The desert

Silence and Desolation.
THE DESERT
FURTHER STUDIES IN NATURAL APPEARANCES
BY JOHN C. VAN DYKE AUTHOR OF “NATURE FOR ITS OWN SAKE,” “ART FOR ART’S SAKE,” ETC., ETC.
NEW YORK CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS 1901
Copyright, 1901, by CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS
Published September, 1901.
TROW DIRECTORY PRINTING AND BOOKBINDING COMPANY NEW YORK
After the making of Eden came a serpent, and after the gorgeous furnishing of the world, a human being. Why the existence of the destroyers? What monstrous folly, think you, ever led Nature to create her one great enemy—man! Before his coming security may have been; but how soon she learned the meaning of fear when this new Œdipus of her brood was brought forth! And how instinctively she taught the fear of him to the rest of her children! To-day, after centuries of association, every bird and beast and creeping thing—the wolf in the forest, the antelope on the plain, the wild fowl in the sedge—fly from his approach. They know his civilization means their destruction. Even the grizzly, secure in the chaparral of his mountain home, flinches as he crosses the white man’s trail. The boot mark in the dust smells of blood and iron. The great annihilator has come and fear travels with him.
“Familiar facts,” you will say. Yes; and not unfamiliar the knowledge that with the coming of civilization the grasses and the wild flowers perish, the forest falls and its place is taken by brambles, the mountains are blasted in the search for minerals, the plains are broken by the plow and the soil is gradually washed into the rivers. Last of all, when the forests have gone the rains cease falling, the streams dry up, the ground parches and yields no life, and the artificial desert—the desert made by the tramp of human feet—begins to show itself. Yes; everyone must have cast a backward glance and seen Nature’s beauties beaten to ashes under the successive marches of civilization. The older portions of the earth show their desolation plainly enough, and the ascending smoke and dust of the ruin have even tainted the air and dimmed the sunlight.