Mower County transcript. [volume] (Lansing, Minn.) 1868-1915, 1878-12-05
DesOlato Attica.

A correspondent of the London Times,
writing from Athens, speaks of the desc.
lation of the country, caused by the de-
struction of the forests and the practice
of permitting goats to run wild, and
adds:
cit is not Gods providence, but
mans improvidence, that one has to
thank for this evil. 1t is centuries of
human unthrift and stolidity which has
made of Attica a torrid desert for six or
seven months in the year. There was a
time, as Sophocles tells us, and as the
guide-books translate, when beautiful
fields bloomed, when nightingales sighed
and lamented among the groves of
Colonus, along its green hedges and walls
mantled wi tn dark ivy. Days are men,
toned when the Cephisus and Ilissus
were streams of water and not beds of
arid stones as they are now; when people
could talk of sacred foliage teeming
with fruits in shady GOODNESS, nourished
by gentle breezes, untouched by storms
The ravages of man have done away
with all that. Men still living here re-
member the fires with which the last
strips of forest in the glens of Hymettus
and Pentelicus cleaned round Athens
night after night as they do now inces-
sanity in the gorges Of the mountains Of
Albania visible from Corfu The savage
cultivators of the soil in these regions
burn their woods to fertilize the fields
with their ashes. By the destruction of
trees of many ages growth they insure a
paltry crop for one season. But the ex-
pertinent cannot be twice made; the
havoc is now complete; the mischief
can no further 60. With every trace
of vegetation, every vesIige of
moisture vanishes early in the spring
from the Attic land. Before the end of
May all is parched, burnt, pulverized.
Nothing can be more astonishing than
the tantalizing barrenness of the clouds
which at that time of the year hang
heavily on the horizon-phantom clouds,
pregnant in appearance with very del
uge, yet hardly squeezing out drop or
two just to sprinkle without ever laying
the dust. The horrors of such drought
are common enough throughout South
ern Italy and Spain, and the population
of Madrid, for instance, ought to pre-
serve a lively recollection of it. But
there Queen Isabella brought in living
streams from the Sierra de Guadarama,
and now the Spanish capital, with zone
of about two miles around it, is being
turned from a desert into garden. We
are told that water will likewise be
brought, or even is actually being
brought into Athens, as also into Flor
ence and Naples. But for what concerns
the Greek city it must be borne in mind
that it has, unfortunately, no snow noun
tains within reach, no sacred grove where
springs may be coaxed up and nursed
and screened from the heat of the suns
furnace. All around is bare, and scorch-
ed and desolate. No one plants trees
here; no trees planted would have any
chance of living; and where nature, by
the inexhaustible strength of her recu.
perative energies, puts forth here a
bud, there bulb, where chance seed
dropped from a bird or waited by the
wind, might be the means of again Gov
ering the land with trees and blessing it
with new verdure and moisture, the MUIR
derous goat comes browsing, crops up,
tears up, the very rock to which the
roots cling with unavailing vital in
stinct."