ACADIA An Old Account of Mt. Washington A Word Upon its Insect Life A Word on Mt. Katahdin Sieur de Monts Publications XVIII

MT. KATAHADIN AS A FOREST RESERVATION
GEORGE BUCKNAM DORR

Northern New England, with Maine the greater part, is a natural forest region, rich in lakes and streams, rugged, mountainous and beautiful. In it and the immediately adjoining portions of New York and Canada the Appalachian forest attains at once its greatest density and northern bound.

A BOLD CLIMB

Three centuries ago, when the first Acadian and Plymouth settlements were made, this forest was the most extensive, the richest in species, and probably the most ancient temperate zone forest in the world. The earliest fossil records — leaf and branch — of the broad-leaved, deciduous trees, such as the Sassafras and Fig, the Tulip tree, Magnolia, Willow, Oak and Maple, are found — washed down — in the Potomac formations of Maryland and Virginia and the New Jersey clays. And already they resemble modern forms, showing long previous development in some related region whence they spread — that lying to the north and east most probably, deeply eroded since and partly sunk beneath the sea. Europe, swept bare to the Alps of all but arctic vegetation by the great Ice-invasions of the Glacial Epoch, retained at the beginning of the historic period scarce half the wealth of woodland forms in genera and species which the Appalachian forest still preserves in direct inheritance from those early times.

NOTE: The most important advance, in its consequences, ever made perhaps in the development of life since the first gathering of cells into organic form is that of the rise of the Angiosperms or Flowering Plants, which, by the new food supply they brought, made possible in turn the development of the higher Animals. This took place — the evidence strongly indicates — along the northeastern coast of North America, the region of New York, New England and early French Acadia, an ancient land already, with a temperate climate and a vast temperate region to its north which sent down into it new forms of plants and animals, while it was isolated by the ocean then upon its western side as well as on its eastern. There, apparently, in long seclusion while earlier types of vegetation still prevailed and giant saurians and other reptiles roamed the world, the new plant forms which were to revolutionize its life developed through their early stages, although all trace of them has vanished since with the surface which they dwelt on.

In this forest, stretching broadly down the mountain ranges of the Appalachian system from Northern Maine to Georgia, the United States has an inexhaustible resource, of permanent economic value, if only the tree-species that produce it, turning the passing rains and sunshine of the season into structural, heat-and-energy conserving form, be protected in their self-renewal. Once let a break occur, however, through excessive depletion of a species' ranks or sudden sweeping tree-disease, such as has recently assailed the Chestnut and is assailing now the Pine, and this great economic gift of Nature, this magic spell by which the Pine, the Chestnut, the Hemlock or the Spruce is built from air and water and a pinch of dust, is lost to us and to the world for ever. And with it, too, an infinite source of beauty and delight.

ON KATAHDIN'S SUMMIT

A KATAHDIN STREAM

Three dangers threaten now this old and rich inheritance: forest fires in annually recurrent periods of draught; exploitation by private interests with vision centered on immediate gain; and introduction by the new carrier systems of the world of insect and fungal tree diseases against which age-long evolution has not given the American species immunity or capacity for resistance.

Between us and such destruction stands, representing the Nation and its abiding interest in preventing it, the National Forest Service. It is splendidly equipped and organized for such a task, and is already doing a magnificent work of conservation in the West. In the East, where early relinquishment of public rights in the land made re-acquisition of it for such purpose necessary, the work has only just begun, with the establishment of the White Mountain and the Southern Appalachian Forests. From these it should extend until each great forest district in the East is adequately represented in it.

Two such those of New Hampshire and the South are represented in it now, thanks to the broad statesmanship and energy of Senator Weeks and his associates; a third should unquestionably be that of the great coastal State of Maine — the homeland of the Eastern Pine and Spruce — with its vast forest tracts and valuable timber that has been of untold benefit to every other Eastern State in its upbuilding. In it, one tract stands out beyond all others as suited to such purpose, that of the grandest mountain group throughout the East, Katahdin a vast block of ice-worn, boldly sculptured granite rising above a forest land extensive enough to form a separate State* and climatically distinct from any other, with its own forest needs and problems. Around it on either side flow the East and West Branches of the Penobscot River, upon which its great tributaries of water are utilized for power and transport.

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*See Note B, page 33.

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THE SITE OF A FUTUR WATER-POWER

No National Forest could be better placed to represent and dominate a forest land, nor is there any forest in the East of greater national concern than that which it would represent. There is no more valuable Forest Service work to do, apart from the study and prevention of invading tree diseases, than guarding from fire such rocky, humus-covered slopes as these and those of the White Mountains, whose waters feed industrial and navigable streams. And no more important biologic work could be accomplished than the establishment under Government protection of such a vast and splendid Bird and Wild Life Breeding Ground and Sanctuary at the heart of the greatest, the wildest, and the most shot-over, game land in the East.

The most valuable source of energy in sight to replace coal and oil, whose fast diminishing supplies can now be looked upon as temporary only, is water power. Centuries have clothed our rocky mountain sides, such as those of the white Mountains and Katahdin, with a humus covering that centuries only can replace. This humus, formed from vegetable matter, holds water like a sponge but burns like fuel. A sweeping forest fire will consume in a few hours what has been ages gathering. When it is gone, the rain that came gradually down the mountain slopes and maintained the streams beneath in even flow will descend in torrents, wasting their water to the sea, and leave dry beds behind.

This, too, should be held in mind, that the rain-fall on such mountain heights as these is far greater than below — on Mt. Washington, in a drier climate than Katahdin, 83-1/2 inches annual average — and that these are lands, accordingly, whose power-producing waters it is doubly important to conserve.

KATAHDIN FROM KIDNEY POND

NOTE A
LOUISIANA IN 1816

Louisiana in 1816, when Dr. Bigelow wrote, was not the present State but a vast, wild territory recently acquired from France — for the sum of fifteen million dollars — and comprising all that lay to the westward of the Mississippi and the north of Texas. When first explored and claimed for France by Robert Cavalier, Sieur de la Salle, who entered it from the north in 1682 and named it for his sovereign, Louis XIV, it meant the whole great Mississippi valley, on both sides. Later it passed to Spain, then back again to France, now limited by the river eastward. Napoleon's needs led finally, in 1803, to its sale to the United States, who owe their present continental greatness to the chance thus offered and the statesmanship that took it.

In 1713, Antoine de la Mothe Cadillac, lord and first owner of Mount Desert Island and founder of Detroit, was made its Governor, thus linking together in his roving and adventurous life the three great provinces of ancient France — Acadia, Canada, and Louisiana — since shared between the United States and England.

NOTE B
DESCENDING FROM KATAHDIN

H. D. THOREAU, 1846

I found my companions where I had left them, on the side of the peak, gathering the mountain cranberries, which filled every crevice between the rocks, together with blueberries, which had a spicier flavor the higher up they grew, but were not the less agreeable to our palates. From this elevation, just on the skirts of the clouds, we could overlook the country, west and south, for a hundred miles.

There it was, the State of Maine which we had seen on the map, but not much like that, — immeasurable forest for the sun to shine on. No clearing, no house. It did not look as if a solitary traveler had cut so much as a walking-stick there. Countless lakes, — Moosehead in the southwest, forty miles long by ten wide, like a gleaming silver platter; Chesuncook, eighteen long by three wide, without an island; Millinocket, on the south, with its hundred islands; and a hundred others without a name; and mountains, also, whose names, for the most part, are known only to the Indians.

The forest looked like a firm grass award, and the effect of these lakes in its midst has been well compared, by one who has since visited this same spot, to that of a "mirror broken into a thousand fragments and wildly scattered over the grass, reflecting the full blaze of the sun."

It was a large farm for somebody, when cleared. According to the Gazetter, which was printed before the boundary question was settled, this single Penobscot County in which we were was larger than the whole State of Vermont, with its fourteen counties; and this was only a part of the wild lands of Maine.