Wealth of the Worlds Waste Places and Oceania | Page 3

the Peruvian Andes makes much of the western part of Chile and Peru a desert. But that same absence of rain makes the nitrate beds possible; for had there been yearly rains, the nitrates long since would have been leached out. So, the lands the nitrates now fertilize are far greater in area than that of the region of the nitrates.
Then, perhaps, we turn our eyes oceanward. What! wealth in these great wastes? Most certainly, and indispensable wealth at that. Let us forget for a moment that the oceans produce about as much meatstuffs as the land; this is really the least important feature about them. The oceans produce one thing that is absolutely necessary for every living thing almost every hour of the day, and that is fresh water. Every drop of fresh water that falls on the land is born of the ocean. Even the cold, polar oceans are indispensable to life, for their waters are constantly flowing out into the warmer oceans, thereby tempering the water of the latter and preventing it from being too warm for living things.
Thus we see that, after all, Dame Nature is not very unkind to her subjects. Compensation is her great law; if her supplies are "short" in one direction they are "long" in another. And when we take the broader view we must conclude that there are no waste places. It is only when we take the extreme and narrow view that we voice the persiflage of the poet Pope:
"While man exclaims: 'See all things for my use'-- 'See man for mine,' replies a pampered goose."
Now, these waste places are of various kinds and in pretty nearly every locality. Some are deserts pure and simple; some are very dry and, to avoid hurting our national feelings, we politely refer to them as "arid regions"; some are so rugged and inaccessible that nothing short of dirigible balloons and aeroplanes could open a general communication with them; still others are in polar regions and too bleak and desolate to produce foodstuffs or support human life. The purpose of these chapters is to present the characteristics of these waste places. Most of them have been conquered by man, and their resources have been opened wide to the world. Possibly others yet remain to be conquered, but "what man has done, man can do."
CHAPTER I
THE WEALTH OF THE ARID SOUTHWEST
Years ago the maps of the United States depicted a vast region west of the Missouri River stippled with dots, which were supposed to imitate sand, and marked with the portentous legend, "Great American Desert." As sturdy pioneers pushed their settlements farther and farther westward, the great American desert began to shrink in size until the roseate descriptions of prospectors and land speculators led one to believe that this whole region needed only a touch of the plough and the harrow to produce the most bountiful crops grown anywhere in the world.
Nevertheless, the great domain extending from the twenty-five-hundred-foot level to the crest of the Sierra Nevada Mountains is a region so deficient in rainfall that, for the greater part, ordinary foodstuffs will not grow without irrigation; so farming must be confined mainly to the flood-plains of the rivers. Here and there considerable areas have been made fertile by capturing rivers, damming their streams so as to create great reservoirs, and then measuring out the waters to the farm lands below. The Salt River dam in Arizona, recently completed, will supply water to two thousand square miles, or about twenty-five thousand fifty-acre farms.
But in spite of all that man has done and can do to make this region fruitful, not far from half a million square miles will ever remain barren so far as the production of foodstuffs is concerned. Now this whole region, irrigated lands included, does not produce more wealth than the State of New York alone--possibly it does not produce so much.
Indirectly, however, it is worth more than two thousand million dollars yearly to the rest of the United States; for it is a great highland whose rims, the Sierra Nevada and the Rocky Mountain ranges, are about two miles high. Now, these lofty ranges wring almost every drop of moisture from the rain-bearing winds of the Pacific Ocean, leaving them too dry to shed any moisture over the eastern half of the United States. Because of this great mountain barrier, the winds that bring rain and bountiful crops to the Mississippi Valley and the Atlantic slope, follow an easier passage, flowing directly from the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean Sea. And the copious rains are the chief wealth of this midland region.
But the arid western highland possesses a great wealth of its own--a wealth whose influence is world-wide, for it is one of the world's chief storehouses of gold, silver,