Arizona republican., 1902-08-01
PHOENIX, ARIZONA. AUG. l. 1902

The Century Magazine for August contains the fourth installment of MT
 Ray Stannard Bakers | THE exceedingly interesting | TRAGEDY series of articles on OF THE ''The Great Southwest,
 RANGE material for which he |
 was gathering while in Phoenix about q year ago. When here, MT. Baker thought that this matter would appear in McClure's, but evi- | dently the high quality of the articles appealed to the Century. The August number deals with the Tragedy of the Range and it is 9 graphic story which Mr. Baker tells of the part man has greedily played in confirming the dominion of the desert. The perma- nent denudation of the ranges through overwhelming, the destruction of the shrubbery by sheep and goats. and the lessening of the water supply are de- scribed with a fidelity which leaves nc room to doubt that the author studied his subject in an intelligent and eX
 
 have not space for more than few extracts.
 .'The way of civilization in a new land passes comprehension remarks MT. Baker, after an introductory de scription of the desert as it is today, with the bleaching skeletons of cattle marking the spots wherein the silent tragedies of waterless range have been enacted. Its motto seems to be: ruin first; there is time afterward to save. Civilization is a good deal like a wild full blooded boy. It must first sow wild oats, waste it's patrimony, disgrace it's antecedents; then it is ready to begin the serious work of life. That has been the history Of the range country; swift ruin for thirty or forty years, with a resulting wreck that it will require a century of hard work, perseverance and Self-control to save. Think of what the range country was as recently as thirty-five or forty years ago, when man first invaded it. Though often denOnlinated a part of the Great Desert, it was yet the dwell ing place Of millions of buffalo, deer antelope, and wild horses, and thou sands of Indians It was q goodly land The plains were covered with rich and nutritious grasses; the rocky hills were grown up to shrubs and trees; even the loose rocks of the des- ert were hidden in season by Towering vines All the grazing crea lures roamed over 6 vast territory. working north in summer and returning south in winter, seeking always the best feeding grounds. The result of these yearly tides of animal life was a scrt of natural rotation of pasturage in which some part of the range was al ways at rest, growing up to grass and producing seed against another season of invasion by wild herds. Nature had arranged all these things in her own perfect way, so that the range should be forever protected and preserved She maintained the balance Cf animal life with exquisite perfection. She matched the Indian, the wolf the lynx the lion, against the buffalo, the ante lope. the deer, the wild horse and the rabbit. so that they all progressed to- gether, going to nc excesses. preserv- ing the range as they would home.
 And then the white man broke in one is almost tempted to say, with a WhOop- He was a scientific Apache. The last buffalo of the great southern herd disappeared about 1876 dilU lHe 1iuldliS, those WnO naC escaped this wild white man. were soor afterward hustled off to the reserva- tion- Then the grass, ungrazed by wild herds, took new start and grew rank beyond belief Where now the gray earth is as bare as your palm and literally blowing away little by little, hunter might have crouched il the grass as in jungle while h. hunted the deer. In many places il was as high as q cows back. The cat. tieman followed the hunter, spreading rapidly from Texas, Kansas and Ne braska westward and ncrthward ove all the range states-New Mexico Ari zona, California, Nevada, Utah. Colo rado, Wyoming, the western part 0 the Dakotas, Montana. Idaho, OregCl and Washington. In those days oi tn first invasion ii was all golden land Here said tile cattleman, is food fo all the COWS in the world. So he be gan raising vast herds, and they mul tiplied and spread like locusts, for tn grass and the water were both free
 If the cattiemen had been left un dis, urbed in the: own country. tn range might have been better pre- served. But when the rich grasses be gan to si''a out. the black. white, an croW-foot Sramas. the curly mesQuit, the sedges, and the needle grasse: which were wonderful cattle food, tn rangers conceived the idea of intro duCing more sheep-&nOWing tila sheep will thrive where cattle starV, Sc it happened that vast fiocks al peared on the range. burning across
 like so much live fire, the sheep eatin out the vegetation to it's very root And where sheep have fed, cattle wi not, or cannot not, live -. Or would think that when the sheep ha