boom in mining in the Kootenay district and Alaska has since done a great deal to better the position of farmers and stock-breeders in Western Canada and British Columbia.
Having now concluded my business, I intended to finish my trip by a visit to the forests of the Southern Alleghany mountains of which I had heard much from my friend Professor Charles E. Sargent. He had re¬ commended me to visit Asheville, North Carolina, close to which town Mr. Vanderbilt had lately purchased a large tract of forest, built himself a splendid house, and established a large nursery and garden under the direction of an accomplished professional forester, Mr. Pinchot.1 His idea was to bring a tract of natural forest under good management, and instead of allowing it to be burnt, grazed and destroyed, in the reckless way favoured by most American owners of forest, from the State down¬ wards, he endeavoured, by natural reproduction and protection against waste and improper felling, to bring it into a condition of permanent profit. By the time I reached Asheville, in the first week of June, the weather became excessively hot, and the change from the dry, cold and bracing climate of Alberta to a damp, tropical heat of 8o° to 90° in the shade was very trying and upset me a bit for two or three days. I found Asheville a new and rising town in a beautiful situation, but not high enough in the mountains to make it suitable for a pleasure resort, as I believe was the hope of those who were booming it. In spring or autumn it might be very charming, but the lack of decent roads and the difficulty of getting good guides and riding-horses at reasonable prices make excursions in these southern highlands still rather too arduous for the ordinary tourist.
I heard many curious stories, which no doubt must be accepted as only partially true, of the way in which Mr. Vanderbilt’s attempt to found a great country estate on the model of an English one was thwarted by the settlers, whose desire to get all the profit they could out of the presence of so wealthy a man in their midst seemed curiously mixed with a demo¬ cratic objection to a man who was so rich that he could afford to spend money on things they had no idea of. There was also no doubt a feeling of hostility among those who had for generations looked on the forest as a feeding-ground for their stock and hogs, as a hunting-ground free to all, and a place from which they had a prescriptive right to take what¬ ever timber they wanted without questions being asked. It appeared that when Mr. Vanderbilt’s agents had purchased as much as possible of the land in order to form a block of 30,000 to 40,000 acres, there remained a few bits occupied by whites and negroes who could not prove their titles, or who declined to sell at all; and these men, backed by local lawyers, were encouraged to make their presence as objectionable as possible to Vanderbilt, in order to force him to buy them out at exorbitant prices. Such stories are made the most of, and I cannot say how far they are true, but from what I saw of the class of people who inhabit the mountain forests of North Carolina and East Kentucky, I can well believe
1 Mr. Pinchot later became Chief of the Forest Department of the United States,
and developed that service into one of the best managed and most successful that
exists in any country.
