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those -woods alone preserved. It is not the mere absence of men. Turkey has many 

 subject territories, and many means of retaining recruits. It is that there has been an 

 absence of thinkers — of leaders — of men who had minds to understand the sources of fer- 

 tility and national strength, and energy to impress them on their countrymen. When 

 we read of the great armaments sent out, in former days, by the Ottomans, by Spain, by 

 Greece, we should remember that these great eflforts^ — now represented by a rusty anchor, 

 some broken armour on the hall pillars, or a few time-shattered towers, and perhaps three 

 lines in a history — augured and indeed implied broad harvests, industriously worked 

 mines, industries of many cities, vast store of cattle and of horses, and all that goes to 

 fill the cup of national strength. Now, long deserted shores, deserts where once the well- 

 kept fences for a hundred leagues carefully divided the rich land among its proud pro- 

 prietors; grass-grown mounds where rose the myriad sounds, where flourished the 

 countless industries of great cities, meet the traveller's eye. Why ? They destroyed the 

 protecting forests ; the land parched into sterility j the strength of the possessors faded 

 in a few generations away. 



Throughout the North American continent, where winter's frost and summer's heat, 

 with fervid alternations elsewhere unknown, try the temper of the soil, there is every 

 reason to believe that the process of destruction, once the forests are withdrawn, wiU be 

 more rapid and more thorough than in other lands. This has already, in Wisconsin, Min- 

 nesota, New York, Kentucky, and nearly all the settled states, been a source of deep un- 

 easiness to reflective minds. The north-western waters, it is said, have now lost half 

 their draught-power, and the whole wide-draining tributaries of the great Mississippi are 

 losing their steady depth, while in spring and fall, those terrible inundations we have 

 lately seen carry off the waters — then as injurious as they might have been beneficial. 

 An Ohio man, at the Cincinnati convention said, " Let the hills be deprived of the rest of 

 the protection which the forests afford, and half of the area of the State will be sterile in 

 less than fifty years. The rain will wash the soil from the hill -tops first, then from the 

 slopes ; the limestone, which is now covered with productive humus, loam and clay, will 

 be laid bare ; the naked rocks will reflect the rays of the sun and increase the summer 

 heat, the north storms will blow unhindered over the country, and every change of the 

 wind will cause an abrupt change in the temperature. The rainfall will be diminished 

 and become irregular. Snow and rainwater will at once run down in the valleys and 

 cause periodical freshets, which will ultimately carry away the best part of the soil, even 

 from the valleys. Such will be the unavoidable results of further devastation of the 

 timber." Mr. Clay, of Kentucky, remarked at the same gathering : " I move in the 

 sphere of experience with more certainty. I remember when the forests were hardly 

 broken here that springs of water were very frequent and perennial. The rivulets and 

 creeks and rivers had a perpetual flow ; these have now changed. The rivulets and creeks 

 are now dried up in summer, and the fish so often caught by me in earlier years are now 

 gone. Not one spring in a thousand remains." I would beg my readers to note what 

 follows particularly ; it is also my own experience here. Mr. Clay goes on : — " Indian 

 corn was generally planted in March, and the rains and exhalations of moisture from the 

 surroundings made crops successful every year. Now, the destruction of the forest has 

 lost to us that bed of leaves which was a perpetual reservoir of water for springs and for 



