144 B. E. Fernow—The Battle of the Forest. 
restrict his operations. So the cultivated acres were abandoned by thou- 
sands. Then the hills, no longer protected by the forest foliage, no longer 
bound by the forest roots, no longer guarded by the bark and brush dam 
of the careful overseer, were attacked by raindrops and rain-born rivulets 
and gullied and channeled in all directions; each streamlet reached a 
hundred arms into the hills, each arm grasped with a hundred fingers a 
hundred shreds of soil, and as each shred was torn away the slope was 
steepened and the theft of the next storm made easier. 
So, storm by storm and year by year, the old fields were invaded by 
gullies, gorges, ravines and gulches, ever increasing in width and depth 
until whole hillsides were carved away, until the soil of a thousand 
years’ growth melted into the streams, until the fair acres of ante-bellum 
days were converted by hundreds into bad lands, desolate and dreary as 
those of the Dakotas. Over much of the upland the traveler is never out 
of sight of glaring sand wastes where once were fruitful fields; his way 
lies sometimes in, sometimes between, gullies and gorges, the “‘gulfs” of 
the blacks whose superstitions they arouse, sometimes shadowed by 
foliage, but oftener exposed to the glare of the sun reflected from barren 
sands. Here the road winds through a gorge so steep that the sunlight 
scarcely enters; there it traverses a narrow crest of earth between the 
chasms, scores of feet deep, in which he might be plunged by a single 
misstep. When the shower comes he may see the roadway rendered 
impassable, even obliterated, within a few minutes; always sees the fall- 
ing waters accumulate as viscid brown or red mud torrents, while the 
myriad miniature pinnacles and defiles before him are transformed by 
the beating raindrops and rushing rills so completely, that when the sun 
shines again he may not recognize the nearer landscape. 
This destruction is not confined to a single field or a single region, but 
extends over much of the upland. While the actual acreage of soil thus 
destroyed has not been measured, the traveler through the region on 
horseback daily sees thousands or tens of thousands of formerly fertile 
acres now barren sands; and it is probably within the truth to estimate 
that 10 per cent of upland Mississippi has been so far converted into bad 
lands as to be practically ruined for agriculture under existing commercial 
conditions, and that the annual loss in real estate exceeds the revenues 
from all sources; and all this hayoc has been Wrought within a quarter 
century. The processes, too, are cumulative ; each year’s rate of destruc- 
tion is higher than the last. 
The transformation of the fertile hills into sand wastes is not the sole 
injury. The sandy soil is carried into the valleys to bury the fields, in- 
vade the roadways, and convert the formerly rich bottom lands into 
treacherous quicksands when wet and blistering deserts when dry. Hun- 
dreds of thousands of acres have thus been destroyed since the gullying 
of hills began a quarter of a century ago. Moreover, in much of the up- 
lands the loss is not alone that of the soil, 7. e., the humus representing 
the constructive product of water work and plant work for thousands of 
years; but the mantle of brown loam, most excellent of soil stuffs, is cut 
through and carried away by corrasion and sapping, leaving in its stead 
