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be unimportant if it were not for the fact that the fine needles which form the foliage of a coniferous forest are very susceptible to atmospheric moisture. A heavy dew fairly saturates them, and a very slight increase in the humidity of the air renders them much less inflammable. On the other hand, they dry out almost instantly in direct sunshine or under the touch of a parching breeze. An east wind, therefore, acts on a Cascade forest fire very much as the hot blast does on an iron furnace, or as a brand-new battery acts on a gasoline engine. There is something doing immediately it puts in an appearance. But that was not all. This National forest lies mainly on the western side of the Cascades, but, like all other great ranges, the Cascades are very irregular and have many outlying peaks and slopes that face in all directions. It so happened that the particular slope which was worrying our Uncle Samuel looked toward the east. The wind, therefore, was not only hot and dry, but it was blowing from the new slashings straight up the mountain-side toward Uncle Sam's own woods. And about four o'clock in the afternoon, when that wind had had several hours in which to lick every last trace of moisture out of the tangled brush, the slashings took fire. By half-past seven, when the first telephone message reached the Forest Supervisor, the flames had swept a thousand acres, much of it heavily timbered.

The Supervisor's office was eighty miles away, but he was on the spot the next day with a hundred men, well armed with shovels and other weapons. The lumber company had already set another hundred at work, and twenty-five more arrived the following morning. The east wind had nearly, though not quite, blown itself out, and just at present the fire was not spreading nearly as rapidly as at first. The indications were that there would be a day or two of calm weather, followed by a west wind of more or less strength, and when that west wind arrived the flames would cease their westward progress entirely and begin to travel toward the east, where there was a large body of fine green timber which must be saved if possible. In fact, they had already made a start in that direction by running up a long,

steep slope on the eastern side of the valley where the lumbermen had been working. So the Supervisor, after looking the ground over, divided his force into two main bodies and sent one of them to the fire's northeastern front and the other to the southeastern, with instructions to work toward each other. It takes brains and experience to fight a forest fire effectively. Shovels and water and dynamite are all very well as far as they go, but they alone are not enough.

The men sent to the northeastern border found the fire burning in isolated spots, without any continuous front, and spreading very slowly. Probably this was due in part to the fact that the ground was fifteen hundred to two thousand feet higher than where the trouble began, and at such altitudes the dews are heavier than on the lower levels. A forest fire differs from President Lincoln's gunboats in that it cannot navigate freely where the ground is a little damp. These small burning areas were attacked with the shovels, and dirt was thrown on the flames until they were smothered. They were easy. Besides them, however, there were a great many tall "stubs " or "snags," which were doing more or less damage-dead trees, standing as erect as ever, but almost bare of bark and branches, and thoroughly dried out by years of exposure to the sun and wind. These infernal machines are much more common in the Northwestern forests than in the Eastern, and are not infrequently two hundred feet or more in height. When a fire reaches the foot of one of them, it goes straight to the top and throws out sparks and cinders, which are carried far and wide to start fresh trouble in unexpected places. Except the wind they are the worst enemies that the fire-fighter has to contend with. For a time they called for very careful watching, but many of them fell within the next day or two, and as fast as they came down they were extinguished.

The men on the southeast had a somewhat different proposition on their hands. Here the fire was not so scattered, but was advancing with a front that was fairly continuous, though crooked and irregular. It was moving more rapidly, too, for the ground was lower and drier than toward the north. There was little chance of

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A RANGER PUTTING OUT A GROUND FIRE WITH A WET BLANKET

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66 THESE SMALL BURNING AREAS WERE ATTACKED WITH THE SHOVELS smoldering and a few stubs still making threats.

disposing of it by direct attack, and it seemed wiser to place some impassable obstacle in its way and let it burn itself out. So instead of throwing dirt upon it they cleared a "fire-line" along its front, scraping away everything that was inflammable and leaving only the fire-proof mineral soil. Within the next two or three days this line was extended northward into the region where the first company was at work, and then, before the west wind arrived, there came an unexpected piece of good fortune-a very slight fall of rain. It wasn't much. To the uninitiated it might have been too small to amount to anything. But it made a wonderful difference, and the supervisor immediately began paying off his men, keeping only enough to patrol the worst places, where the ground fires were still

Then Uncle Sam sat down to count the cost. The actual expenses of fire-fighting had been about twenty-five hundred dollars, most of which had fallen on him, though the lumber company paid a part. He and the company had each lost about seven million feet of timber. Uncle Sam's was so situated that it would not have been salable for some time to come, and the valuation that he placed upon it was very low, but the company's was being cut into saw-logs when the fire took it, and its immediate value was much higher. Uncle Sam had also lost several hundred acres of very young trees which would have been good for nothing for many years, but which, if they had lived, would in the course of time

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AND DIRT WAS THROWN ON THE FLAMES UNTIL THEY WERE SMOTHERED"

The

have become merchantable timber. immediate loss to all parties concerned he estimated as between eighteen and twenty thousand dollars. The ultimate loss, including the increase which would undoubtedly have taken place in the value of his burned timber, cannot be estimated at present, but will certainly be much higher.

And there need never have been any fire at all if the lumbermen had been willing to drop their work for a few weeks in the height of the summer.

The men of the Forest Service are often asked whether it is possible to do away entirely with forest fires. The answer is very simple. Forest fires cannot be entirely done away with, any more than city fires or any other kind, but they can be kept down to a minimum, both in number and destructiveness.

Forty-seven fires took place in and near this particular National forest during the season of 1910. Not all of them were actually inside its boundaries, but those that were not were near enough to endanger it, and the forest officials and employees took part in extinguishing them. them. The origin of seven of these fires is unknown. Probably some of them might have been prevented-possibly some could not. But we do know how the other forty started, and the subject is one worthy of a little attention.

To begin with, only four originated on Government property. All the rest started on privately owned lands, either inside the boundaries or just outside. This, of course, was mainly because Uncle Sam's lands are at present almost uninhabited and his timber practically untouched.

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the twenty spread from a heap of old snow-shed timbers that the railway people burned as rubbish, and might have been avoided by burning them in wet weather instead of dry. To the credit of the company it should be said that it set a large force of men at work to put this fire out, and that, while the fire covered a good deal of ground, it did not destroy much valuable timber.

Four fires were started by donkey-engines in the lumber camps. These also

clared that this is too expensive and cannot be done, but of late they seem to be making up their minds that they must do it anyhow, whether they can or not. Ultimately, of course, the consumer will pay the freight if there is any to pay, but burning the brush will not raise the price of lumber as much as burning stumpage.

This seems a good place to say that the lumbermen and railway men are not entirely to blame for their slowness in adopting such remedies as these. For instance,

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