Pine Bluff daily graphic., 1895-09-08

picked up for few cents an acre at the tax sales in Albany. It was the cheer ful habit of the Iunbermen to buy tract, strip it of salable logs and then let it go back to the state for unpaid taxes In this way, without expense, the state was regaining control of the wilderness when rich men began bid ding in the tracts for game preserves. At about the same time the people of the state were urged to waken to the necessity Of keeping the wilderness. The charcoal burners were completing the ruin wrought by the ax. On the lower edge of the woods at Glens Falls, the pulp mills were, and still are, grind ing up the forests to make paper for all the big dailies of New York.
 The havoc done by the lumbermen was fully discussed by the Harrison party this summer. The dam at Old Forge has killed standing trees away back to Fourth lake. in the Fulton chain. Other dams have bordered Fifth and. Sixth lakes with melancholy fringe of dead trees. Of the whole eight. only Seventh and Eighth remain beautiful woodland gems.
 Another impressive example is the Raquette river. the great water high way of the woods. Below Long lake it's reaches are. at low water, bordered with mud banks, where the back water from the 1umberlnen's dams hxe killed every bush. Forlxed lake and Raquette lake, farther up. are still so far from the mills that one may see thousands of great pines two feet and half in diameter and Che shores are green and beautiful. as ali woodland shores should be.
 Forest fires have done frightful dam age in many places. Now the state has its fire wards and game constables, the finest forest region in all the east ern states. q hundred miles in extent in each direction, is in a fair way to be saved
 The state may have to repurchase some of the big preserves; it certainly should declare public all the important natural thoroughfares of the woods But in the case of the mountain re- serve, at least, the peoples interests are as well guarded now as they could be under state control, except that the state permits a man to shoot deer. If the state wishes to economize, it need only repurchase tracts whose present owners purpose to strip them of trees or deny public ethoroughfares
 The guides were once slaughterers of
 
 camps in many places, but. owning no- where a foot of land. They little dreamed that it would ever fall into the hands of people who would put up mo trespassingn signs The lumbermen never did that. Pathetic indeed were the cases of many men who had camps where they had lived half a lifetime in summer and were driven away from them. In some cases, like that of Hermit Cunning, of Seventh lake, the new owners permitted the guides who had established camps to keep them during their lifetimes.
 But with the coming of the railroads their functions are changing and they are becoming boatmen and squires of danes at picnic parties, who once saw little of women and guided only hunters in the free woods. They have become the best friends of the deer, the most useful helpers of the game and fire wards, and the most enthusiastic advo- cates-not without political influence, too-of state ownership.
 They see where their interests lie.
 There are other preserves on the edges of the woods, mainly from one to ten square miles in extent, hardly worth considering, besides the big ones I have named. They arc all owned by clubs more or less numerous. The Durant demesne is owned by m estate. Dr. Webb's is the best example. the best in all the country no doubt. of land enough for n dozen New Eagl&ss7 towns, for a thousand New York farms, for population of one hundred thous- and souls in Belgium, held for the pleasure of one man who may be there a month in the year.
 Here is at last a parallel to the great moors of the Scotch Highlands, with exceptions. Here the eye is not sad dened by the falling ruins of homes de serted by eyicted peasants with sorrow in their hearts and curses on their lips. Here never is or was a crofter problem Here the term forest. Is net mere memory of dead and buried trees where now all is desolate, but the fro;lAs of myriads of trees rustic in the san for one man. For him big lakes giealn sii- yer in the woods and bears lumber through the underbrush, and deer run wild uncounted. For him a solitude that is as perfect in it's green beauty as in it's vastness. No laird is there in all Britain who might not envy this forest king ofthc new world, tho beauty and the extent, and the wildness of the domain that lie calls all his own.
 EIIzA PUTNAM HEAToN.