[Gutenberg 50091] • Silas Strong, Emperor of the Woods

1906\. Bacheller writes that the book has one high ambition. It has tried to tell the sad story of the wilderness itself-to show, from the woodsman's viewpoint, the play of great forces which have been tearing down his home and turning it into the flesh and bone of cities. Were it to cause any reader to value what remains of the forest above its market price and to do his part in checking the greed of the saws, it would be worth while. The book begins: The song of the saws began long ago at the mouths of the rivers. Slowly the axes gnawed their way southward, and the ominous, prophetic chant followed them. Men seemed to goad the rivers to increase their speed. They caught and held and harnessed them as if they had been horses and drove them into flumes and leaped them over dams and pulled and hauled and baffled them until they broke away with the power of madness in their rush. But, even then, the current of the rivers would not do; the current of thunderbolts could not have whirled the wheels with speed enough. See other titles by this author available from Kessinger Publishing.