Elk City mining news. (Elk City, Idaho) 1903-1913, 1908-06-13
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 q
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-
BILE evils are they only to be pictured,
but as the general unacceptable death
grip on our world, for it is the begin
ming of the end. What depauperates
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 fertile 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 fortu-ie 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-
ventured.
Girdling the earth with what it takes
| q - 81
life extinguishing serpents coils run
two desert belts of country. The one
follows. roughly speaking. the tropic of
Cancer, extending northward from 1t;
the other, the tropic of Capricorn. Ari-
IONA is in the northern band. as are the
Sahara. Arabia and the deserts of Gen.
trail Asia.
Now, these desert belts are growing.
In the great desert of northern Arizona
the traveller, threading his way across
a sagebrush and cacti plain shut in by
abrupt sided shelves of land rising here
and there some hundreds of feet high
er, suddenly comes upon petri6ed for
est.
Trunks of trees in all stages of frac-
ture strew the ground over q 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 q
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 a little canyon one
p 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
5 the torrent, uprooting il. left it prone.
E with limbs outstretched In futile grasp
upon the other side. A confer 1t was,
cousin only to such as grow today, and
c dourished probably In the cretaceous
: era. for the land has not been under
water here since the advent OF tertiary
e times.
S Nowhere near il, except for the rare
o cotton woods along the bank of the Lit
lie Colorado, grows anything today
e The land which once supported these
forests is incompetent to do 80 now
Yet nothing has changed there since
except the decreasing water sup
NH nsarfno, tarfforu opd
b time the rainfall has been growing lesG
{ and less. Proof Of this Is offered By
e the great pine oasis that caps the pla
! teau OF which these peTihed fOrests
form a part and Is kerneled by the saI
Francisco peaks, The height aboy'
sea leyel OF the spot where the ehal
= cedony trunks are streWn - aboul
= 1900 feet, The lower present limit d
G the pine NJ us full development 4
q 600 feet. Two thousand feet upWare
J. the yerdure line has rereated since thl
# former forests were. And this Is ~
a Local alteration, for upon the other SID
a Of The plateau petuned remalns OF Tee
4 are similarly found,
= The line " perpetual green has rlsel
, because ln desert regions the molstur
d IS found most plentiful nearest % an
clouds from which d falls upon
r parching earth Streams, Instead b
! gathering volume ps they 70, are laI
gesf near iheE soupe ana grow leR
4 and less Wlth each fresh mue of hoY
l THO brooks descending from the Anu
/ lebanon lp syria, Nafer the garden
] of Damaseus and, thence issuing upo
/ me plain lose themselves just leyspl
I lhe threshold of Us gates ~ W al