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Along in the latter part of the Eighteenth Century, shortly after the French Revolution, a peasant in the mountain regions of southern France cut down a tree, and presently the whole face of the land was changed. Thousands of acres of fertile farms were either transformed into vast stretches of unwholesome pools and marshes, or barren wastes of sand and gravel, and the slopes, which formerly afforded fine grazing for the cattle and sheep, were washed away, exposing the bare rocks underneath. Springs and streams dried up so that, in summer, as a French writer described it: If you overlooked from an eminence one of these landscapes, furrowed by ravines, it presented only images of desolation. Enormous deposits of pebbles, many feet in thickness, spread far over the plain. One who has never been in one of these regions can form no conception of the parched mountain gorges where not a bush can be found to shelter a bird, and the dead silence is seldom broken, even by the hum of an insect. The reason for all this was that when the control of the forests passed out of the hands of the nobles, as a result of the revolution, the poor peasants were free to cut down the trees as fast as they pleased, and they cleared the ground so thoroughly that soon they had no forests left to give them wood nor save up for them the water of the rains and the melting snows and give it back through springs and the little running streams that feed the rivers. Thus, with the melting of the mountain snows in the spring and after every heavy rainfall throughout the year, these streambeds became the channels of roaring torrents that came and went in a few hours; but, in those few hours, helped to do damage that France is still engaged in repairing. As a result of this bitter and costly experience, from which all who will may freely learn, the French have developed the science of forestry to a high degree and have done remarkable things in restraining or entirely suppressing the torrents; but to restore to the farmer, at any practicable expense, soil now buried many feet deep in sand and pebbles and boulders may well be beyond the power of even the most skilled and resourceful of our modern engineers. NO WONDER OUR BOYS ALARMED THE FRENCH! Do you wonder, then, that the French were astonished, and quite a little alarmed, at the free way in which their young friends of the American army helped themselves to trees and timber on raw days when they wanted a roaring fire? Here are some paragraphs from General Bullard's reminiscences: In our daily lives in the billets in the villages of France, in the raw, damp weather, there was a tremendous desire among the Americans to build a fire and a big one, and at first there was a tendency to lay hands on every piece of wood or timber within reach. This literally caused hysteria among the French people. I've no doubt the French were almost afraid these good-natured young men, whom their children had already come to idolize for their kind and jolly ways, might destroy all the trees the war had spared! General Bullard goes on to say: On one occasion, passing through a village in the war-ruined zone, I explained to a French magistrate the difference between the conditions in America and in France and expressed the hope that he and his people would be patient and assured him that the American authorities were doing everything possible to prevent the waste of fuel and would see that all wood taken was paid for. He answered, in a very irritated tone: "Yes, I know that you have more trees and burn more wood than we, but I would like to know if you Americans are in the habit of burning up your house furniture; because there is one of my people who now complains to me that an American captain has broken up and burned a side-board in his house." I saw that there was no use trying to soothe him by the usual expression of regrets, so I answered him humorously: "Yes, we have that habit. If an American gets up in the morning and is not feeling well, he is just as likely as not to chuck his bed right into the fire." He saw the humor of the thing and accepted the situation with a voucher for payment for the sideboard. Now don't think that the story of what I have called "The Black Magician" is merely an entertaining tale of the long ago. To some extent it is a story of conditions that have begun to show themselves in our own country, in parts of the Sierra Nevada Mountains of California, of the Cascade Range in Oregon and elsewhere, owing to the cutting of trees--without provision for new growth, and because of fires. In sections which have thus been deprived of their natural protection by the roots of the trees and forest undergrowth which bind the soil together, and the dead leaves and mould of the forest floor which soak up the water of the rains and melting snows and slowly release it to the running streams, heavy downpours or sudden thaws swell the streams into torrents. By these torrents the soil is washed away from the slopes, and the fertile bottom-lands are either buried in boulders, pebbles, and sand, or converted into stagnant marshes by the stoppage of their former drainage outlets. In the San Bernardino Mountains, for example, the torrents have already begun to invade the orange-groves with their unwelcome grist of sand and pebbles and boulders and sterile clay. Indeed, even in regions far removed and safe from their direct invasions, both the orange-growers and the farmers suffer from the mischief-making of these wild children of the mountains and the rains. Between their outbreaks the streams are low because the water which should have fed them for months has run off in a few days; and, in places where the crops depend on irrigation, this is quite as serious a matter as the burial of good soil under the debris of the mountains. In almost every section of the country there are grim examples of destruction resulting from floods and erosion traceable to the cutting down to trees without providing for new growths on our watersheds. |
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