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idyllic contentment. Mild zephyrs gently moved the glossy leaves in the vast forests, 

 wherein fawns, satyrs and nymphs joined in frolicsome dance. Umbrageous groves over- 

 shadowed the silvery springs on the verdant shores of which Pindar and Sappho listened 

 to the sweet song of the nightingale. The poetical disposition of the Greek people led 

 them to contemplation and love of nature ; their religion was based upon personification 

 of the latter. Each species of tree was dedicated to a certain god ; the oak to Zeus, the 

 spruce to Poseidon, ikc. In all parts of the country were sacred groves. In every tree 

 the dryad, an elf-like being, was supposed to live ; the flowing sap of a wounded tree was 

 the blood of the dryad, who died with the tree. There was no waste of the forests in the 

 classical period of Greece. They were destroyed in later centuries. The gods and god- 

 esses, majorum and minorum gentium, have disappeared with them. Instead of balsamic 

 zephyrs the icy boreas and the suffocating south wind blow unhindered over the parched 

 fields of Attica and over the barren hills of the once paradisaical Arcadia, now thinly 

 populated by a poor and degenerate people." 



Spain. 



"Under the reign of the Moorish Caliphs the Iberian peninsula resembled avast gar- 

 den, yielding grain and fruit, of every known variety, in the most perfect quality, and 

 in endless abundance, and thickly populated by a highly cultivated people. But then 

 the sierras and mountain slopes were covered with a luxuriant growth of timber, which 

 was afterwards wantonly destroyed under the rule of the Christian Kings. Large herds 

 of half-wild goats and sheep prevented the spontaneous growth of trees on the neglected 

 lands. Now nearly all the plateau-lands of Spain, being fully one-third of the entire 

 area, are desert-like and unfit for agriculture, because of the scarcity of rain and the want 

 of water. Another one-third of the territory is covered with worthless shrubs and thorn- 

 bushes, and ^affords a scanty pasture for the merino sheep: the number of which is decreas- 

 ing from year to year. The once delicious climate has become changeable and rough, 

 since there are no more forests to break the power of the scorching Salano and the cold Gal- 

 ego wind. The average depth of the fine rivers that cross Spain in all directions has greatly 

 diminished. The Government well aware of the causes of the deterioration of the soil and 

 climate, has lately made earnest efforts, partly to replant the old forest grounds, but has 

 met with little success, it being very difficult to make trees grow on former timber land, 

 which has been laying waste for a longer time. It will take a full century's time and 

 necessitate an immense outlay of money to restock Spain with sufficient timber." 



The Eastern coast of the Adriatic Sea. 



*' On the entire eastern coast of the Adriatic Sea, in Dalmatia, Herzegovina, and 

 Montenegro, the same evil consequences of the devastation of the natural forests are clear- 

 ly perceptible. These coast lands were very fertile until the Romans, having used up 

 their own timber, took it from the other side of the Adriatic, and until millions of lUyric 

 trees were converted into pillars and rammed into the lagunas to make foundations for 

 the houses, palaces and churches of Venice. What was left by the lumbermen was de- 

 stroyed by the camp-fires of careless herdsmen, and here also the goats did their pernici- 

 ous work in preventing spontaneous growth. The long mountain range running along the 

 coast, which was yet well timbered in the time of the great Constantine, is now destitute 

 of all soil ; the naked lime-roads, reflecting the hot rays of the, sun, warn the stranger not 

 to enter the sterile and inhospitable country hardly worth the loss of human life and 

 treasure which the subjection of its unruly inhabitants now costs the house of Hapsburg." 



Sicily. 



*' Let us look at Sicily, once the great grain reservoir for Rome, Since the island of 

 plenty was despoiled of its forests, it gradually lost its fertility and the mildness of its 

 climate. The ruins of proud and opulent Syracuse lay in a desert, covered by sand, 

 which the hot sirocco carried over the Mediterranean Sea from Africa. A few isolated, 

 well-watered and carefully cultivated districts, of very limited extension, is all that is 

 jeft to remind the tourist of the by -gone glory of Sicily." 



