ian ruin, was at once a melancholy monument
to the gladness and fertility of a vanished era, and an argument for
forest-conservation that should carry conviction to all who see it.

The next day as I rode amid the strange traffic of Nankou Pass I found
this argument translated into even more directly human terms. For of
the scores of awkward-moving camels and quaint-looking Mongolian
horses and donkeys that I saw homeward-bound after their southward
trip, a great number were carrying little bags of coal--dearly bought
fuel to be sparingly used through the long winter's cold in quantities
just large enough to cook the meagre meals, or in extreme weather to
keep the poor peasants from actually freezing. Only in the rarest
cases are the Chinese able to use fuel for warming themselves; they
can afford only enough for cooking purposes.

Yet in sight of the peasant's home, perhaps--in any case, not far
away--are mountain peaks too steep for cultivation, but which with
wise care of the tree-growth would have provided fuel for thousands
and tens of thousands, and at a fraction of the price at which wood or
coal must now be bought.

Japan, Korea, and India--the whole Orient in fact--bear witness to the
importance of the forestry messages which Gifford Pinchot and Theodore
Roosevelt have been drumming into our more or less uncaring ears for a
decade past. When I reached Yokohama I found it impossible to get into
the northern part of the island of Hondo because of the {264} flood
damage to the railroads, and the lives of several friends of mine had
been endangered in the same disaster. The dams of bamboo-bound rocks
that I found men building near Nikko and Miyanoshita by way of remedy
may not amount to much; but there is much hope in the general
programme for reforesting the desolated areas, which I found the
Japanese Department of Agriculture and Commerce actively prosecuting.
Here is a good lesson for America. In Korea, however, the Japanese
lumbermen, even in very recent years, have given little thought to the
morrow and with such results as might be expected. The day I reached
Seoul, one of its older citizens, standing on the banks of the Han
just outside the ancient walls, remarked, "When I was young this was
called the Bottomless River, because of its great depth. Now, as you
can see, it is all changed. The bed is shallow, in some places nearly
filled up, and it has been but a few weeks since great damage was done
by over