We cut down trees, and use every kind of wild and cultivated timber, not only to make fire to warm us and dress our meat, but also for building, that we may have houses to defend us from the heat and cold.

With timber likewise we build ships, which bring us from all parts every commodity of life.

We are the only animals who, from our knowledge of navigation, can manage what nature has made the most violent--the sea and the winds.

Thus we obtain from the ocean great numbers of profitable things.

We are the absolute masters of what the earth produces.