and she pointed to the sky. "As far as you can see they are
felling."

We looked, and sure enough the vast woods that clothed the lofty
mountainsides were being ruthlessly cleared away. We suggested that a
protest should be made.

"Oh, na, na! The woods are none of ours. The graf de Ferraris too has
sold the estate to a gesellschaft from Vienna. They care nothing for
the castle, but are hungry for timber. The count lives a long way
off, and does not feel it, but it must eat the heart of his aged
lady mother to the fibres--she lives in the village--to know that
foreigners are sweeping down masses of trees by wholesale--trees that
have always kept the poor man's noodles boiling. And where are the
planks to come from for our houses, our barns, our stables? And how
can the cattle be kept from straying without fences of wood? Then,
too, avalanches of snow and of stones will fall, and maybe overwhelm
the village. Thanks to the Mother of God! they will drop on my grave,
but, Lord Jesus, the children and the children's children!"

Having given us these sad scraps of information, and heaving a
big sigh, the poor old soul lifted up her bundle of chips and went
fumbling forward over her stumbling-blocks.

Sad and true was the picture which she had drawn. Nor does it,
alas! belong exclusively to Taufers, but to the whole Tyrol. In many
instances the people are themselves eager for this reckless clearing.
They hope thereby to secure more pasturage, the feeding and rearing
of cattle being the great idea of wealth to the Tyroler. So they make
ready money of their timber, which now in the form of masts floats on
the Mediterranean and the Suez Canal. The Venetians, requiring timber,
have turned the once beautiful, richly-wooded Dalmatia into a dreary,
barren land. In the Tyrol it is not generally foreigners, but the
natives, who unhesitatingly sweep away woods, which, causing grass and
plants to grow, have enabled human habitations to be erected on spots
that would otherwise be but dreary wildernesses, the battle-fields of
chilling winds and scorching sunshine. The precious timber, which like
refuse they cart into the clumsy yawning craters called stoves, or
else sell out of the country for economy so called, might not only
supply the land for centuries with a proper amount of fuel, either as
wood or charcoal, but bring prosperity to many a sequestered village
if turned into tools and kitchen utensils, whilst still leaving
thousand