The Arizona sentinel., 1889-09-14


A recent number of Lippincott':
Magazine has an interesting and in
structive article by Felix L. Oswald or
Floods and Their Causes" in which
mention is made OF the ruin wrought
by destructive floods in the past. rhe
writer says that under normal circum.
stances river floods are about as rare
as forest fires kindled by a stroke ol
lightning, and are caused mainly by
the coincidence of unusual contingen-
cies." He then briefly cites some oil
these unusual contingencies, such as
frozen grounds, early frosts, heavy
snOw-falls and violent rains in early
spring, ice gorges, phenomenal rain
falls, even in well-wooded countries
land-slides, volcanic agencies, etc.
The remaining portion of the article is
as follows:
But the affliction of river floods in
their chronic and infinitely more per-
nicious form is caused almost exclu-
sively by the disappearance of arbor-
cal vegetation, and especially by the
destruction of the land-protecting
highland forests. 1t would be a mis-
take to suppose that the happy climate
of Southern Europe in the golden age;
of pagan civilization was offset by a
neglect of agricultural enterprise.
By the simple plan of sparing the
woods of the sleeper mountain ridges,
summer droughts and winter floods
were effectually prevented, at a time
when the coast lands of the Mediterra-
mean were in the full productiveness
of their fields and the happiness of
their inhabitants as superior to the
wretched deserts which now occupy
their geographical sites as the para
disc of the Tennessee highlands is to
the naked sand hills of Western Ari-
zona- With the disappearance of
those forests began that era of degen-
Grafton which has almost sealed the
doom of the dying continent" and
which has wasted the peninsulas of
Southern Europe to mere skeletons of
the garden lands inhabited by the
nations of classic antiquity Summer
suns scorch the unprotected soil, hot
winds absorb its last vestige of moist
ure and fill the air with clouds of loose
dust; the slopes of the naked mount
aims are torn up into deep
ravines, and their mold, carried
seaward by every rainy spring,
is deposited in the form of fester-
ing, misunderstanding coast swamps.
Springs fail, rivers shrink to feeble
streamlets, which at last become too
shallow even to supply the irri cation
canals by which the starving peas ants
hoped to relief their distress. And all
that misery is aggravated and per-
petuated by the ever-recurring ravages
of the. winter floods. The melting
SHOWS, now no longer absorbed by the
sponge-like carpet of moss and tangled
roots, run off the hill slopes like rain
from tile-covered roof and by their
accumulation tend to deepen the
goages of the rocky ravines, which in
few hours pour down in a mad waste
the moisture which once supplied the
springs of a thousand mountain
brooks. Swollen by the turbid foods
of countless simultaneous torrents,
the lowland rivers roll down vast
masses of detritus, and by the in
evitable laws of gravitation cover the |
fields of their upper valleys with the
heavy particles of that diluvium, sand |
and coarse gravel, while the fertiliz-
ing slime is carried down to add its |
stimulus to the rank mOrasses of a |
malarious delta Thus shoaled by |
yearly accumulations of sand banks, |
the river beds rise higher and higher
above their former channels, and in |
every spring, when more than usually |
heavy SHOWS are thawed by sudden
rains, the uplands send down a deluge
which no dam can resist, and which
often ir a single hour demolishes
barriers which thousands of workmen
have reared by many years labor.
This brief summary outlines an ex-
perience which has repeated itself a
thousand times from the barren slopes
of Mount Lebanon to the naked terrace
lands of the Western Pyrenees, and
which will not fail to enforce its ter
rible lessons on the inhabitants of the
Western continent, if the forests of our
highland regions should be surrender
ed to the land-blighting axe. A few
years ago a correspondent of the Pop
ular Science Monthly described the
climatic amenities of our Southwestern
border States, where the sirocco of the
Colorado deserts is often accompanied
by violent sand-shOwers, which once
obliterated in a few hours
the tract of the Los Angeles railroad.
If three weeks shower of that sort
we're to descend on the guarded regions
of Eastern Pennsylvania the result !