In these milling operations waste far exceeds use, for after the
choice young manageable trees on any given spot have been felled, the
woods are fired to clear the ground of limbs and refuse with reference
to further operations, and, of course, most of the seedlings and
saplings are destroyed.
These mill ravages, however, are small as compared with the
comprehensive destruction caused by "sheepmen." Incredible numbers of
sheep are driven to the mountain pastures every summer, and their course
is ever marked by desolation. Every wild garden is trodden down, the
shrubs are stripped of leaves as if devoured by locusts, and the woods
are burned. Running fires are set everywhere, with a view to clearing
the ground of prostrate trunks, to facilitate the movements of the
flocks and improve the pastures. The entire forest belt is thus swept
and devastated from one extremity of the range to the other, and, with
the exception of the resinous _Pinus contorta_, Sequoia suffers
most of all. Indians burn off the underbrush in certain localities to
facilitate deer-hunting, mountaineers and lumbermen carelessly allow
their camp-fires to run; but the fires of the sheepmen, or
_muttoneers_, form more than ninety per cent.
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