Wauwatosa news. [volume] (Wauwatosa, Wis.) 1900-1948, 1908-04-10
HORROR OF THE DESERT.
Deserts Mean General Unacceptable Death
Grip on the World.


Grip on the World.
Deserts already exist on the earth,
aud the nameiess 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 des
erts are. but that deserts have begun TO
be. Not as local. eyitable evils are they
only to be pictured, but as the general
unacceptable death grip on our world.
For it is the beginning of the end. What
depauperateS the forest to grass lands,
and thence TO wastes must in turn at
tack the sea bottoms 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 forhidding; but the fact
seems one to which we are constructive
ly pledged and into which we are i'll some
sort already adyentured.
Girding the earth with what it takes
| but little personitication to liken to the
life-extinguishing serpent's 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 cacti plain shut in by
| abrupt-sided shelves of land rising here
and there some hundreds of feet higher,
suddenly comes upon a petrihed forest
| Trunks of trees in all stages of frac-
ture strew the ground over a space some
miles III extent. So perfect are their
| forms. he is also minded to think the
usual Wasteful woodshopper has been
| by and left the scattered products of his
art in Uttered confusion 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 out
| lived substance and kept the resem-
| blance, 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 al
most thinks to hear the sound of water
rushing down the creek
! But it is some millions of years and
| more since this catastrophe befell. and
| the torrent, uprootng If, 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
| tiourished probably in the Cretaceous
era; for the land has not been under wa
ter here since the advent of the Tertiary
| times.
Nowhere near it. except for the rare
cottonwo0ds along the bank of the Little
Colorado, grows anything today. The
| land which once supported these forests
| is incompetent to do so now. Yet moth
| ing has changed there since except the
| decreasing water supply. During Ter
| tiary and Quarternary time the rainfall
! has been growing less and less. Proof
| of this is offered by the great pine oasis
| that caps the plateau of which these pet
| rihed forests form part, and is kerneed
| by the San Francisco peaks. The
! height above sea level of the spot where
| the chalcedony trunks are strewn is
| about 300 feet; the lower present limit
of the pine in IT'S full development is
$500 feet Two thousand feet upward
| the veraure line has retreated since the
| former forests were. And this is no
| local alteration, for upon the other side
! of the plateau petrified remains of trees
are 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 upoL parch-
ing EARTH Streams, instead of gathering
volume as they go, are largest near their
source, and grow less aud less with each
| fresh mile of flow The brooks descend
| ing from the Anti-Lebanon, in Syria, wa
ter 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 degree; and those who live there
know it but too well-Percival Lowell in
| Century.