42 



Conservation of Natural Resources in California. 



such an unpleasant way of being right in its figures. Yet the time has 

 come for a show-down between the American people and America itself. 

 Out on the Blackfoot Reservation there stands a tall, lone mountain, 

 rising like a monument above the surrounding plain, and nearly detached 

 from the Rockies, which lie behind it. This peak the Indians call Chief 

 Mountain. Here the Blackfoot sometimes comes to pray. In his mysti- 

 cism his prayer runs: 

 "0 Thou, at whose feet 

 the buried years lie 

 fallen!" That is to 

 say, there is in his 

 mind the thought of 

 the slow forces of 

 Nature. He reverences 

 the idea of erosion. He 

 would understand and 

 not forget that hymn 

 if he sung it, which in 

 effect tells us that all 

 we have in this world 

 comes of the relations 

 of soil and water. 

 There will be a few 

 million American farm- 

 ers who will learn that 

 same truth some time. 

 The somewhat mad and 

 drunken American peo- 

 ple have ignored and 

 inverted that truth 

 heretofore. They have 

 done all they could to 



Wasted country, caused by removal of forest cover. bankrupt, to ruin 



Heavy rains wash the soil away, down to naked rock, one of the richest por- 



The river channels are clogged and this region is + _j? +!,_ OQT ,t>, > , 

 useless, lost to the world. 



face, one of the pleas- 



antest lands ever taken over for human habitation, one obviously 

 intended by the Great Forces as the place for the development of the 

 highest form of civilization and the most splendid flowering of human 

 endeavor. 



What is the pleasant land, and where does it come from ? Of course, 

 the average man supposes that the soil was always there, like Uncle Joe 

 Cannon, Niagara Falls and the tax deficit ; but, as a matter of fact, the 

 soil grew. In that vast story the action was rather more deliberate than 



