"'Where are my beautiful trees,' he cried,
'That grew on the side of the mountain?'"
CHAPTER THREE
THE EARTH AS IT WAS BEFORE THE COMING OF CIVILIZED MEN
| For ages, on the silent forest here, Thy beams did fall before the red man came To dwell beneath them; in their shade the deer Fed, and feared not the arrow's deadly aim. Nor tree was felled, in all that world of woods, Save by the beaver's tooth, or winds, or rush of floods. |
William Cullen Bryant,
A Walk at Sunset
The earth has not always been as it is now. Those parts now possessed by the more civilized peoples have been very greatly changed. If we could look back and see some of the countries as they were long ago, we should hardly know them. In certain lands the forests have been cut down, the wild creatures driven away, and the soil so carelessly cultivated that it has become poor. In other lands Nature's gifts have been carefully used; even the barren deserts have been turned into green fields and blooming gardens for hundreds of miles.
Let us try to picture to ourselves how our own country looked when white men first found and explored it. A few hundred years ago it was the home of wild animals and Indians only. We have been given our freedom in one of the richest of Nature's gardens, and, like so many children, have tried to see who could gather the most treasures from it. We have given little attention to keeping up the garden.
If you have been in some part of the country that is still wild and unsettled, it will help you to form a picture of how the entire land once looked. If you have been in one of our great natural parks, this will be a better help. In these parks everything remains just as Nature made it. There the animals, birds, and plants are free to live their lives unmolested. Is it not a good thing that our government has been wise enough to have large tracts of land left in just the condition in which the whole country was when our ancestors first came?