, a rival organization, the Northwest Fur Company of Montreal, was
established. Then there began an era that was truly terrible for the
Indians of the northern forest. In their eagerness to get the valuable
furs the companies offered the Indians strong liquors in an abundance
that ruined the poor red man, body and soul. Moreover the fur-bearing
animals were killed not only in winter but during the breeding season.
Many mother animals were shot and their little ones were left to die.
Hence in a short time the wild creatures of the great northern forest
were so scarce that the Indians well-nigh starved.

In spite of this slaughter of fur-bearing animals, the same Company
still draws fat dividends from the northern forest and its furry
inhabitants. If the forest had been more habitable, it would long ago
have been occupied by settlers, as have its warmer, southern portions,
and the Company would have ceased to exist. Aside from the regions too
cold or too dry to support any vegetation whatever, few parts of the
world are more deadening to civilization than the forests of the far
north. Near the northern limit of the great evergreen forest of North
America wild animals are so rare that a family of hunting Indians can
scarcely find a living in a thousand square miles. Today the voracious
maw of the daily newspaper is eating the spruce and hemlock by means of
relentless saws and rattling pulp-mills. In the wake of the lumbermen
settlers are tardily spreading northward from the more favored tracts
in northern New England and southern Canada. Nevertheless most of the
evergreen forests of the north must always remain the home of wild
animals and trappers, a backward region in which it is easy for a great
fur company to maintain a practical monopoly.

Outliers of the pine forest extend far down into the United States. The
easternmost lies in part along the Appalachians and in part along the
coastal plain from southern New Jersey to Texas. The coastal forest
is unlike the other coniferous forests in two respects, for its
distribution and growth are not limited by long winters but by sandy
soil which quickly becomes dry. This drier southern pine forest lacks
the beauty of its northern companion. Its trees are often tall and
stately, but they are usually much scattered and are surrounded by
stretches of scanty grass. There is no trace of the mossy carpet and
dense copses of undergrowth that add so much to the picturesqueness of
the