The Louisiana Democrat. [volume] (Alexandria, La.) 1845-1918, 1889-09-11
HENRY l. BlOSSAT, Business Manager

would give us fair idea OF the con.
trast between the former and the pres.
ent appearance of Asia Minor.
The barren mountain ridges that
characterize the LANDSCAPES of our
| Bible illust rators are as anachronistic
as the siege guns in Giorgio Vasari's
| OBSTRUCTION of Jerusalem" Even
during the last centuries of the west
Roman empire the luxuriant fertility
OF Western Asia must have surpassed
any thing produced by combination
OF natural advantages with assiduous
horticulture in the happiest valleys OF
our Atlantic seaboard. Gardens and
forest trees must have clothed the hills
to their very submits to support the
teemlng population of the Roman
provinces between the Caucasus and
the Archipelago. On an area of thirty
thousand square miles, about the size
of the State of South Carolina, NTH
rldates raised armies that resisted the
power of Rome for twenty-five years.
The six west provinces were studded
with towns that could emulate
the luxury of Alexandria. While
their own country was yet in
its prime, Syria was to the citi-
zens of Rome what modern Italy is to
the rest of Europe-the elysiums of
poets and pleasure seekers. About a
century after the death of Alexander
the Great, some mercenaries of Gaul
found their way to Asia Minor, and
their return to their native country
created Il bonanza sensation which in
duced sixty-thous and of their country
men to abandon their homes and fight
their way across Southern Europe, in or
der to reach the lubberland of the East,
where the survivors actually gained a
foothold and founded the province of
Galatia. Cyrus the Great used to pass
seven months of the year in Babylon,
in region of perpetual spring." as
Aenophon calls it; and Hadrian, Septi-
mus Severus and Seleucus Nicator
had their favorite country seats in the
valley OF Daphne, where even a Greek
could forget his country.
And the axe alone has blighted all
but few mountain hooks of that sea-
girt Eden; the coast regions from GAIA
to Trebizond resemble the shores of
the Dead Sea. Nothing short of
miracle would induce the Jews to re-
COLOMBO the promised land of their fa-
theirs. In Syria, in the land of fontes
M'abrosi and meandering meadow
brooks, water is now as scarce as on
the Staked Plains.
Judging from the descriptions of an
Gent geographers, the climate of the
North African provinces must have re-
sembled that of our Gulf States, and
even at the end of the third century
the Cyrenaica (the modern Tunis),
had eighty Christian bishops. and
population of ten or twelve millions;
two hundred years later famine and
drought had reduced that number to
six millions; but the reckless destruc-
ton Of forests continued until ninety
five per cent. of the iowland area had
been reduced to absolute sterility.
Southern Europe is going the same
way. The researches of Hericourt
and Heinrich Barth have left no doubt
that the valley of the Guadalquivir
once contained the twelve-fold multi
pie OF its present population. Greece
has become a barren rock; Sicily, the
pearl of the Mediterranean, hospital
Of famine, typhus and ophthalmia. In
5he course of the last two hundred
years alone the winter floods of South
ern France have caused an amount of
damage that can be estimated only by
thousands of millions. Witness the
memoranda from Charles
aibbe's LES Torrents ct les honda
ions de la Provence:" .Digne, 1862: |
The River Bleone has destroyed the
Irable part of the territory" "Guey-
Ian, 1850: The best parts of the fields
md meadows have been swept away,
md ravines now occupy their places"
'Monans, 1929: Deserted by its peas
mt population, cultivation having
eased to repay the labors of the hus-
sandman" Commune de Barles, 1907:
Two hills have become connected by
and slides and have formed a lake
which now covers the best part of the
SOIL" "Malmaison, 1868: The inhabit-
'nts have emigrated; all their fields
lave been lost" ''Hautes-C ev ennes,
I'll: The ravages of the torrents can
e compared only to the effects of an
arthquake; half the soil in many
communities seeming to have been
wallowed up"
The Ardeche, mountain river con-
iderably less than a hundred miles in
sngth, has repeatedly caused an
mount of havoc resembling the devas-
atoms OF an invading army. Some
venty miles above it's junction with
lie Rhone its bed is spanned by nat
raj bridge, known as the Pont dark,
rock vault sixty feet wide and two
undred feet high; but on more than
ne occasion that enormous tunnel has
roved too small for the descending
pod. In 1916 some women who were
ashing at the brink of the lower
,ream had barely time to flee to the (
Ills before the valley had been turned |