The Hillside Farmer and the Forest. 41 



But the value of the property decreased, and the place 

 was sold for the mortgage and accumulated interest. It 

 now is under control of a stockman. He turns his cattle 

 into the place, and little cares whether there a home has 

 gone to wreck or not. Notice, then, how the rains have 

 washed out the traces of the last furrows and created in 

 time cuts deep enough for a calf to disappear in. Nature 

 charitably clothes the slope with a dense growth of man- 

 zanita lest the wanderer behold the cruel scars here 

 inflicted. Beyond the field of manzanlta a promising lot 

 of young pines rise in vigor — to develop into a forest? 

 No; to be cut for cordwood, or to be burned in useless 

 destruction. 



Let us imagine that we have a svv^eeping view over 

 part of one holding of a stockman. It is the result of 

 long years of the acquirement of deserted ranches. 

 Nothing seems to disturb the harmony of the landscape, 

 and to the casual observer it seems to serve its purpose, — 

 that is, the support of the cattle that are scattered through 

 the trees. But nature has decreed differently. It is only 

 a transitory condition that this region passes through, 

 and no matter how slow the change comes about, it is 

 bound to come. The running fires have rendered the 

 soil so hard that a plow can no longer cut its furrows 

 as it could when humus kept the crust mellow. The rills 

 and creeklets that years ago contained water during the 

 summer have been cut into rocky gullies by the unimpeded 

 torrent of winter rains as they hasten to the lowlands. 

 Here and there we meet with traces of a ditch system 

 that years past furnished irrigation for garden and 

 orchard. Where is the water that used to flow within 

 their banks? Why does it no longer come down those 



