Part 7 (1/2)
While it is raining, let us fill a bottle from some muddy stream and allow it to stand until the water settles. In the bottom will then appear a layer of fine mud, or _silt_ as it is usually called. How much soil do you suppose the rivulets washed from my garden and from yours during the last severe storm? How much do you suppose all the rivulets which make up the rivers of your state washed from all the gardens and fields during the same storm? Make a guess and then multiply your answer by the number of storms in one year and that by fifty years, and you will get a quant.i.ty greater than you would believe possible.
This is the way Nature takes her toll for our carelessness. So quietly does she do it that often the farmer does not have any idea of what is happening. She is like a thief that comes and steals his goods while he is sleeping.
[Ill.u.s.tration: _Bailey Willis_ The soil on the hillsides of China is being washed away because of the thoughtlessness of the people.]
When the farmer finally awakes and begins to wonder why his crops grow smaller each year, he has already lost the cream of his soil. He must at once stop plowing the steep hillsides and leaving the ground bare for the winter rains to wash it away. To save the slopes he can either terrace them or he can sow gra.s.s or clover, which will form a sod and hold the soil. If the farmer can get peas, beans, alfalfa, or clover to grow upon his wasted lands, they will make it fertile again, for these plants have the wonderful power of taking nitrogen from the air and storing it in the soil.
[Ill.u.s.tration: _American Forestry a.s.sociation_ The farmer who owns this land will soon be made poor because of his carelessness in destroying the covering of the soil.]
More earth has been washed from the hillsides of our country during the last fifty years than during thousands of years before white people came. The farm lands have been injured, the bays have been made shallower, and many river channels have been so filled up that it is more difficult to navigate them now than it was in the early days.
The farmer, the stockman, the lumberman, and the miner has each been selfishly doing his share in the destruction of the soil. Each one has thought only of how he could make the most money in the shortest time.
It has not occurred to them that they are making it difficult for their children and grandchildren to live.
In the Southern states thousands of acres are being gullied by the rains, and the soil destroyed. The floods of spring have become worse in late years, because of the destruction of the forest cover in the Appalachian Mountains. Buildings and bridges are frequently carried away, and gravel and boulders are washed over the rich bottom lands.
In the mountains of far-away Italy the soil is poor, and so are the people. They have cut down nearly all the trees and for hundreds of years the brush and gra.s.s have been eaten so closely by the sheep and goats that few roots remain to hold the soil. It does not need to rain heavily there to cause the rivers to become muddy and swollen. The soil which once covered the slopes has been carried to the bays, and now there is land where s.h.i.+ps floated two thousand years ago.
[Ill.u.s.tration: _U. S. Forest Service_ Terraces of rock built by natives of China to aid in holding the soil.]
In Spain so much of the best soil has been lost that the people now do not raise enough food to support themselves, and much has to be imported from other lands.
France is a rich country still, in spite of the cutting of so much of the forest and the careless pasturing of the mountain slopes. The people are industrious and hard working and thus make a living in spite of the loss which they are suffering.
The Montenegrins are among the bravest people of Europe, but their land is barren and they enjoy few luxuries. Their country consists largely of limestone mountains, from which they have been cutting the trees for hundreds of years. There is but little soil and that is to be found in the hollows of the rocks. This soil is so precious that every bit, be it ever so small, is carefully cultivated.
In the mountains of Palestine and Syria the people have so completely destroyed the trees and gra.s.ses which Nature once planted there that it is difficult for them to raise enough to live upon. The rivers are muddy after every rain, and even the water from the melting snows picks up some of the soil and flows away with a dirty, yellow color.
When we reach China and Korea, we find that there the people have been most severely punished for their carelessness. The mountain sides have been torn by the rains and deeply gullied. The once smooth slopes upon which grew trees and gra.s.ses are now a ma.s.s of sharp ridges and deep hollows of bare earth. The water falling upon these mountains runs off in torrents, carrying even large boulders as it does in our Western deserts. Here and there the natives have built terraces of rock to aid in holding the soil, but many parts of the country are almost wholly deserted. The waters run off the mountains so quickly that they often form vast floods which spread over the lower valleys and plains. The floods destroy the crops and drown the people.
Eastward of China there is an arm of the Pacific Ocean known as the Yellow Sea. Why do you suppose this name was given to the sea? One of the great rivers of China, the Yangste-kiang, empties into it. The river rises in the barren mountains of which we have just been speaking, and it is continually bringing so much mud and sand that a whole sea is being filled. Long before a s.h.i.+p comes within sight of the land the waters are seen to be of a muddy, yellow color.
In the smaller valleys of Korea the natives build dikes along the rivers to keep the mountain floods from spreading sand and gravel over their rice fields. Every year they have to make the dikes higher as the river beds fill up.
Thus we see that all over the world people are suffering because they have not obeyed the laws which Nature has made for the protection of the soil.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
THE USE AND CARE OF WATER
The ocean is the home of the water. The water would always remain in the ocean if it could, but the sun and air are continually at work stealing little particles away and sending them on long journeys.
The water particles are so small as they rise from the ocean that we cannot see them. By and by they crowd together and make the clouds that float across the sky. As soon as the clouds meet colder air, the little water particles rush together and thus become larger and larger until they grow so heavy that they can no longer float in the air, but must fall. Some of them fall into the ocean again, but others drop upon the land.
The raindrops that reach the land have many sorts of stories to tell before they again get back to the ocean. Some of them are at once s.n.a.t.c.hed up again and are started upon another journey. The thirsty air, whether over the ocean or over the land, is ever in search of water particles.
If the air is very cold, the clouds turn to snow instead of rain. The feathery flakes fall slowly through the air and form a soft white mantle over the earth. Those that fall on lofty mountains form great banks which may not entirely melt and turn to water until late in the summer.
The raindrops that fall where the slopes are steep, where Nature has grown little vegetation, or where men have destroyed the earth cover, have little to detain them and are soon on their way back to their home.