The Pacific commercial advertiser. [volume] (Honolulu, Hawaiian Islands) 1856-1888, 1877-09-01
SUPPLEMENT To the &c ADVERTISER Sept l. 1877
THE PACIFIC
Commandments
SATURDA Y. SEPTEMBER l..
(Fron The Popular Science Monthly
THE CLIMATIC INFLUENCE OF
VEGETATION.
a Plea for our Forests.
BY T. L. OSWALD, NJ. d.

Turks DIR. S~chliemann writes from Salonica,
IS but, as a respecter of Gods physical laws, L
must own that they deserve their fate. Men
who for twenty generations have proved them
selves tree-destroyers on principle, have no right
to complain if the world rises against them"
1t would be well for the world if for the last
twenty generations the Turks have been the only
Is tree-destroyers on principle" Since the adj
vent of the Christian religion, the physical his
tory Of our planet records the steady growth of a
desert, which made it's first appearance on the
dry table-land of Southern Syria, and gradually
spreading eastward down the Euphrates toward
Afghanistan. and westward along both shores of
the Mediterranean, now extends from Eastern
Persia to the western extremity of Portugal, and
sends its harbingers into Southern France and
the southeastern provinces of European Russia.
Like a Virulent cancer, the azoic sand-drifts of
the Moab Desert have eaten their way into
Southern Europe and Northern Africa, and dried
up the ife-springs of districts which beyond all
dispute were once the garden-regions of this
earth.
Prince de Ligne, countryman and contempo-
rary of Maria Theresa, wrote an essay : On the
Location of the Earthly Paradise and, after
some reflections on the hygienic influence of
different climates, calls attention to the fact that
Sc paradise-traditions, in locating the garden of
Eden, differ only In regard to longitude, but not
to latitude. The latitude keeps always near the
sR0l1-6Oundary, u line just south of the regions
where snow may fall, but will not stay on the
SIOouQ. IL PdDGCo tIAOdEh 1hiOOt, SdoLlLnC1C,
Northern Persia, and Asia Minor, and reaches
the meridian of Europe near the centre of the
| Mediterranean The nations that s. celebrated
life as a festival - have lived along this line, and
we may doubt if In the most favored regions of
the New World human industry, with all the
aids of modern science, will ever reunite the
| opportunities Of happiness which Nature once
lavished on lands that now entail only misery on
their cultivators. All over Spain and Portugal T..
Southern Italy, Greece, Turkey, ASIA Minor,
Persia, and Western Afghanistan, and through
out Northern Africa, from Morocco to the valley
of the Nile, the aridity of the soil makes the
struggle for existence so hard that to the vast
majority of the inhabitants life from q blessing
has been converted into a curse.
Southern Spain, from Gibraltar to the head
waters of the Tagus, maintains now only about
one-tenth of its former population, Greece about
one-twentieth. AS late as A. D. 60, a good
while after the rise of the ann power,
the country now known as Tripoli, and dist. net
from Sahara only through the elevation of its
mountains, was the seat Of eighty-fve Christian
bishops, and had a population Of 6 1000, 900, of
which number three-quarters of one per cent.
are now left The climate which, according to
authentic description, must once have resembled
that of our Southern Alleghanies, is now so
nearly intolerable that even the inhumanity of
an African despot forbears to exact open-air
labor from 9 a. NJ. to 5 P. M. Steamboats, that
pass near the Tripolitan coast in summer, on
their way from Genoa to Cairo, have to keep up
q continual shower Of artificial rain to save their
deck-hands from being overcome by the furnace
air that breathes from the barren hills of the
opposite coast. The rivers of some of these
countries have shrunk to the size of their
former tributaries, and from Gibraltar to Samar-
cand the annual rainfall has decreased till failure
of crops has become a chronic complaint.
All this change is due to the insane destruc-
tion Of forests. The great Caucasian SylUGni0
| that once adorned the birthland of the white race
from the Western Pyrenees to the foothills of
the Himalayas has disappeared of the forest
area Of Italy and Spain, in the days of the elder
Pliny, about two acres in a hundred are left in
Greece, hardly one. But even the nakedness Of
the most sterile tracts of Southern Europe is ex-
ceeded by the utter desolation of the Ottoman
provinces. IF there was not evidence that a
great part of the ruin had been accomplished
before the fall of the Byzantine Empire, the
Turks would really seem to have been 60 tree-des-
troyers on principle" In the recesses of the
Taurus range and the inaccessible heights of
those
mountains that dstni t
Indus and Oxus from their icy caves y
a few remnants of wood have survived the gen.
eral devastation, but throughout the lowlands,
from Bokhara to the Golden Horn, not a stick or
bush can grow up before the wood-famine of the
wretched population lays violent hands upon it.
In Northern Africa, Dalmatia, and the larger
islands of the Grecian Archipelago, the same evil
has made terrible advances. The Mediterranean
Sea, once a forest-lake of paradise, is now a dead
sea surrounded by dusty and burning coasts.
often for hundreds of miles without a vestige of
organic life.
The present appearance of the Tread, the
neighborhood of Lake Tiberias, the valley of the
Euphrates, and other districts that were once
teeming with population, can actually make us
doubt if there ever was such a thing as an origi-
nal desert. On the plateau of Sidi-Belbez, in
the very centre of the Sahara, Champollion
traced the course of former rivers and creeks by
the depressions in the soil and the shape of the
smooth-washed pebbles. He also found tree
stumps, now almost %petri6ed, and covered by
a six-foot stratum of burning sand.
' And SO the astounding truth dawns upon
u.s. he says, &c that this desert may once have
been a region of groves and fountains, and the
abode of happy millions. Is there any crime
against Nature which draws down a more terri
BILE curse than that of stripping our Mother Earth
produced this desert, and l verify believe every
other desert on the surface of this earth. Earth
was Eden once, and our misery is the punishment
of our sins against the world of plants. The
burning sun Of the desert as the angel '0ih the
famine s,rordt cho stands 6etiUeen as and paradise"
That the inhabitants of these artificial deserts
have failed to recognize the cause of their misery
implies a degree of infatuation and mental blind
ness which may appear even more incredible to
future generations than the thousand years belief
80. OOO, 900 able-bodied men to a juggler-guild of
priests. Even frogs and fishes become uneasy ie
the plug-hole of their tank is opened and their
li~fe-element begins to ebb away; and it should be
supposed chat, without any scientific aids to re-
dection. the sheer instinct of self-preseryation
could have suggested the simple remedy before
the evil attained its present proportions.
But this blindness of the Latin races and the
deyotees of Islam, if not justified, is at least
partly explained by the fatalism OF their religion.
Their belief in supernatural agencies, ana a med
dlesome Providence that ruled the world an spite
of man, naturally produced indifference to all
physical sciences whatever. The three Semitic
religions have done more to divorce man from
Nature than all his Unborn vices and the 60 neces-
sary decay of civilized races" that is SO often
preferred as an explanation. Though our
mortal eyes have failed to penetrate the depths of
heaven" says Erasmus, " we have succeeded IN
losing sight of our own earth" If this earth
was a vale of tears, and heaven our proper home,
all attention to earthly affairs seemed so much