46 LIMITS OF HUMAN POWER. 



4 at the head of the Bay of Fundj, or the pressure of a square mile- 

 of sea water at the depth of five thousand fathoms, or a moment 

 of the might of an earthquake or a volcano, our age — which 

 moves no mountains and casts them into the sea by faith alone — 

 might hope to scarp the rugged walls of the Alps and Pyrenees 

 and Mount Taurus, robe them once more in a vegetation as rich 

 as that of their pristine woods, and turn their wasting torrents 

 into refreshing streams. 



The recent discoveries of, if not new laws, at least of new rela- 

 tions between electrical energy and other natural forces and ob- 

 jects, and the various inventions for rendering this energy avail- 

 able for human uses, open a prospect of vast addition to the pow- 

 ers hitherto wielded by man. It is too soon even to conjecture 

 by what limits these powers are conditioned, but it would seem 

 that there is every reason to expect that man's most splendid 

 achievements hitherto, in the conquest of Nature, will soon be 

 echpsed by new and more brilliant victories of mind over matter. 



Could this old world, which man has overthrown, be rebuilded, 

 could human cunning rescue its wasted hillsides and its deserted 

 plains from solitude or mere nomade occupation, from barrenness, 

 from nakedness, and from insalubrity, and restore the ancient fer- 

 tility and healthfulness of the Etruscan sea coast, the Campagna 

 and the Pontine marshes, of Calabria, of Sicily, of the Pelopon- 

 nesus and insular and continental Greece, of Asia Minor, of the 

 slopes of Lebanon and Hermon, of Palestine, of the Syrian 

 desert, of Mesopotamia and the delta of the Euphrates, of the 

 Cyrenaica, of Africa proper, Numidia and Mauritania, the throng- 

 ing millions of Europe might still find room on the Eastern con- 

 ticent, and the main current of emigration be turned towards the 

 rising instead of the setting sun. 



But changes Hke these must await not only great political and 

 moral revolutions in the governments and peoples by whom those 

 regions are now possessed, but, especially, a command of pecuniary 

 and of mechanical means not at present enjoyed by those nations, 

 and a more advanced and generally diffused knowledge of the 

 processes by which the amehoration of soil and climate is pos- 

 sible than now anywhere exists. Until such circumstances shall 

 conspire to favor the work of geographical regeneration, the 

 countries I have mentioned, with here and there a local excep- 



