CHAPTER TWELVE 



WHAT HAPPENS WHERE THERE IS NO PROTECTING 

 CARPET OF VEGETATION 



Not all of the muddy streams are due to the carelessness 

 of men. It is the business of some of the servants of Nature, 

 as we have already learned, to tear down the mountains 

 and fill up the hollows in the earth. It is the business of 

 others to spread a carpet of vegetation over the surface, 

 and wherever they have already succeeded in their work 

 the waters run clear most of the time. 



Where it is dry so much of the time that few plants can 

 live, the destructive servants have their own way when the 

 occasional rains come. Where there is a warm sun and 

 frequent rains, a green carpet is spread over all the slopes. 

 But when men destroy the carpet and take no care of the 

 soil tmdemeath, the raindrops are able to do as much dam- 

 age as they do during the cloudbursts in the deserts. 



The Colorado is one of those rivers in the basin of which 

 few people live. Much of its journey is through a land in 

 which there is httle vegetation. Here, the waters from the 

 melting snows upon the lofty mountains about the basin 

 and those of the occasional heavy rains have things their 

 own way. They are always yellow with mud. The 

 amount of mud which this river carries has been measured. 

 You wiU hardly believe me when I tell you that it amounts 

 to sixty-one million tons every year. This is enough to 

 cover 164 square miles one foot deep. We might call this 

 the cream of the soil from all the slopes of the great basin 

 of the Colorado River. 



In other parts of our land, where abundant rains fall, 



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