Montour American. (Danville, Pa.) 1866-1920, 1908-06-25
Warned BY DESERTS
What These Sandy Wastes Mean
to Mother Earth.
a DEATH GRIP ON THE WORLD
They indicate the Beginning of the
End of Our Beautiful Planet, Which
Is Doomed to Roll Through Space a
Parched and Lifeless Orb.


Is Doomed to Roll Through Space a
Parched and LifeIess Orb.
Deserts already exist on the earth.
and the nameless horror that attaches
to the word in the thoughts of all who
have had experience of them or are
gifted with Imagination to conceive is
in truth greater than we commonly
suppose, for the cosmic circumstance
about them which is most terrible is
not that deserts are but that deserts
have begun to be. Not aS local evita-
bic evils are they only to be pictured,
but as the general inescapable death
grip on our world, for it is the begin
ming of the end. What Gepauperates
the forests TO grass lands and thence TO
wastes must in turn attack the sea bot
toms when they shall have parted with
their seas.
Last of the fGtile spots upon the
planet because of the salts the streams
have for ages washed down and of the
remnant of moisture that would still
drain into them, eventually they must
share the fortune of their predecessors
and the planet roll a parched orb
through space. The picture is forbid
ding. but the fact seems one to which
we are constructively pledged and into
which we are in some sort already ad-
venturcd.
Girdling the earth with what it takes
but little personilication to lilen to the
life extinguishiug serpents coils run
two desert belts of country. The one
follows, roughly speaking, the tropic of
Cancer, extending northward from it.;
the other, the tropic of Capricorn. Ari-
zona is in the northern band, as are the
Sahara, Arabia and the deserts of cen
trail Asia.
Now, these desert belts are growing
In the great desert of northern Arizona
the traveller, threading his way across
Il sagebrush and cact plain shut in by
abrupt sided shelves of land rising here
and there some hundreds of feet high
er, suddenly comes upon n petrifed for
est.
Trunks of trees In all stages of frac
ture strew the ground over a space
some miles in extent. So perfect are
their forms he is almost minded to
think the usual wasteful woodchopper
has been by and left the scattered
products of his art In Uttered confu-
sion upon the scene of his exploit
Only their beautiful color conveys a
sense of Strangeness to the eye, and,
leaning down and touching them, he
finds that they are-stone; chalcedony,
not carbon! Form has outlived sub
stance and kept the resemblance, while
the particles of the original matter
have all been spirited away Yet so
perfect is the presentment one can
hardly believe the fact, and where one
fallen giant spans little canyon one
almost thinks to hear the sound of wa
ter rushing down the creek.
But it is some millions of years and
more since this catastrophe befell, and
the torrent, uprooting it, left it prone,
with limbs outstretched in futile grasp
upon the other side. A confer it was,
cousin only to such as grow today, and
fourished probably IN the cretaccous
era. for the land has not been der
water here since the advent of tertiary
times.
Nowhere near 1t, except for the rare
cottonwoods along the bank of the Lit
tie Colorado, grows anything today.
The land which once supported these
forests is incompetent to do so now.
Yet nothing has changed there since
except the decreasing water sup
ply. During tertiary and quaternary
time the rainfall has been growing less
and less. Proof of this is offered by
the great pine oasis that caps the pla-
taarL nf which these netriGel forcsts
form part and IS kernelGd by the San
Francisco peaks. The height above
sea level of the spot where the chal.
rodouy trunks are strewu is about
1900 feet. The lower present limit of
the pine in its full development is
G,JO0 feet. Two thousand feet upward
the verdure line has retreated since the
former forests were. And this is no
local alteration, for upon the other side
OF the plateau petriiied remains of trees
are similarly found.
The line perpetual green has risen
because "a desert regions the moisture
is found most plentiful nearest TO the
clouds from which it falls upon a
parching earth. Streams, instead of
gathering volume as they so, are lar
gest near their source and grow less
and less with each fresh mile of flow.
The brooks descending from the Anti
Lebanon, in Syria, water the gardens
of Damascus and, thence issuing upon
the plain, lose themselves just beyond
the threshold of its gates SO in the
Arizona desert, thougA In Il less &c
gree, and those who live there know it
but too well.-From Percival LowelrS
Mars and the Future of the Earth
in Century.