"Man has let in the passionate sun
To suck the life-blood of the mountain,
And drink up its fountains one by one:
And out of the immortal freshness made
A thing of barter, and sold in trade
The sons of the mother mountain.

"Down in the valley I see a town,
Built of his spoils from my mountain--
A jewel torn from a monarch's crown,
A grave for the lordly groves of Pan:
And for this, on the head of vandal man,
I hurl a curse from the mountain.

"His palpitant streams shall all go dry
Henceforth on the side of the mountain,
And his verdant plains as a desert lie
Until he plants again the forest fold
And restores to me my kingdom old,
As in former days on the mountain.

"Long shall the spirit of silence brood
On the side of the wasted mountain,
E'er out of the sylvan solitude
To lift the curse from off the plain,
The crystal streams pour forth again
From the gladdened heart of the mountain."

MILLARD F. HUDSON, in _American Forestry_, XIV. 42

[Illustration: _Pillsbury's Pictures, Inc._
"'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 cou