Water 



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They shall turn the rivers far away; the brooks of defense shall be emptied and dried 

 up; . . . and everything sown by the brooks shall wither. Isaiah 79, 6-7. 



"TO RULE THE MOUNTAIN is to rule the river," is a Chinese proverb 

 more than 40 centuries old. And: "Mountains exhausted of forests are washed 

 bare by torrents," the ancient Chinese said. 



Early in the present century Gifford Pinchot was shown before-and- 

 after pictures of denudation and erosion in North China. The Chinese knew 

 enough, it seems, to handle their land wisely; but they had not, as a people 

 working under various pressures, been able to apply their wisdom. For here 

 was a painting done in the fifteenth century, and here were photographs of 

 the same scene taken in the twentieth century, some 500 years later. "The 

 painting," Walter C. Lowdermilk recalls, "showed a beautiful, populous 

 and prosperous well-watered valley at the foot of forested mountains." But 

 he also recalls that "the photographs showed the mountains treeless, glaring, 

 and sterile; the stream bed empty and dry; boulders and rocks from the 

 mountains covering the fertile valley lands. The depopulated city had fallen 

 in ruins." 



Gifford Pinchot took the pictures around to the White House and showed 

 them to Theodore Roosevelt. President Roosevelt illustrated his message to 

 Congress with those pictures and as a result the United States Forest Service 

 was established. 



Men grown gray in the Service recall that Pinchot, their first chief, 

 showed the same pictures before congressional committees. Also, to drive 

 home the role of cover in staying run-off, he carried to the hearings a plank. 



x 79 



