Perhaps, when you really understand my work, you will say that I have no evil intentions at all. I am only one of Nature's servants. Each one of us has a work to do. Sometimes we have to do things that seem to be bad, but that is because some one on the earth has broken Nature's laws.
Nature has many servants. To each one of us is given a different kind of work. I am the great leveler of the land. No mountain is too great or too high for me to tear down. I can carry it all away grain by grain and leave it in the lowlands or in the sea. Many mountains I have destroyed so completely that you would hardly believe they ever existed. Long before there were any animals and men on the earth I was busy, and I shall be busy when they are all gone.
The farmer believes me his enemy, but if I do injure his fields it is because I cannot help it. The work that has been given me to do is the carrying away of the loose earth wherever I can find it. If the farmer does not want his hillsides made poor, he should take care of them.
The farmer does not know that he has me to thank for the richest of his lands, those lands where the soil is deep and dark, and filled with plant food. I and my brother rivulets have been thousands of years in collecting the soil which forms the fertile lowlands in the valleys through which we flow. We all unite to form the mighty river which finally ends in the sea.
Upon all the slopes which drain toward the river we rivulets are at work. Other servants of Nature are working here. Some of them are making the rocks soften and fall apart. Others are bringing seeds of the grasses and trees that they may take root in the crumbling rock. It is their business to make a carpet of plants over the earth and thus stop my work. But wherever the slopes are steep we rivulets have our way. We pick up and carry away the particles of sand and clay so that only the bare, hard rocks remain.
When the steep slopes become gentle, and we can no longer carry away all the particles of crumbled rock, then the carpet of plants spreads over the surface. Now our waters become clear. We seem like different beings. Once in a while, when the rains fall very heavily, some of us break through the protecting carpet and dig great hollows and gullies into the earth.
Would you like to know how we rivulets get rid of the load we carry from the mountain slopes? When we are muddy and swollen with the heavy rains, we turn the river into a flood. The river then breaks its banks and spreads out over all the lowlands along its course. Now the river flows more slowly and drops a part of the sand and mud which we rivulets brought to it. Finally, when the storm is over and the river goes back into its channel, there is left on the surface of the valleys a layer of earth rich in plant food. We brought the river the finest of the rock particles, together with the leaves and stems of plants that lay in our way.
H. W. Fairbanks
The rivulets have united to form the broad, shallow river loaded with the soil from the farms along its upper course.