404 A TREELESS WASTE 



The Greek rides the veriest runt of a horse, though it 

 has endurance. The fine little Thessalian chunk, of the 

 era of Phidias, which was certainly alive and kicking in 

 the days of Alexander — for was it not he that won the 

 battles of the great Macedonian? — has long since disap- 

 peared. No wonder. The forests were all chopped down 

 aeons ago ; as a consequence the brooks and rivers dried 

 up and the land gradually became a desert. This is the 

 condition everywhere in the Orient. It is a treeless, 

 waterless waste. Thousands of places which, like Jericho 

 Avhen Antony made a present of it to Cleopatra, we know 

 to have been among the most beautiful spots outside of 

 Paradise, are now a howling wilderness of sand and rock. 

 Any American who has travelled through the Orient 

 must assuredly return home an advocate for forestry laws, 

 a pronounced enemy to the ruthless lumberman who is 

 fast sapping the sources of our noble rivers, and well 

 equipped to vote for making public reservations of such 

 essential forest-stretches as the Adirondacks or the wil- 

 derness around Moosehead Lake. It is onl}^ a question of 

 time, if the destruction of our forests continues, when the 

 Hudson River will cease to be navigable, when the beau- 

 tiful granite streams of the White Mountains will be tor- 

 rents in winter and dry beds in summer. The trouble 

 lies in the fact that we Americans either will not believe 

 this fact or that we work on the principle of after us the 

 deluge — of which " the devil take the hindmost " is the 

 more common equivalent. If we go on, it will be "after 

 us hades." Oh, for another Peter the Hermit to preach a 

 crusade on the preservation of our forests ! 



So soon as the land dried up, so did all that it produced 

 and nourished. To-day (Ti-eece is fit, on all its hill-sides, to 

 feed nothing but sheep and goats. The latter eat every 

 slio(jt of vegetation ; trees cannot grow. The (7 reek com- 



