158 TRANSACTIONS OF THE ILLINOIS 



to the land that is believed to exist beyond the river of death; still, 

 if leaves are such a blessing in that far-away land, I cannot con- 

 ceive why they should not be an equal blessing in the rudimentary 

 world we now inhabit; and with due reverence for the sacredness of 

 the words quoted, will proceed to make the application. 



In healing a nation or an individual we pre-suppose there is 

 sickness, wounds, or bad condition in some way. Nations may be 

 supposed to be sick, when their resources are exhausted, their lands 

 impoverished, their wealth squandered or wrested from them, and 

 their status reduced to a low ebb, as compared with more prosperous 

 nations. 



But national sickness, brought on by destruction of the forests, 

 is of slow growth; hence more insidious, dangerous, and certain in 

 its deadly work, therefore it is necessary, to obtain even a faint idea 

 of the magnitude of this disorder, that our consideration of the 

 subject should extend over long periods of time, and cannot be 

 treated in a short paper except in a general way. 



Let us in imagination go back to the land of the Orient, the 

 land where civilization was born, to ancient Egypt, and take a look 

 along the storied Nile. Here we find those might structures of 

 stone, the pyramids that were upreared so long ago that all record 

 or tradition of their building is lost, and scattered along the river 

 on every hand we see the ruius of once populous and mighty cities. 

 There is Memphis, Luxor, Caruac, and many others, besides that won- 

 derful city of Thebes, that was in ruins before Moses was born but 

 is grander to-day, after unnumbered centuries have bleached its broken 

 columns, than modern cities in all their paint and prime. But what 

 can we say of the country; except a narrow strip overflowed by the 

 river it is a barren waste, unfit for cultivation and affording little 

 pasturage. 



The question naturally arises, Was it always so? Could those 

 mighty and costly works have been built in a desert land, without 

 railroads; and how were the vast hordes of people maintained; and 

 where was the wealth produced? Undoubtedly, this was once a 

 land flowing with milk and honey; when the hills and mountains 

 were clothed with a magnificent growth of timber, and the abund- 

 ant leafage held up and kept strong the mighty nation. But as 

 time rolled on the trees were cut away, the lands dried up and ex- 

 hausted, could furnish no sustenance for the inhabitants, and the 

 nation became sick and weak, and so remains unto this day; and if 

 it was not for the small amount of healing that the Nile brings 

 down from the leaves that grow upon the mountains hundreds of 

 miles away, the land of the Pharaoh's would be sick unto death. 

 How kind and provident is Nature in her healing. 



In the days of Pharaoh this land became densely inhabited, in 

 fact, too thick to thrive. At least, so thought Moses, and he organ- 

 ized an excursion or land-looking party on a grand scale and struck 



