs, or of the State. This is the chief region of timber and game. At Raquette lake, at points on the headwaters of Moose river, are sections of forest which no lumberman has yet cut-as wild in places as when Columbus discovered America.

In the discussions which led to the establishment of our forest preserves one of the chief arguments used was the ultimate value to the State of the timber upon these lands as a reserve for forest administration. The general agreement of high authority and experience appears to be in favor of the utilization of the already lumbered districts of the forest, so far, at least, as to meet the expense of their maintenance, if not of their cost. Yet those tracts of wild and picturesque forest, including the larger lakes, like the Raquette, the Saranac or the Au Sable, especially those sections which have never been lumbered, can be preserved intact as a memorial and evidence of the ancient forests, and the application of the European system may be confined to those natural lumbering districts in the border of the forest which have already been cut over, but have now a new growth of merchantable timber upon them. The taxes of this State may perhaps ultimately be lightened to the extent of $2,500,000 per annum from the present deforested border lands of this region, now nearly bare of timber.