r failing
supply, became scarcer. They did not know that fish live mostly in the
shallow waters along shores, and that the great ocean depths contain
very few.

[Illustration: _George J. Young_
Sierra junipers above Tuolumne Meadows, near the Yosemite Valley,
showing how roots will force their way in apparently most unfavorable
places.]

Thus, as the earth became thickly settled with men and their wants
increased, they discovered that they had to treat Nature in a very
different way from that of their early ancestors.

Because of our great numbers we have to be careful not to use the earth
in such a way as to lessen its fertility and productiveness. Where
people have been careless, famine has often resulted. Poverty and
suffering have come to many parts of the earth, as we shall learn
farther along in this little book.

THE CITY ON THE PLAIN

Strange indeed were the sounds I heard
One day, on the side of the mountain:
Hushed was the stream and silent the bird,
The restless wind seemed to hold its breath,
And all things there were as still as death,
Save the hoarse-voiced god of the mountain.

Through the tangled growth, with a hurried stride,
I saw him pass on the mountain,
Thrusting the briers and bushes aside,
Crackling the sticks and spurning the stones,
And talking in loud and angry tones
On the side of the ancient mountain.

The tips of his goatlike ears were red,
Though the day was cool on the mountain,
And they lay close-drawn to his horned head;
His bushy brows o'er his small eyes curled,
And he stamped his hoofs,--for all the world
Like Pan in a rage on the mountain.

"Where are my beautiful trees," he cried,
"That grew on the side of the mountain?
The stately pines that were once my pride,
My shadowy, droop-limbed junipers:
And my dewy, softly whispering firs,
'Mid their emerald glooms on the mountain?

"They are all ravished away," he said,
"And torn from the arms of the mountain,
Away from the haunts of cooling shade,
From the cloisters green which flourished here--
My lodging for many a joyous year
On the side of the pleasant mountain.

"The songbird is bereft of its nest,
And voiceless now is the mountain.
My murmurous bees once took their rest,
At shut of day, and knew no fear,
In the trees whose trunks lie rotting here
On the side of the ruined mountain.