The early colonizers, settling on the Atlantic Coast soon after the discoveries of Columbus, did not, as is usually believed, find an untouched virgin forest. The aboriginal Indians had, before then, hewn out their corn fields, and had supplied themselves with fuel wood and material for their utensils; and fires, accidental, intentional, or caused by lightning, had, no doubt, also made inroads here and there. The white man, to be sure, is a more lavish wood consumer; his farms increased more rapidly, his buildings and his fireplaces consumed more forest growth, and carelessness with fire was, as it is still, his besetting sin. Moreover, a trade in timber with the Old World developed, in which only the best and largest-sized material figured. Wastefulness was bred in him by the sight of plenty, and the hard work of clearing his farm acres incited a natural enmity to the encumbering forest. The first sawmill in the New World was erected in 1631 in the town of Berwick, Maine, and the first gang saw, of 18 saws, in 1650 in the same place,[18] while, before that time, masts and spars, handmade cooperage stock, clapboards and shingles formed commonly parts of the return cargoes of ships. By 1680, nearly 50 vessels, engaged in such trade, cleared from the Piscataqua River. The ordinances on record which were issued at the same early times by the town governments of Exeter (1640), Kittery (1656), Portsmouth (1660), and Dover (1665), restricting the use of timber, remind us of the early European forest ordinances; they were probably not dictated by any threatening deficiency of this class of material, but merely intended to secure a proper and orderly use of the town property. [18] See Forestry Quarterly, vol. IV, p. 14. The appointment of a Royal Surveyor of the Woods for the New England colonies in 1699, and the penalties imposed in New Hampshire (1708) for cutting mast trees on ungranted lands ($500 for cutting 24-inch trees), and in Massachusetts (1784) for cutting White Pine upon the public lands ($100), were probably also merely police regulations, to protect property rights of the Crown or commonwealth. That this last move was in no way conceived as a needed conservatism is proved by the fact that two years later the Legislature of Maine devised a lottery scheme for the disposal of fifty townships; and 3,500,000 acres were disposed of in this way during the twelve years following the war. Altogether the States sacrificed their “wild lands” at trifling prices. But, when William Penn, the founder and first legislator of the State which represented his grant, stipulated, in 1682, that for every five acres cleared one acre was to be reserved for forest growth by those who took title from him, that may properly be considered an attempt to inaugurate a conservative policy, dictated by wise forethought,--an attempt, which, however, bore little or no fruit.