Wealth of the Worlds Waste Places and Oceania | Page 3

it produces is used in every civilized country. And so
we might name regions by the score that are practically unhabitable,
which nevertheless produce things necessary to civilized man.
We call them "waste places," but this is far from true. For the greater
part they are quite as necessary as the places we call fertile. Of
foodstuffs, for instance, the greater part of the Rocky Mountain
highland produces not much more than the State of New York. Yet the
presence of this great mountain wall diverts the moist warm air from

the Gulf of Mexico northward, making the Mississippi basin one of the
foremost granaries of the world. The absence of rain in the west slope
of 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