Fact and legend have been combined to give many of us a somewhat mystical story of our early forest wealth. Authentic records there are, of course, which enable us to picture a little to our satisfaction how these forests appeared to the voyager from across the Atlantic, but even some of these smack more of 17th century press agent tactics fostered by an ambitious trading company, than a sincere effort to record in an impartial way, the facts about our original forests.