Deserts Due to Deforestation 



By Move Wicks 

 Member of the Seieiitifie Society, San Antonio, Texas 



THJi history of civilization has been a record of 

 increasing deserts. Trees have disappeared be- 

 fore the advance of man Hke the bultalo. It is 

 axiomatic with scientists that no country was originally 

 a desert. All deserts have been man-made. The tree 

 growth in Eastern and Central Asia and Northern Africa, 

 the birth-places of the human family, soon fell before 

 teeming populations. Those countries were already in 

 process of becoming deserts before systematic agriculture 

 was known in Europe. 



When Zenobia was overthrown by the Romans under 

 Aurelian, Palmyra, her capital, was the metropolis of a 

 mighty empire. Now the shifting sands of Sahara almost 

 hide the ruins of that stupendous city of marble and gold. 



As late as the rise of Mohammedanism, in the seventh 

 century of the Christian Era, the country of Tripoli, on 

 the north African coast, had a pHDpulation of 6,000,000 

 souls. It was then clothed with vineyards, orchards and 

 forests. It is now bare of vegetation, the streams dried 

 up and the population reduced to 45,000 people. The 

 heat is so intense that the little labor done there is post- 

 poned until after the setting of the sun. 



All this is due to reckless ravages upon tree growth. 

 The hatred of a Turk for a tree is proverbial. Wherever 



the crescent of ^Mohammed achieved victory the Moslems 

 destroyed the trees with nearly as much zeal as they 

 have displayed in slaying those denying the inspiration 

 of the '■ Camel Driver of Mecca." 



Champollion, the famous Egyptologist, says of the 

 Sahara desert of Northern Africa : " And so the astonish- 

 ing fact dawns upon us that this desert was once a 

 region of groves and fountains and the abode of happy 

 millions. Does any crime against nature draw down 

 a more dreadful curse than that of stripping Mother 

 Earth of her sylvan covering? The hand of man has 

 produced this desert, and, as I verily believe, every 

 desert on the face of the earth." 



In similar vein, Baron Alexander Von Humboldt says : 

 " Man by his own recklessness brings upon himself a 

 scarcity of wood and, resultingly, a lack of water." The 

 famous Dr. Schleiman writes from Salonica : " As a 

 fellow Unitarian, I feel sorry for the Turks, but as a 

 respector of God's physical laws, I must own that they 

 deserve their fate. Alen who for twenty generations 

 have shown themselves tree-destroyers on principle, have 

 no right to complain if the world rises against them." 



The student of natural science adopts these words of 

 the distinguished explorer of the ruins of Troy, albeit 



NO TREES TO Li 



— -,;j ]ilI';l 



This, at one time, well-forested section of Algeria, one hundred miles south of Algiers, is now a desert. Sudden rains fall and swell the mountain water-courses 

 into temporary torrents, which almost as quickly subside. The herd of camels is being driven south after bringing up dates from the desert of Sahara. 



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