river & all the way along these mountains are well wooded, & in many places there is a really heavy growth of surprisingly fine trees; & here I should like to remark on the selfishness of some classes of people. Timber is indispensable to the miner & is almost as valuable as the gold itself, & yet so thoughtless & indifferent are these people that for hundreds of miles along the river & lake, & in fact along the whole trail, the woods may be seen ablaze, ignited from camp fires carelessly left burning. These hundreds of square miles of excellent timber must have been destroyed through the selfish indifference of men who would not stretch out a hand for a pail of water to save from destruction millions of cords of wood which did not belong to them. Timber is already scarce & a few more years of this sort
