seventy million feet of lumber annually; those of Puget Sound and the East 'Washington mills, one billion feet. Most of the Oregon production is consumed at home, while the Washington output is very largely exported.
The kinds of timber adapted to lumbering purposes are known as the red, white, and yellow fir, cedar, hemlock, and, in some localities, pine and larch. The red fir constitutes the great bulk of common lumber; the yellow fir is used where strength and elasticity are required, as in spars of vessels, piles, wharves, bridges, and house-building; and cedar for foundations of houses, fence-posts, and inside finishing of houses.
The cabinet-woods are maple, alder, and arbutus. There is oak for staves and other purposes ; but nothing that answers for wagon-making grows on these mountains. Hemlock becomes valuable as furnishing bark for tanning leather. Ash is used for some mechanical purposes, and makes excellent firewood.
The red fir, being very resinous, might be made valuable for its pitch. Oregon turpentine is of superior quality, but, owing to the high freights and high rates of labor on this coast, has not heretofore proved profitable as an export. It is common to find a deposit of dried pitch or resin in the trunks of large fir- trees—especially those that have grown on rocky soil—of one to two inches in thickness, either forming a layer quite round the heart of the tree or extending for fifty feet up through the tree in a square “ stick.”
Trees that have been destroyed by fire have their roots soaked full of black pitch or tar, and even the branches of growing trees drop little globules of clear white pitch on the ground. This wood makes excellent charcoal, in the burning of which a great deal of tar might be saved by providing for its being run off from the pit. There is also plenty of willow wood for making charcoal growing on all the bottom-lands. Fires are permitted to destroy much fine timber every year, settlers being unable to remove the heavy growth b}" any other means.
