4 EVERGREENS. 



corn and before the great trees fell the soil was swept away. 

 Then they moved higher up and continued the work of destruc- 

 tion. What was the result? Those rich farms In the fertile 

 valleys were ruined. Great masses of sand and rock were 

 hurled upon them', houses and barns were swept away. The 

 valley of the noble Catawba river became a. scene of awful 

 desolation. In the southern Appalachian region, In a little over 

 a year, the damage was estimated at over eighteen millions of 

 dollars, and this only the beginning of the ruin which must 

 go on. Did the vandals get eighteen millions out of the forests 

 they destroyed? This thoughtlessness Is like children playing 

 with dynamite, lighting the fuse and throwing it Into a neigh- 

 bor's yard. Hundreds of lives and hundreds of millions have 

 been destroyed by this fearful heedlessness and wanton disre- 

 gard of the wise provisions of Nature. God can work thou- 

 sands of years to adorn a land with marvelous beauty and in u 

 short time civilized barbarians can destroy It all. 



In Arizona the streams which flow through Texas have their 

 beginnings. Greed drove In great herds of cattle and horses 

 and vast flocks of sheep. These destroyed the grass and 

 bushes which bound the soil to the mountain sides. The for- 

 ests were cut from the mountains, only a small portion of 

 the timber was used, the rest was left to Invite the fires. The 

 young timber was ruined, leaving a track of desolation. The 

 floods came. There was nothing to hold them back. Na- 

 ture's dams were all torn away. The rains ripped the soil 

 from the rocks and poured avalanches of mud Into the streams. 

 They plowed great furrows thirty feet deep through the rich 

 valleys. The beds of the rivers were filled with mud and rock. 

 Of course they overflowed. Then they poured into Texas; hun- 

 dreds of lives were lost and millions of property destroyed. All 

 because men, heedless as a drove of donkeys, could not see the 

 result of such diabolical indifference. 



Look at our northern forests. A casual observer would have 

 said, "They will last forever." They might have done so if 

 cared for, giving a perpetual harvest. But to the lumlierman 

 there was no future — only a today, and Into that the work 

 of destruction must be crowded aa fast as possible. The ax, 

 firebrand and railroad engine found "a Garden of Eden before 

 them, and left a desolate wilderness behind them." 



Go to the West and how the forests have been stripped from 

 the mountains of Colorado! Further West the track of civil- 

 ization has been the track of ruin. As fast as human Ingen- 

 uity can devise, God's noblest work and the grandest forests 

 which ever sprung from earth are doomed to destruction. Only 

 a little while and blackened stumps will bo all that Is left of 

 God's richest legacy to man. Fortunately the Govern- 

 ment has stepped in and is saving shreds and patches' here 

 and there — oases left In the desolation. 



