THE CLIMATIC INFLUENCE OF VEGETATION. 387 



population lays violent hands upon it. In Northern Africa, Dalmatia, 

 and the larger islands of the Grecian Archipelago, the same evil has 

 made terrible advances. The Mediterranean Sea, once a forest-lake 

 of paradise, is now a dead sea, surrounded by dusty and burning 

 coasts, often for hundreds of miles withovit a vestige of organic life. 



The present appearance of the Troad, the neighborhood of Lake 

 Tiberias, the valley of the Euphrates, and other districts tliat were 

 once teeming with population, can actually make us doubt if there 

 ever was such a thing as an original desert. On the plateau of Sidi- 

 Belbez, in the very centre of the Sahara, Champollion traced the 

 course of former rivers and creeks by the depressions in the soil and 

 the shape of the smooth-washed pebbles. He also found tree-stumps, 

 now almost petrified, and covered by a six-foot stratum of burning sand. 



"And so the astounding truth dawns upon us," he says, "that this 

 desert may once have been a region of groves and fountains, and the 

 abode of happy millions. Is there any crime against Nature which 

 draws down a more terrible curse than that of stripping our Mother 

 Earth of her sylvan covering ? The hand of man has j)roduced this 

 desert, and I verily believe every other desert on the surface of this 

 earth. Earth was Eden once, and our misery is the punishment of 

 our sins against the world of plants. I'he burning sun of the desert is 

 the angel with the flaming sword xcho stands betioeen us and paradise.''^ 



That the inhabitants of these artificial deserts have failed to rec- 

 ognize the cause of their misery implies a degree of infatuation and 

 mental blindness which may appear even more incredible to future 

 generations than the thousand years' belief in witchcraft and the pa- 

 tient submission of 80,000,000 able-bodied men to a iuo-ffler-wuild of 

 priests. Even frogs and fishes become uneasy if the plug-hole of their 

 tank is opened and their life-element begins to ebb away; and it 

 should be supposed that, without any scientific aids to reflection, the 

 sheer instinct of self-preservation could have suggested the simple 

 remedy before the evil attained its present j>roportions. 



But this blindness of the Latin races and the devotees of Islam, if 

 not justified, is at least partly explained by the fatalism of their reli- 

 gion. Their belief in supernatural agencies, and a meddlesome Provi- 

 dence that ruled the world in spite of man, naturally produced indif- 

 ference to all physical sciences whatever. The three Semitic religions 

 have done more to divorce man from Nature than all his inborn vices 

 and the "necessary decay of civilized races" that is so often preferred 

 as an explanation. "Though our mortal eyes have failed to penetrate 

 the depths of heaven," says Erasmus, " we have succeeded in losing 

 sight of our own earth." If this earth was a vale of tears, and heaven 

 our proper home, all attention to earthly affairs seemed so much lost 

 time, and in the souls of men who were taught to consider their nat- 

 ural feelings as antagonistic to tlie will of God the warning voice of 

 instinct was raised in vain. 



