80 TORRENTS. 



tiers, are now entirely gone. The supply of drinking water has for the 

 first time become a vital question. This situation is going to be diffi- 

 cult to improve. If done, it will be quite costly — in fact, it will prob- 

 ably cost more to reclaim than the district is worth. 



Several cases of what appears to be permanent destruction of for- 

 ests exist on the eastern edge of our reserves. One of the most ac- 

 cessible of these is on the southeastern flank of the San Bernardino 

 range, fronting on the San Gorgonio Pass. This forest was still stand- 

 ing, when I last saw it, twelve years ago. Pire had killed it many 

 years before. The trees stood white and stark, where they had burned 

 to death. The soil must have been burned up at the same time, or else 

 bad been washed away. There was not any. The dead forest had 

 neither grass, flower, bush, or living thing in it. A torrent-wrecked 

 canyon debouched below it off to the desert where it has repeatedly 

 washed out the railroad. The desert is at our door today. It is push- 

 ing up against the mountain barrier that divides us. It Is creeping up 

 on the passes, north and east and conquering a corner now here, now 

 there and even has footings on and inside our mountain wall. The 

 deserts even now come into our lovely valleys for a few days with their 

 fire and furnace breath to look at the rich booty they may some day 

 hold. The armies of the forest, steadfast and true to their posts, are 

 our allies. It is the forest that mans the rampart between our or- 

 chards, fields, flowers and cities and the frost and fire of the glittering 

 wastes of the deserts of death. What shall we do with these forests? 

 Shall we destroy our own friends and protectors? The fact is that this 

 is just what we are doing. Greed, ignorance and crime dominate and 

 destroy our forests. We stand by and fiddle, while the forests burn. 



Along the Sierra Madre, the fire scars are becoming more and more 

 numerous. They are growing larger and larger. All this is in plain 

 sight from a steam-sped car window. Back in the range, it is a hun- 

 dred times worse. What the next heavy rainfall season will do in tor- 

 rent action is a serious quetion. 



In level or nearly level lands, within settled districts, the rainfall 

 off-flow becomes more and more concentrated. Ditches for roads and 

 lailroads bring the ofi:-flow together and increase the cutting action 

 of the running water. As the land is more rolling and gullies or in- 

 cipient torrents commence, the land owners block them here and 

 divert them there, and so create considerable torrents within culti- 

 vated districts. A striking instance of this is the torrent created by 

 cleaning off low brush and concentrating small washes, at Altadena. 



