Peninsula enterprise. [volume] (Accomac, Va.) 1881-1965, 1908-06-27
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 LifeIess Orb

Is Doomed to Roll Through Space
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 unacceptable death
grip on our world, for 1t 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 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 adj
ventured.
Girdlng the earth with what 1t takes
but little persOnifcation TO liken to the
life extlnguishing 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-
IONA 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
a sagebrush and cacu plain shut in by
abrupt sided shelves Of land rising here
and there some hundreds of feet high
or, suddenly comes upon 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
sense of strangeness to the eye, and,
leaning down and touching them, he
finds that they are-stone; chalcedony,
not carbon! Form has outlved 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
almost thinks to hear the sound Of wa
ter rushing down the creek.
But 1t 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 1t was,
cousin only to such as grow today, and
fiourishcd probably in the cretaceous
era. for the land has not been under
water here since the advent Of tertiary
times.
Nowhere near it, 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-
teau Of which these petrifed forests
form part and is kerneled by the San
Francisco peaks. The height above
sea level of the spot where the chal-
cedony trunks are strewn is about
1900 feet. The lower present limit of
the pine In It's full development Is
G.5O0 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 tie plateau petrlfed remains of trees
arc similarly found
The line Of perpetual green has risen
because In 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 go, 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, though in a less de-
gree, and those who live there know 1t
but too well-From Percival Lowelps
"Mars and the Future of the Earth
I'm Century,