Seattle daily post-intelligencer. [volume] (Seattle, W.T. [Wash.]) 1881-1888, 1883-10-20

lNeH York Snn1

For many weeks vast cloud of smoke
mas overhung Oregon, Washington, Ida
no and part of Montana II has COW
ered territory greater than all Of New
England, Nsv York. New Jersey, Ohio,
Pennsylvania, MARYLAND, Delaware, vir-
ginia and West Virginia. The smoke
has rolled from the Pacific coast TO the
main divide Of the Rocky Mountains.
There has been no rain for months to
clear the air. Except at rare intervals,
/ the smoke has filled the atmosphere
| The mountains have been shrouded, the
sun has been nothing but a cspper col
ored SPOT in the murky sky.
| This smoke proceeds from tremendous
/ forest fire. that have been burning near-
| ly all summer in the timber region of
| the Northwest. The yastness Of the
smoke cloud indicates ths extent of the
| destruction wrought among the forests.
Ii is. in fact, the only measure We have
at present OF the wealth destroy cd
since last July in Oregon and Wash
in0ton.
1t ID estimated that ths loss to settlers
whose houses and barns at the thresh
olds OF the timber region have been
burned amounts to from quarter of a
million to half million dollars. That
is only an incident in the wholesale de
struction of the forests themselves. In
the course of time, as the extent of the
conhagration in the wilderness is ascer-
tained, 1t may be possible to say ap
proximately how many million dollars
worth of red and yellow fir, of cedar,
of black spruce and yellow pine, has
been consuIHed. But these giant trees,
standing 80 closely together that he who
goes among them seems to be shut in by
an impenetrable stoekade. have a value
that cannot be reckoned in dollars. The
defamation of the forests of the North
west Is an irreparable and national
calamity.
The noble forests in nsrthern Idaho,
along both shores ofushe Columbia river.
in Chehalis and Clatsop and other coast
counties Of Washington and Oregon, on
the Olympiau peninsula, and all around
the magnificent Puget Sound. contain a
supply of timber which, enormous AS it
Is, Is none too great for the needs which
the future will bring. Between the tim
Der lands of Minnesota and the timber
lands of the Bitter Root and the Pend
d'Oreiile, stretches an almost treeless
region a thousand miles wide. Prao-
tically, the whole Of central and east
crn Washington, including what is to
be- In few years one of the busiest
wheat countries on the globe, is naked.
The forest count y west of the Case ide
Ringe must furnish the material for
the development of the treeless country
east.
The shipbuilders of Maine are already
sending to the mouth of the Columbia
or to Puget Sound for their heavy spars.
The lumber mills at Astoria, at Tacoma
and at Seattle turn out sticks hundred
and twenty feet long and two feet square
at one end as at the other. trunks six
feet through at the base are 30 tall that
they look slender. The furnaces of the
steamboats, are fed with logs which
would make railroad ties. Everywhere
there is a lavish squandering of the vast
wealth of standing timber with which
nature has endowed this region, for the
supply is foolishly regarded as mex
haustibls.
But 1t is not inexhaustible, and this is
the region which the great fires of the
present year have invaded.