Adventures in Diet
Vilhjalmur Stefansson
Public Domain
Harper's Monthly Magazine
November 1935, December 1935, January 1936
Public Domain
Reprinted in 2006
Resurrection Press
Moscow, Idaho
Adventures in Diet
By
Vilhjalmur Stefansson
Resurrection Press
Moscow, Idaho
Contents
ADVENTURES IN DIET
Title Page..............................................................................................9
Part One...............................................................................................11
Part Two..............................................................................................25
Part Three...........................................................................................41
Adventures in Diet
By
Vilhjalmur Stefansson
Resurrection Press
Moscow, Idaho
10
In 1906 I went to the Arctic with the food tastes and beliefs of the
average American. By 1918, after eleven years as an Eskimo among
Eskimos, I had learned things which caused me to shed most of those
beliefs. Ten years later I began to realize that what I had learned was
going to influence materially the sciences of medicine and dietetics.
However, what finally impressed the scientists and converted many
during the last two or three years, was a series of confirmatory
experiments upon myself and a colleague performed at Bellevue
Hospital, New York City, under the supervision of a committee
representing several universities and other organizations.
Not so long ago the following dietetic beliefs were common: To be
healthy you need a varied diet, composed of elements from both the
animal and vegetable kingdoms. You got tired of and eventually felt a
revulsion against things if you had to eat them often. This latter belief
was supported by stories of people who through force of circumstances
had been compelled, for instance, to live for two weeks on sardines
and crackers and who, according to the stories, had sworn that so long
as they lived they never would touch sardines again. The Southerners
had it that nobody can eat a quail a day for thirty days.
There were subsidiary dietetic views. It was desirable to eat fruits
and vegetables, including nuts and coarse grains. The less meat you ate
the better for you. If you ate a good deal of it, you would develop
rheumatism, hardening of the arteries, and high blood pressure, with a
11
of the story, I found myself that autumn the guest of the Mackenzie
River Eskimos.
The Hudson's Bay Company, whose most northerly post was at Fort
McPherson two hundred miles to the south had had little influence on
the Eskimos during more than half a century; for it was only some of
them who made annual visits to the trading post; and then they
purchased no food but only tea, tobacco, ammunition and things of
that sort. But in 1889 the whaling fleet had begun to cultivate these
waters and for fifteen years there had been close association with
sometimes as many as a dozen ships and four to five hundred men
wintering at Herschel Island, just to the west of the delta. During this
time a few of the Eskimos had learned some English and perhaps one
in ten of them had grown to a certain extent fond of white man's foods.
But now the whaling fleet was gone because the bottom had
dropped out of the whalebone market, and the district faced an oldtime winter of fish and water. The game, which might have
supplemented the fish some years earlier, had been exterminated or
driven away by the intensive hunting that supplied meat to the whaling
fleet. There was a little tea, but not nearly enough to see the Eskimos
through the winter - this was the only element of the white man's
dietary of which they were really fond and the lack of which would
worry them. So I was facing a winter of fish without tea. For the least I
could do, an uninvited guest, was to pretend a dislike for it.
The issue of fish and water against fish and tea was, in any case, to
me six against a half dozen. For I had had a prejudice against fish all
my life. I had nibbled at it perhaps once or twice a year at course
dinners, always deciding that it was as bad as I thought. This was pure
psychology of course, but I did not realize it.
I was in a measure adopted into an Eskimo family the head of which
knew English. He had grown up as a cabin boy on a whaling ship and
was called Roxy, though his name was Memoranna. It was early
September, we were living in tents, the days were hot but it had begun
to freeze during the nights, which were now dark for six to eight hours.
13
II
By midwinter I had left my cabin-boy host and, for the purposes of
anthropological study, was living with a less sophisticated family at
the eastern edge of the Mackenzie delta. Our dwelling was a house of
wood and earth, heated and lighted with Eskimo-style lamps. They
burned seal or whale oil, mostly white whale from a hunt of the
previous spring when the fat had been stored in bags and preserved,
14
although the lean meat had been eaten. Our winter cooking however,
was not done over the lamps but on a sheet-iron stove which had been
obtained from whalers. There were twenty-three of us living in one
room, and there were sometimes as many as ten visitors. The floor was
then so completely covered with sleepers that the stove had to be
suspended from the ceiling. The temperature at night was round 60*F.
The ventilation was excellent through cold air coming up slowly from
below by way of a trap door that was never closed and the heated air
going out by a ventilator in the roof.
Everyone slept completely naked no pajama or night shirts. We
used cotton or woolen blankets which had been obtained from the
whalers and from the Hudson's Bay Company.
In the morning, about seven o'clock, winter-caught fish, frozen so
hard that they would break like glass, were brought in to lie on the
floor till they began to soften a little. One of the women would pinch
them every now and then until, when she found her finger indented
them slightly, she would begin preparations for breakfast. First she cut
off the head and put them aside to be boiled for the children in the
afternoon (Eskimos are fond of children, and heads are considered the
best part of the fish). Next best are the tails, which are cut off and
saved for the children also. The woman would then slit the skin along
the back and also along the belly and getting hold with her teeth,
would strip the fish somewhat as we peel a banana, only sideways
where we peel bananas, endways.
Thus prepared, the fish were put on dishes and passed around. Each
of us took one and gnawed it about as an American does corn on the
cob. An American leaves the cob; similarly we ate the flesh from the
outside of the fish, not touching the entrails. When we had eaten as
much as we chose, we put the rest on a tray for dog feed.
After breakfast all the men and about half the women would go
fishing, the rest of the women staying at home to keep house. About
eleven o'clock we came back for a second meal of frozen fish just like
the breakfast. At about four in the afternoon the working day was over
and we came home to a meal of hot boiled fish.
15
16
men who never use it, while the few white women, wives of captains,
none used tobacco. (This, remember, was in 1906.)
Now Roxy had heard that white people believe that salt is good for,
and even necessary for children, so they begin early to add salt to the
child's food. That child then would grow up with the same attitude
toward salt as an Eskimo has toward tobacco. However, said Roxy,
since we Eskimos were mistaken in thinking tobacco so necessary,
may it be that the white men are mistaken about salt? Pursuing the
argument, he concluded that the reason why all Eskimos dislike salted
food and all white men like it was not racial but due to custom. You
could then, break the salt habit as easily as the tobacco habit and you
would suffer no ill result beyond the mental discomfort of the first few
days or weeks.
Roxy did not know, but I did as an anthropologist, that in preColumbian times salt was unknown or the taste of it disliked and the
use of it avoided through much of North and South America. It may
possibly be true that the carnivorous Eskimos in whose language the
word salty, mamaitok, is synonymous with evil-tasting, disliked salt
more intensely than those Indians who were partly herbivorous.
Nevertheless, it is clear that the salt habit spread more slowly through
the New World from the Europeans than the tobacco habit through
Europe from the Indians. Even today there are considerable areas, for
instance in the Amazon basin, where the natives still abhor salt. Not
believing that the races differ in their basic natures, I felt inclined to
agree with Roxy that the practice of salting food is with us a social
inheritance and the belief in its merits a part of our folklore.
Through this philosophizing I was somewhat reconciled to going
without salt, but I was nevertheless, overjoyed when one day Ovayuak,
my new host in the eastern delta, came indoors to say that a dog team
was approaching which he believed to be that of Ilavinirk, a man who
had worked with whalers and who possessed a can of salt. Sure
enough, it was Ilavinirk, and he was delighted to give me the salt, a
half-pound baking-powder can about half full, which he said he had
been carrying around for two or three years, hoping sometime to meet
18
III
During the first few months of my first year in the Arctic, I
acquired, though I did not at the time fully realize it, the munitions of
fact and experience which have within my own mind defeated those
views of dietetics reviewed at the beginning of this article. I could be
healthy on a diet of fish and water. The longer I followed it the better I
liked it, which meant, at least inferentially and provisionally, that you
never become tired of your food if you have only one thing to eat. I did
not get scurvy on the fish diet nor learn that any of my fish-eating
friends ever had it. Nor was the freedom from scurvy due to the fish
being eaten rawwe proved that later. (What it was due to we shall
deal with in the second article of this series.) There were certainly no
19
20
Usually I think, the men believe that what I tell of myself is true for
me personally, but that I am peculiar, a freakthat a normal person
will not react similarly, and that they are going to be normal and have
an awful time. Their past experience seems to tell them that if you eat
one thing every day you are bound to tire of it. In the back of their
minds there is also what they have read and heard about the necessity
for a varied diet. They have specific fears of developing the ailments
which they have heard of as caused by meat or prevented by
vegetables.
We secure our food in the Arctic by hunting and in midwinter there
is not enough good hunting light. Accordingly we carry with us from
the base camp provisions for several weeks, enough to take us into the
long days. During this time, as we travel away from shore, we
occasionally kill a seal or a polar bear and eat their meat along with
our groceries. Our men like these as an element of a mixed diet as well
as you do beef or mutton.
We are not on rations. We eat all we want, and we feed the dogs
what we think is good for them. When the traveling conditions are
right we usually have two big meals a day, morning and evening, but
when we are storm bound or delayed by open water we eat several
meals to pass the time away. At the end of four, six or eight weeks at
sea, we have used up all our food. We do not try to save a few
delicacies to eat with the seal and bear, for experience has proved that
such things are only tantalizing.
Suddenly, then we are on nothing but seal. For while our food at sea
averages ten percent polar bear there may be months in which we don't
see a bear. The men go at the seal loyally; they are volunteers and
whatever the suffering, they have bargained for it and intend to grin
and bear it. For a day or two they eat square meals. Then the appetite
begins to flag and they discover as they had more than half expected,
that for them personally it is going to be a hard pull or a failure. Some
own up that they can't eat, while others pretend to have good appetites,
enlisting the surreptitious help of a dog to dispose of their share. In
extreme cases, which are usually those of the middle-aged and
21
One man wants a big dish of mashed potatoes and gravy; another a
gallon of coffee and bread and butter; a third perhaps wants a stack of
hot cakes with syrup and butter.
On reaching the ship each does get all he wants of what he wants.
The food tastes good, although not quite so superlative as they had
imagined. They have said they are going to eat a lot and they do. Then
they get indigestion, headache, feel miserable, and within a week, in
nine cases out of ten of those who have been on meat six months or
over, they are willing to go back to meat again. If a man does not want
to take part in a second sledge journey it is usually for a reason other
than the dislike of meat.
Still, as just implied, the verdict depends on how long you have
been on the diet. If at the end of the first ten days our men could have
been miraculously rescued from the seal and brought back to their
varied foods, most of them would have sworn forever after that they
were about to die when rescued, and they would have vowed never to
taste seal again vows which would have been easy to keep for no
doubt in such cases the thought of seal, even years later, would have
been accompanied by a feeling of revulsion. If a man has been on meat
exclusively for only three or four months he may or may not be
reluctant to go back to it again. But if the period has been six months
or over, I remember no one who was unwilling to go back to meat.
Moreover, those who have gone without vegetables for an aggregate of
several years usually thereafter eat a larger percentage of meat than
your average citizen, if they can afford it.
23
24
Digestion may stop almost at the point of the mental shock. Obviously
the sickness which follows that meal is not caused by the food, as
such.
Or ask some impressionable friend to lunch. Serve them veal, of
good quality and well cooked. When dinner is over you inquire about
the veal; they will answer with the usual compliments. Then you say
that your case has been proved. Rover died and they have eaten him. If
your stage setting and acting have been at all adequate, a few at least
of your company will make a dive from the room. What sickens them
is not the meat of a dog but the idea that they have eaten dog.
The Russell Sage experiment then could not be made upon anybody
controlled by any strong dietetic belief, such as that meat is harmful,
that abstinence from vegetables brings trouble, that you tire of a food
if you have to eat the same thing often. But almost everyone holds
these or similar beliefs. So we were practically compelled to secure
subjects from members of one of my expeditions; they were the only
living Europeans we knew who had used meat long enough to
eliminate completely the mental hazards.
One man fortunately was available. He was Karsten Anderson, a
young Dane who had been a member of my third expedition. During
that time he had lived an aggregate of more than a year on strictly meat
and water, suffering no ill result and, in fact being on one occasion
cured by meat from scurvy which he had contracted on a mixed diet.
Moreover, he knew from experience of a dozen members of the
expedition that his healthful enjoyment of the diet was not peculiar to
himself but common to all those who had tried it, including members
of three racesordinary whites, Cape Verde Islanders with a strain of
Negro blood, and South Sea Islanders.
But there were other things which made Anderson almost incredibly
suitable for our test. For several years he had been working on his own
in Florida spending most of practically every day outdoors, lightly clad
and enjoying the benefits (such as they are) of a sub-tropical sunlight.
In that mental and physical environment he had naturally been on a
diet heavy in vegetable elements, and had suffered constantly from
29
head colds, his hair was thinning steadily; and he had developed a
condition involving intestinal toxemia such as would ordinarily cause
a doctor to look serious and pronounce: "You must go light on meat."
or "I am afraid you'll have to cut out meat entirely."
We could find no one but Anderson whose mind would leave his
body unhandicapped. So, in January 1928, the test began with the two
of us. It was under the direct charge of Dr. DuBois and his staff in the
dietetic ward of Bellevue Hospital, New York City.
A storm of protests from friends broke upon us when the press
announced that we were entering Bellevue. These were based mainly
upon the report that we were going to eat our meat raw and the belief
that we were using lean meat exclusively. The first was just a false
rumor; the trouble under the second head was linguistic.
Eating meat raw, our friends chorused, would make us social
outcasts. It is proper to serve oysters raw, and clams, in the United
States; herring raw in Norway; several kinds of fish raw in Japan; and
beef raw almost anywhere in the world if only you change the name
and call it rare. The fashion of giving raw meat to infants was
spreading, but we were babes neither in years nor in stature and could
not take advantage of that dispensation.
The answer to the raw meat scare was to explain a basic procedure
of our experimentsAnderson and I were to select our food by palate
(so long as it was meat). It proved that in most of our meals for a year
he leaned to medium cooking and I to well done.
The linguistic trouble came from a recent change of American
usage. In Elizabethan English meat was any kind of food, as in the
expression "meat and drink." In modern England this has narrowed
down to what is implied by the rhyme about Jack Sprat eating no fat
and his wife no lean, although they both ate meat. In the United States
meat, in the last few years has become a synonym for lean. The
meaning can become even narrower, as when somebody, usually a
woman, tells you that she is strictly forbidden by her physician to
touch meat, but that she is permitted all the chicken she wants, with an
occasional lamb chop. To that woman meat signifies lean beef.
30
II
During our first three weeks in Bellevue Hospital we were fed
measured quantities of what might be called a standard mixed diet;
fruits, cereals, bacon and eggs, that sort of thing for breakfast; meats,
vegetables including fruits for lunch and dinner. During this time
various specialists examined us from practically every angle that
seemed pertinent.
Most tedious, and let us hope correspondingly valuable, were the
calorimeter studies. With no food since the evening before, we would
go in the late morning to the calorimeter room and sit quite for an hour
to get over the physiological effect of having perhaps walked up a
single flight of stairs. Then as effortlessly as we could, we slid into
calorimeters which were like big coffins with glass sides, and
everybody waited about an hour or so until we had got over the
disturbance of having slid in. The box was now closed up, and for
three hours we lay there as nearly motionless as we could well be
while a corps of scientists visible through the glass puttered about and
studied our chemical and other physiological processes. We were not
permitted to read and cautioned even against thinking about anything
particularly pleasant or particularly disagreeable, for thoughts and
feelings heat or cool you, speed things up or slow them down, play
hob generally with "normal" processes.
(Dr. DuBois told of a calorimeter test ruined by mental disturbance.
A nervous Romanian had developed an intense dislike for a fellowpatient named Kelly. During the second hour of an experiment that had
been going very well, Max caught a glimpse of the hated Kelly
31
through the window. This raised his metabolism ten percent during
that whole hour.)
With the air we breathed and the rest of our intakes and excretions
carefully analyzed, with our blood chemistry determined and a check
on such things as the billions of living organisms which inhabit the
human intestinal tract, we were ready for the meat.
During the three weeks of mixed diet and preliminary check-up, we
had been free to come and go. Now we were placed under lock and
key. Neither of us was permitted at any time, day or night to be out of
sight of a doctor or nurse. This was in part the ordinary rigidity of a
controlled scientific experiment, but it was in some part a bow to the
skepticism of the mixed diet advocates and to the emotional storms
which were sweeping the vegetarian realms.
Not was the skepticism and excitement all newspaper talk. One of
the leading European authorities, most orthodox and belonging to no
particular school, was touring the United States. He called on us
during the preliminary three weeks and assured the presiding
physicians most solemnly that we should be unable to go more than
four or five days on meat. He had tried it out himself on experimental
human subjects who usually broke down in about three days. These
breakdowns, I thought, were of psychological antecedents; but our
European authority instituted they were strictly psychologicalquite
independent of emotions.
The experiment started smoothly with Andersen, who was permitted
to eat in such quantity as he liked such things as he liked, provided
only that they came under our definition of meatsteaks, chops,
brains fried in bacon fat, boiled short-ribs, chicken, fish, liver and
bacon. In my case there was a hitch, in a way foreseen.
For I had published in 1913, on pages 140-142 of My Life with the
Eskimo, an account of how some natives and I became ill when we
had to go two or three weeks on lean meat, caribou so skinny that there
was no appreciable fat behind the eyes or in the marrow. So when Dr.
DuBois suggest that I start the meat period by eating as large quantities
as I possibly could of chopped fatless muscle, I predicted trouble. But
32
III
For the first three weeks I was watched day and night by the
Institute staff. My exercise was supposed to be about that of an
33
average business man. I went out for walks, but always under guard. If
I telephoned, the attendant stood at the door of the booth; if I went into
a shop, he was never more than a few feet away; and he was always
vigilant. As Dr. DuBois explained, and as I well knew in advance, this
was not because the supervising staff were suspicious of me but rather
because they wanted to be able to say that they knew of their own
knowledge my complete abstinence from all solids and liquids, except
those which I received in Bellevue and which I ate and drank under the
watch of attendants.
But my affairs unfortunately demanded that I travel widely through
the United States and Canada. This was an added reason why
Andersen had been secured for the experiment. When after three
weeks, they had to put me on parole, so to speak, they retained him
under lock and key for a total of something over 90 days.
Those who believed that a meat diet would lead to death had set at
anything from four to fifteen days the point where Dr. Lieb, as clinical
supervisor, would have to call a halt in view of danger to the subjects.
Those who expected a slower breakdown had placed the appearance of
the dread symptoms long before 90 days. In any case, Anderen
reported back to the hospital constantly after he left it and I whenever I
was in town.
After my three weeks and Andersen's thirteen, and with the constant
analyses of excretions and blood when we came back to the hospital
for check-ups, the doctors felt certain they would catch us if we broke
diet. Moreover, long before the thirteen weeks ended they had satisfied
themselves that Andersen had no longing for fruits or other vegetable
materials and therefore, no motive for breach of contract.
Toward the end of the covenanted year Andersen and I returned to
Bellevue for final intensive studies of some weeks on the meat diet,
and then our first three weeks on a mixed diet. At this end of the
experiment all went smoothly with me, but not so with Andersen.
My trouble, it will be remembered, had been that at the outset they
stuffed me with lean, permitting no fat. His difficulty , or at least
annoyance, began on the second day after he completed a year on the
34
meat (January 25, 1929) when they asked him to eat all the fat he
could, to the nausea limit, permitting only a tiny bit of lean, about 45
grams per day. There they kept him on the verge of nausea for a week.
The second week they added his first taste of vegetables in a year,
thrice-cooked cabbage netting about 35 grams of carbohydrate per day.
The third week they omitted the cabbage but retained the high
proportion of fat to lean.
These three weeks, Andersen says, were the only difficult part of the
experiment. Looking back at it now, he thinks if it were possible to
separate the nausea from the other unpleasantness there would have
been a good deal left overthat he wasn't, properly speaking, well at
the end of the third week. However, that is speculation if not
imagination.
Returning to facts, we have the ominous one that pneumonia
epidemic was sweeping New York. The hospital was crowded with
patients; some of the staff got the disease, and with them Andersen. It
was Type II pneumonia in his case, and the physicians were gravely
worried, for this type was proving deadly in that epidemic, carrying off
fifty percent of its Bellevue victims. Andersen, however, reacted
quickly to treatment, ran an unusually short course, and convalesced
rapidly.
IV
The broad results of the experiment were, so far as Andersen and I
could tell, and so far as the supervising physicians could tell, that we
were in at least as good average health during the year as we had been
during the three mixed-diet weeks at the start. We thought our health
had been a little better than average. We enjoyed and prospered as well
on the meat in midsummer as in midwinter, and felt no more
discomfort from the heat than our fellow New Yorkers did.
In view of beliefs that are strangely current it is worth emphasizing
that we liked our meat as fat in July as in January. This ought not to
35
36
Sir Hubert's father, the first white child born in South Australia, told
that when he was young the herdsman, who were the majority of the
population, lived practically exclusively on mutton (sometimes on
beef) and tea. At all times of year they killed the fattest sheep for their
own use and when in the open, which was frequently, they roasted the
fattest parts against a fire with a dripping pan underneath, later dipping
the meat into the drippings as they ate. But then gradually commerce
developed, breads and pastries began to be used, jams and jellies were
imported or manufactured, and with the advance of starches and
sugars, the use of fat decreased. Now, except that the Australians eat
rather more meat per year than people do in the British Isles, the
proportion of fat to the rest of the diet is probably about the same in
Australia as elsewhere within the Empire.
A conclusion of our experiment which the medical profession
seemingly find difficult to assimilate, but which at the same time is
one of our clearest results, is that a normal meat diet is not a high
protein diet. We averaged about a pound and a third of lean per day
and half a pound of fat (this is about like eating a two pound broiled
sirloin with the fat such a steak usually has on it). That seems like
eating mostly lean; but grow technical and you find, in energy units,
that we were really getting three-quarters of our calories from the fat.
That is what the scientists meant when they said at the end of our diet
had proved to be not so very high in protein.
That meat, as some have contended is a particularly stimulating
food I verified during our New York experiment to the extent that it
seems to me I was more optimistic and energetic than ordinarily. I
looked forward with more anticipation to the next day or the next job
and was more likely to expect pleasure or success. This may have a
bearing on the common report that the uncivilized Eskimos are the
happiest people in the world. There have been many explanations
that a hunter's life is pleasant, and that the poor wretches just don't
know how badly off they are. We now add the suggestion that the
optimism may be directly caused by what they eat.
37
Only one serious fear of the experiments was realizedour diet for
the year turned out low in calcium. This was not demonstrated by any
tests upon Andersen or me, and certainly you could not have proved it
by asking us or looking at us, for we felt better and looked healthier
than our average for the years immediately previous. The calcium
deficiency appeared solely through the food analysis of the chemists.
Part of our routine was to give the chemists for analysis pieces of
meat as nearly as possible identical with those we ate. For instance,
lamb would be split down through the middle of the spine and we had
the chops from one side cooked for us, while they got the chops from
the other side to analyze. When the diet was sirloin steaks, they
received ones matching ours. The only way in which the diet was not
identical with the food analyzed was that Andersen and I followed the
Eskimo custom of eating fish bones and chewing the rib ends; from
these sources we no doubt obtained a certain amount of calcium.
Toward the latter part of the test it became startlingly clear, on paper
that we were not getting enough calcium for health. But we were
healthy. The escape from that dilemma was assume that a calcium
deficiency which did not hurt us in our one year might destroy us in
ten or twenty.
You study bones when you look for a calcium deficiency. The thing
to do then, was to examine the skeletons of people who had died at a
reasonably high age after living from infancy upon an exclusive meat
diet. Such skeletons are those of Eskimos who are known to have died
before the European influences came in. The Institute of American
Meat Packers were induced to make a subsidiary appropriation to the
Peabody Museum of Harvard University where Dr. Earnest A. Hooton,
Professor of Physical Anthropology, under took a through going study
with regard to the calcium problem in the relation to the Museum's
collection of the skeletons of meat eaters. Dr. Hooton reported no
signs of calcium deficiency. On the contrary, there was every
indication that the meat eaters had been liberally, or at least
adequately, supplied. They had suffered no more in a lifetime from
39
calcium deficiency than we had in our short year (really short, by the
way for we enjoyed it).
40
Scurvy has been the great enemy of explorers. When Magellan sailed
around the world four hundred years ago many of his crew died from it
and most of the others were at times so weakened that they could
barely handle the ships. When Scott's party of four went to the South
Pole twenty three years ago their strength was sapped by scurvy; they
were unable to maintain their travel schedule and died. Nor has scurvy
been the nemesis of explorers only. Twenty years ago the British
Army in the Near East was seriously handicapped, and last October an
American doctor reported a hundred Ethiopian soldiers per day dying
of scurvy. The disease worked havoc during the Alaska and Yukon
gold rushes following 1896. Scores of miners died and hundred
suffered.
Medical profession and laity equally believed for more than a
hundred years that they knew exactly how to prevent and cure the
disease, yet the method always failed on severe test.
The premise from which the doctors started was that vegetables,
particularly fruits, prevent and cure scurvy. Since diet consists of
animals and plants, the statement came to take the form that scurvy is
cause by meat and cured by vegetables. Finally the doctors
standardized on lime juice as the best of preventatives and cures. They
name it a sure cure, a specific. Lawmakers followed the doctors. It is
41
on the statute books of many countries that on long voyages the crews
are to be supplied with lime juice and induced or compelled to take it.
Obtained from officers of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, and
from sourdoughs, I have in my diaries and notes many a case of
suffering and death caused by scurvy in the Alaska and Yukon gold
rushes. The miner generally began to sicken toward the end of winter.
He had been living on beans and bacon, on biscuits, rice, oatmeal,
sugar, dried fruits and dried vegetables. When he recognized his
trouble as scurvy he made such efforts as were possible to get the
things which he believed would cure him. Apparently the miners had
the strongest faith in raw potatoes. These had to be brought from afar,
and there are heroic tales of men who struggled through the wilderness
to succor a comrade with a few pounds of them. There were similar
beliefs in the virtues of onions and some other vegetables. Curiously,
there was either no belief in those vegetables which were obtainable,
or else there was a belief that they should be treated in a way which.
we now understand, destroys their value. For instance a man might
have been cured or at least helped with a salad of leaves or even bark
of trees. What the miners did with the pine needles and willow drink
the tea. If they had fresh meat they boiled it to shreds and drank the
broth. Death frequently occurred in two to four months from
recognized onset of the disease.
Ignoring the decimation of armies, and the burden of this disease in
many walks of civil life through past ages, we turn to the explorers, the
class most widely publicized as suffering from and dying of scurvy.
It is unusual to rank James Cook of a hundred and fifty years ago
with the foremost explorers of all time. Part of his fame may be
attributed to his having discovered how to prevent and cure scurvy.
Medical books name him as pioneer in the field, saying that we owe to
him the conquest of a dread disease. For he demonstrated that with
vegetables (again particularly fruits) scurvy could be prevented on the
longest voyages. By statement or inference these books assert that
from this developed the knowledge according to which we extract and
42
bottle the juice of the lime, stock ships with it, prevent and cure
scurvy.
As show above intimated, however, the good physicians, with their
faith in lime juice as a specific, overlooked its constant failure upon
severe test.
How stoutly the faith was kept is shown by the British polar
expedition of Sir George Nares. When he returned to England in 1876
after a year and a half, he reported much illness from scurvy, some
deaths, and a partial failure of his program as a result. In his view fresh
meat could have saved his men. But the doctors, as we shall see when
we consider how they later advised Scott, soon forgot whatever
impression was made by Nares. They seem to have scared themselves
with the old doctrines by a series of assumptions: that the lime juice on
the Nares expedition might have been deficient in acid content; that
some of the victims did not takes as much of it as needed; and that
perhaps it was too much to expect of even the marvelous juice to cope
with all the things which tended to bring on scurvyabsence of
sunlight, bad ventilation, lack of amusement and exercise, insufficient
cleanliness.
Particularly because Nares medical court of inquiry had closed on a
note of cleanliness and "modern sanitation," you would think the
medical world might have felt a severe jolt when they read how
Nansen and Johansen had wintered in the Franz Josef Islands, (now
Nansen Land) in 1895-96. They had lived in a hut of stones and walrus
leather. The ventilation was bad, to conserve fuel; the fire smoked, so
that the air was additionally bad; there was not a ray of daylight for
months; during this time they practically hibernated, seldom going
outdoors at all and taking as little exercise as appears humanly
possible. Yet their health was perfect all winter and they came out of
their hibernation in as good physical condition as any men ever did out
of any kind of Arctic wintering. Their food had been lean and the fat
of walrus.
Tens, if not hundreds of thousand of scientists in medicine and the
related branches must have seen this account, for Nansen's books were
43
II
Scott, in 1900, sought the most orthodox scientific counsel when
outfitting his first expedition. He followed advice by carrying lime
juice and by picking up quantities of fruits and vegetable things as he
passed New Zealand on his way to the Antarctic. He saw to it that the
diet was "wholesome," that the men took exercise, that they bathed
and had plenty of fresh air. Yet scurvy broke out and the subsequently
famous Shackleton was crippled by it on a journey. They were pulling
their own sledges at the time so they must of had enough exercise.
There was plenty of light with the sun beating on them, and there was
plenty of fresh air. To believers in the catch words and slogans of their
44
day, to believers in the virtues of lime juice, the onset of the scurvy
was a baffling mystery.
That is was Shackleton's scurvy which most interfered with the
success of the first Scott expedition was particularly unfortunate, if
you think of the jealousies it aroused, the enmities it caused. Scurvy,
as disease go, is really one of the cleanest and least obnoxious; but in
English the name of it is a term of opprobrium"a scurvy fellow," "a
scurvy trick." Shackleton may have smarted as much under that wordassociation as he did under the charge that his weakness had been
Scott's main handicap. The passion to clear his name, in every sense,
drove him to the organization of an expedition, which many in Britain
considered unethicala subordinate, with indecent haste and
insistence, crowding forward to eclipse his commander.
The crucial element in the first Shackleton expedition, to the
students of scurvy, is the fact that Shackelton was an Elizabethan
throwback in the time of Edward VII. He was a Hawkins or a Drake, a
buccaneer in spirit and method. He talked louder and more than is
good form in modern England. He approached near to brag and
swagger. He caused frictions, aroused and fanned jealousies, and won
the breathless admiration of youngsters who would have followed
Dampier and Frobisher with equal enthusiasm in their piracies and in
their explorations.
The organization, and the rest of the first Shackleton expedition,
went with a hurrah. They were as careless as Scott had been careful;
they did not have Scott's type of backing, scientific or financial. They
arrived helter skelter on the shores of the Antarctic Continent, pitched
camp, and discovered that they did not have enough food for the
winter, nor had they taken such painstaking care as Scott to provide
themselves with fruits or other antiscorbutics in New Zealand.
Compared with Scott's, their routine was slipshod as to cleanliness,
exercise, and several of the ordinary hygienic prescriptions.
What signifies is that Scott's men, with unlimited quantities of jams
and marmalades, cereals and fruits, grains, curries, and potted meats,
had been little inclined to add seals and penguins to their dietary. With
45
III
A bulletin conspicuous in the subways co-operated some time ago
with the New York Commissioner of Health by displaying this notice:
FOR SOUND TEETH
BALANCED DIET with
VEGETABLES : FRUIT : MILK
BRUSH TEETH
VISIT DENTIST REGULARLY
Shirley W. Wynne, M.D.
Commissioner of Health
During the same time the ether was full and the magazine pages
were crowded with advertising which told you that mouth chemistry is
altered by a paste, a powder, or a gargle so as to prevent decay, that a
clean tooth never decays, that a special kind of toothbrush reaches all
the crevices, that a particular brand of fruit, milk or bread is rich in
elements for tooth health. There were toothbrush drills in the schools.
Mothers throughout the land were scolding, coaxing, and bribing to get
children to use the preparations, eat the foods, and follow the rules that
insured perfect oral hygiene.
Meantime there appeared a statement from Dr. Adelbert Fernald,
Curator of the Museum of Dental School, Harvard University, that he
had been collecting mouth casts of living Americans, from the most
northerly Eskimos south to the Yucatan. The best teeth and the
healthiest mouths were found among people who never drank milk
since they had ceased to be suckling babes and who never in their lives
tasted any of the other things recommended for sound teeth by the
New York Commissioner of Health. These people, Eskimos, never use
tooth paste, tooth powder, tooth brushes, mouth wash, or gargle. They
never take any pains to cleanse their teeth or mouths. They do not visit
50
for the United States or Europe, Icelandic teeth show a high percentage
of decay.
I began to learn about another formerly toothacheless people when I
joined the Mackenzie River Eskimos in 1906. Some of them had been
eating European foods in considerable amount since 1889, and
toothache and tooth decay were appearing, but only in the mouths of
those who affected the new foods secured from the Yankee whalers.
The Mackenzie people agreed that toothache and cavities had been
unknown in the childhood of those then approaching middle age while
there were many of all ages still untouched, the ones who kept mainly
or wholly to the Eskimo diet. Here and in many other places, this is
somewhere between 98 and 100 percent from animal sources. There
are districts, like parts of Labrador and of western and southwestern
Alaska, where even before the coming of Europeans there was
considerable use of native vegetable elements nowhere furnished as
much as 5 percent of the average yearly caloric intake of the primitive
Eskimos, even in south-western Alaska.
Dr. Alex Hirdlicka, Curator of Anthropology in the National
Museum, Washington, writes me that he knows of no case of tooth
decay among Eskimos of the present or past who were uninfluenced
by European habits. Dr. S. G. Ritchie, of Dalhousie University, wrote
after studying the skeletal collection gathered by Mr. Diamond Jenness
on my third expedition: " In all the teeth examined there is not the
slightest trace of caries."
I brought about 100 skulls of Eskimos, who had died before
Europeans came in, to the American Museum of Natural History, New
York. These have been examined by many students, but no sign of
tooth decay has yet been discovered.
Dr. M. A. Pleasure examined at the American Museum of Natural
History 283 skulls said to be Eskimo of pre-European date. He found a
small cavity in one tooth; but when the records where check it turned
out that the collector, Rev. J. W. Chapman of the Episcopal Board of
Missions, who now lives in New York City, had sent that skull to the
Museum as one of an Athabasca Indian, not of an Eskimo.
53
The slate is, therefore, clean to date. Not a sign of tooth decay has
yet been discovered among that one of all peoples which most
completely avoids the foods, the precepts, and the practices favored for
dental health by the New York Commissioner of Health, the average
dentist, the toothbrush drillmasters of the schools, and the dentifrice
publicists.
IV
When addressing conventions and societies of medical men, I
usually state the oral hygiene case somewhat as above but in more
detail. If there is rebuttal from the floor, it invariably takes the form of
contending that the tooth health of primitive people is due to their
chewing a lot and eating coarse food. The advantage of that argument
to the dentist, whose best efforts have failed to save your teeth is
obvious. It gives him an excuse. He can from the doctrine make a case
that not all your care, even when support by his skill and science, can
preserve teeth in a generation of soft foods, that give no exercise to the
teeth and no friction to the gums.
But it is deplorably hard to square anthropology with this
comfortable excuse of the dentist. Among the best teeth of a mixeddiet world are those of a few South Sea Islanders who as yet largely
keep to their native diets. Similar or better tooth condition is described,
for instance, from the Hawaiian Islands by the earliest visitors. But can
you think of a case less fortunate for the chewing-and-coarse-food
advocates? The animal food of these people was chiefly fish, and fish
is soft to the teeth, whether boiled or raw. Among the chief vegetable
elements was poi, a kind of soup or paste. Then they used sweet
potatoes.
It would be difficult to find a New Yorker or Parisian who does not
chew more, and use coarser food, than the South Sea Islanders did on
the native diets which gave them in at least some cases 97 percent
freedom from caries, a record no block on Park Avenue can approach.
54
one? The best I could think of was to agree that Eskimos pull nails
with their teeth because they have good teeth than that they have good
teeth because they pull nails.
There are several reasons why the teeth of many Eskimos wear
down rapidly. They usually meet edge to edge, where ours frequently
overlap, and that tends to cause wear. Some Eskimos wind-dry fish or
meat, sand gets in, and to an extent makes them like sandpaper. Both
sexes, but especially men, use their teeth for biting on hard materials.
Both sexes, but especially the women, use their teeth for softening
skins. A wearing toward the pulp may, therefore, take place in early
middle-life. What then happens is stated by Dr. Richie (whom we have
already quoted) with relation to the Coronation Gulf Eskimos:
"Coincident with this extreme wear of the teeth the dental pulps
have taken on their original function with conspicuous success.
Sufficient new dentine of fine quality has been formed to obliterate the
pulp chambers and in some cases even the root canals of the teeth.
This new growth of tissue is found in every case where access to the
pulp chambers has been threatened. There has therefore been no
destruction of the pulps through infection and consequently alveolar
abscesses are apparently unknown."
Total absence of caries from those who live wholly on meat is then
definite. Cessation of decay when you transfer from a mixed to a meat
diet happens usually, perhaps always. The rest of the picture is not so
clear.
Caries has been found in the teeth of mummies in Egypt, Peru, and
in our own Southwest. These ancient people were mixed-diet eaters,
depending in considerable part on cereals. Their teeth were better than
ours, though not so good as the Eskimos. If you want a dental law, you
can approximate it by saying that the most primitive people usually
have the best teeth. You can add that in some cases a highly vegetarian
people while not attaining the 100 percent perfection of meat eaters, do
nevertheless, have very good teeth as compared with ours.
It is contended by the Hawaiian Sugar Planters Association Health
Research Project that the shift from good to execrable teeth among the
56
mixed diet Polynesians there has been due to years of cereals. I have
seen no comment of theirs upon the (I should think) great increase of
sugar consumption that has been synchronic with the deterioration of
Hawaiian teeth.
On the view that diet is the greatest factor in saving teeth, the
anthropologists have been getting support from experiments conducted
by institutions and by scattered students. Some dentists are here
contributing nobly to a research, and to a campaign of education, that
seems bound to deplete their income. My probing has not revealed
thus far corresponding unselfishness among the dentifrice
manufacturers.
A serious mouth disease, next after caries, is pyorrhea. He who runs
cannot read the marks so readily on human skeletons; but it seems at
least probable that the medieval Icelanders, the Eskimos, and others
who have left teeth free from cavities, were also free from, or at least
not severely afflicted by, pyorrhea. Similarly, the modern investigators
have found Eskimos who are still living on their native foods to have
an unusually good average condition of general oral health, therewith
absence of pyorrhea.
One of the things we noticed in the general well-being of our New
York year on meat and similar years in the Arctic was the absence of
headaches. I used to have them frequently before going north and have
them occasionally whenever I am on a mixed diet. The whys and
wherefores are not clear and what we say on this point is more
tentative than any other part of this statement.
It was noticed in the X-ray pictures during our New York meat year
that we had far less gas in the intestinal tract when on meat than when
on a mixed dietpractically no gas. The work of Dr. John C. Torrey
showed that neither did digestion and elimination produce those
offensive smells which are found in vegetarianism and on a mixed diet
But whether the freedom from a certain kind of intestinal food
decomposition was what led to the freedom from headache is no more
than a working hypothesis.
57
V
More than twenty-five years have passed since the completion of
my first twelve months on meat and more than six years since the
completion in New York of my sixth full meat year. All the rest of my
life I have been a heavy meat eater, and I am now fifty-six. That
should be long enough to bring out the effects. Dr. Clarence W. Lieb
will report in the American Journal of Gastroenterology that I still run
well above my age average on those points where meat has been
58
59
It has been said in a previous article that I found the exclusive meat
diet in New York to be stimulatingI felt energetic and optimistic
both winter and summer. Perhaps it may be considered that meat is,
overall, a stimulating diet, in the sense that metabolic processes are
speeded up. You are then living at a faster rate, which means you
would grow up rapidly and get old soon. This is perhaps confirmed by
that early maturing of Eskimo women which I have heretofore
supposed to be mainly due to their almost complete protection from
chill they live in warm dwellings and dress warmly so that the body
is seldom under stress to maintain by physiological processes a
temperature balance. It may be that meat as a speeder-up of
metabolism explains in part both that Eskimo women are sometimes
grandmothers before the age of twenty-three, and that they usually
seem as old at sixty as our women do at eighty.
So you could live on meat if you wanted to; but there is no driving
reason why you should. Moreover vegetables are fundamentally
economical. You can get several times more food value from an acre
of corn than from the pigs that ate the corn.
The thing to do then, probably, is to go on as you have been doing,
but adding to your mental equipment, if it be a novelty, the idea that
several at least of the disadvantages of a meat diet are compensated for
by advantages.
60
61
62
Resurrection Press
Moscow, Idaho
63
64
FOREWORD
In 1938 and 1939, Dr. W. C. Lowdermilk, who was an assistant chief
of the U. S. Soil Conservation Service at that time, made an 18-month
tour of western Europe, North Africa, and the Middle East to study soil
erosion and land use in those areas. This tour was sponsored by the
soil Conservation Service at the request of a congressional committee.
The main objective of the tour was to gain information from those
areas -- where some lands had been in cultivation for hundreds and
thousands of years -- that might be of value in helping to solve the soil
erosion and land use problems of the United States.
During the 1938-39 tour, Dr. Lowdermilk visited England, Holland, France, Italy, Algeria, Tunisia, Tripoli, Egypt, Palestine, TransJordan, Lebanon, Cyprus, Syria, and Iraq. Prior to that time, he had
spent several years in China where he had studied soil erosion and land
use problems.
After his return to this country, Dr. Lowdermilk gave numerous
lectures, illustrated with lantern slides, about his findings on land use
in the old world. Conquest of the Land Through Seven Thousand Years
is the essence of those talks. It was first published in l942, in
mimeograph form, as a lecture. It has been used extensively in
conjunction with lantern slides by many school teachers and other
lecturers. It proved to be so popular that it now has been slightly
revised and illustrated, and is published in its present form with the
hope that its usefulness will be greatly extended.
Most of the illustrations used in this publication were made from
photographs taken by Dr. Lowdermilk during his travels.
65
Introduction
Some time ago I heard of an old man dawn on a hill farm in the
South, who sat on his front porch as a newcomer to the neighborhood
passed bye. The newcomer to make talk said, "Mister, how does the
land lie around here?" The old man replied, "Well -- I don't know
about the land a-lying; its these real estate people that do the lying." In
a very real sense the land does not lie; it bears a record of what men
write on it. In a larger sense a nation writes its record on the land, and
a civilization writes its record on the land -- a record that is easy to
read by those who understand the simple language of the land. Let us
read together some of the records that have been written on the land in
the westward course of civilization from the Holy Lands of the Near
East to the Pacific Coast of our country through a period of some 7000
years.
Records of mankind's struggles through the ages to find a lasting
adjustment to the land are found written across the landscapes as
"westward the course of empire took its way." Failures are more
numerous than successes, as told by ruins and wrecks of works along
this amazing trail. From these failures and successes we may learn
much of profit and benefit to this young nation of the United States as
it occupies a new and bountiful continent and begins to set up house
for a thousand or ten thousand years -- yea, for a boundless future.
Freedom Bought and Sold for Food
Pearl Harbor, like an earthquake, shocked the American people to
a realization that we are living in a dangerous world -- dangerous for
our way of life, for our survival as a people, and perilous for the hope
of the ages in a government of the people, by the people and for the
people. Why should the world be dangerous for such a philanthropic
country as ours?
The world is made dangerous by the desperation of peoples
suffering from privations and fear of privations, brought on by restrictions of the exchange of the good and necessary things of Mother
Earth. Industrialization has wrought in the past century far reaching
66
farmers and our city folks of a possible similar catastrophe in this new
land of America. A simplified method of field study enabled us to examine large areas rapidly.
In the Zagros Mountains that separate Persia from Mesopotamia,
shepherds with their flocks have lived from time immemorial, when
"the memory of man runneth not to the contrary." From time to time
they have swept down into the plain to bring devastation and destruction upon farming and city peoples of the plains. Such was the
beginning of the Cain and Abel struggle between the shepherd and the
farmer, of which we will have more to say.
At Kish, we looked upon the first capital after the Great Flood that
swept over Mesopotamia in pre-historic times and left its record in a
thick deposit of brown alluvium. The layer of alluvium marked a break
in the sequence of a former and a succeeding culture as recorded in
artifacts. Above the alluvium deposits is the site of Kish, the first
capital in Mesopotamia after the traditional flood as described in the
Bible.
At the ruins of mighty Babylon we pondered the ruins of
Nebuchadnezzar's stables adorned by animal figures in bas-relief; we
stood subdued as at a funeral as we recalled how this great ruler of
Babylon had boasted:
That which no king before had done, I did....A wall like a mountain
that cannot be moved, I builded....great canals I dug and lined them
with burnt brick laid in bitumen and brought abundant waters to all
the people....I paved the streets of Babylon with stone from the
mountains....magnificent palaces and temples I have built....Huge
cedars from Mount Lebanon I cut down....with radiant gold I
overlaid them and with jewels I adorned them.
Then came to mind the warnings of the Hebrew prophets that
were thundered against the wicked city, for they warned that Babylon
would become "A desolation, a dry land, and a wilderness, a land
wherein no man dwelleth....And wolves shall cry in their castles, and
70
jackals in the pleasant places." Believe it or not, the only living thing
that we saw in this desolation that once was Babylon, was a lean gray
wolf, shaking his head as if he might have had a tick in his ear, as he
loped to his lair in the ruins of one of the seven wonders of the ancient
world -- the Hanging Gardens of Babylon where air conditioning was
in use 2600 years ago.
Mesopotamia, the traditional site of the Garden of Eden, out of
which come the stories of the Flood, of Noah and the Ark, of the
"Tower of Babel" and the confusion of tongues, of the fiery furnace
which we found still burning today, is jotted full of records of a
glorious past, of dense populations and of great cities that are now
ruins and desolation. For at least eleven empires have risen and fallen
in this tragic land in 7000 years. It is a story of a precarious agriculture
by people who lived and grew up under the threat of raids and invasions from the denizens of grasslands and the desert, and of the failure
of their irrigation canals because of silt -- silt!
In recent years a great pool of oil was discovered beneath the
traditional Garden of Eden. It was escaping gas from this pool that
caught fire and became known as the fiery furnace into which,
presumably, the three friends of Daniel, Shadrach, Meschech and
Abednego, were thrown by an angry King. Income from this rich find
of petroleum may well be used to restore this ancient land to more than
its former productivity by installations of modern civilization. Scarcely
a beginning in this possible reclamation has been made.
71
Fig. 1. The remains of the prehistoric city of Kish lay buried under the sands of
Mesopotamia for thousands of years. During recent years, archaeologists have
excavated the ruins shown above. These ruins now lie in a desert -- a man-made
desert.
Fig. 2. This picture shows part of the excavated ruins of ancient Babylon; which was
the capital of most of the civilized world only 4,000 years ago. When Babylon died,
it remained dead and was buried under the sands of Mesopotamia; not because it was
sacked and razed; but because the irrigation ditches which watered the lands that
supported the city were permitted to fill with silt.
72
the land, raising it higher and higher. In these flat lands of slowly
accumulating soil, farmers never met with problems of soil erosion. To
be sure, there have been problems, especially since year-long irrigation
has been made possible by the Assuan Dam, of salt accumulation and
of rising water tables for which drainage is the solution. But the body
of the soil has remained suitable for cropping for 6000 years and more.
It was perhaps in the Nile Valley that a genius of a farmer about 6000
years ago hitched an ox to a hoe and invented the plow, thus originating power-farming to disturb the social structure of those times much
as the tractor disturbed the social structure of our country in recent
years. By this means farmers became more efficient in growing food; a
single farmer released several of his fellows from the vital task of
growing food for other tasks. Very likely the Pharaohs had difficulty in
keeping this surplus population sufficiently occupied; for we suspect
that the Pyramids were the first great W.P.A. projects.
On the Trail of the Israelites
We shall follow the route of Moses out of the fertile irrigated
lands of Egypt into a mountainous land where forests and fields were
watered with the rain of heaven. Fields cleared on mountain slopes
presented a new problem in farming -- the problem of soil erosion,
which as we shall see, became the greatest hazard to permanent
agriculture and an insidious enemy of civilization.
We crossed the modern Suez Canal with its weird color of blue,
now a very important "big ditch," into Sinai where the Israelites with
their herds wandered for 40 years. They or some one must have overgrazed the Peninsula of Sinai, for it is now a picture of desolation. We
saw in this landscape how the original brown soil mantle was eroded
into enormous gullies as shown by great yellowish gashes cut into the
brown soil covering. I had not expected to find evidences of so much
accelerated erosion in the arid land of Sinai.
On the way to Aqaba we crossed a remarkable landscape, a
plateau that had been eroded through the ages almost to a plain, called
a peneplain in physiographic language. This broad flat surface glisten75
the Golden Age of China -- 200 B.C. to 200 A.D. Rose-red ruins of a
great city are hidden away in a desert gorge on the margin of the
Arabian desert.
Petra is now the desolate ruin of a great center of power and
culture and has been used by some students as evidence that climate
has become drier in the past 2000 years, making it impossible for this
land to support as great a population as it did in the past. In
contradiction to this conclusion, we found slopes of surrounding valley
covered with terrace walls that had fallen into ruin and allowed the
soils to be washed off to bare rock over large areas. These evidences
showed that formerly food was grown locally and that soil erosion had
damaged the land beyond use for crops. Invasion of nomads out of the
desert had probably resulted in a breakdown in these measures for the
conservation of soil and water, and erosion had washed away the soils
from the slopes and under-mined the carrying capacity of this land for
a human population. Before ascribing decadence of the region to
change of climate, we must know how much the breakdown of intensive agriculture contributed to the fall and disappearance of this
Nabatean civilization.
The great buildings used for public purposes are amazing;
temples, administrative buildings, and tombs are all carved out of the
red Nubian sandstone cliffs. A fascinating story still lies hidden in the
unexcavated ruins of this ancient capital. The influence of Greek and
Roman civilization was found in a great theater with a capacity to seat
some 2500 persons, carved entirely out of massive sandstone rock,
which only echoes the scream of eagles, or the chatter of tourists.
And as we proceeded northward in the Biblical land of Moab, we
came to the site of Mt. Nebo and were reminded of how Moses, after
having led the Israelites through 40 years of wandering in the
wilderness, stood on this mountain and looked across the Jordan
Valley to the Promised Land. He described it to his followers in words
like these:
77
For the Lord thy God bringeth thee into a good land, a land of
brooks of water, of fountains and depths that spring out of valleys
and hills; a land of wheat and barley and vines and fig trees and
pomegranates, a land of olive oil and honey; a land wherein thou
shalt eat bread without scarceness; thou shalt not lack anything in
it; a land whose stones are iron and out of whose hills thou mayest
dig brass.
The Land of Milk and Honey
We crossed the Jordan Valley as did Joshua and found the Jordan
River a muddy and disappointing stream. We stopped at the ruins of
Jericho and dug out kernels of charred grain which the archaeologists
tell us undoubtedly belonged to an ancient household of this ill-fated
city. We looked at the Promised Land as it is today, 3000 years after
Moses described it to the Israelites as a land flowing with milk and
honey.
The British Mandate Government for Palestine was very
accommodating and furnished an armored car to protect us in our
travels against attacks of terrorists, who were very active at that time.
The Government also furnished us an airplane with special permission
to take pictures from the air. The Jewish Agency gave us all facilities
to study the agricultural colonies. Because of this excellent
cooperation, we had an excellent view of Palestine as it is today.
We found that the soils of red earth had been washed off the
slopes to bed rock over more than half the upland area -- washed off
the slopes and lodged in the valleys where they are still being
cultivated and still being eroded by great gullies that cut through the
alluvium with every heavy rain. Evidence of rocks washed off the hills
were found in piles of stone where tillers of soil had heaped them
together to make cultivation about them the easier. From the air we
read with startling vividness the graphic story as written in the land,
where soils have been washed off to bed rock in the vicinity of Hebron
and only dregs of the land are left behind in narrow valley floors, there
still cultivated to meager crops.
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Fig. 3. This is a present day view of the Promised Land to which Moses led the
children of Israel. A few patches, like those shown in the foreground, still have
enough soil to raise a meager crop of grain. But, as observed from the rock
outcroppings, most of the land on the sloping hillsides has lost practically all soil
through man-induced erosion. The crude rock terrace, shown in the middle
foreground, helps to hold some of the remaining soil in place.
Fig. 4. This picture, taken near Jerusalem, Palestine, shows a contrast in slopes. The
slopes in the foreground and the left middle distance are almost completely bare of
soil; while the slopes to the right where crude terraces are seen still retain enough
soil to produce a thin crop of grain.
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thriving cities. They swept down as a wolf on the fold to raid the
farmers and their supplies of food. Raiders sacked and robbed and
passed on, often leaving destruction and carnage in their path, or they
replaced former populations and themselves became farmers only to
be swept out by a later wave of hungry denizens of the desert.
Conflicts between the grazing culture and farming culture of the
Holy Lands have been primarily responsible for the tragic history of
this region. Not until these two cultures supplement each other in
cooperation can we hope for peace in this ancient land. We saw the
tents of descendants of nomads out of Arabia who in the 7th century
swept in out of the desert to conquer and over-run the farming lands of
Palatine and again in the 12th century when they drove out the
Crusaders. They and their herds of long-eared goats, often called
cloven-hoofed locusts, let terrace walls fall in ruin and unleashed the
forces of erosion which for nearly 13 centuries have been washing the
soils off the slopes into the valleys to make marshes or out to sea.
In recent times a great movement has been under way for the
redemption of the Promised Land by Jewish settlers, who have
wrought wonders in draining swamps, ridding them of malaria and
planting them to thriving orchards and fields, in repairing terraces, in
reforesting the desolate and rocky slopes, and in the improvement of
livestock and poultry. The work of the Jewish colonies is the most
remarkable reclamation of old lands that I have seen in three
continents.
Throughout our survey of the work of the agricultural colonies, I
was asked to advise on measures to conserve soil and water. I urged
that trees of orchards be planted on the contour and the land benchterraced by contour plowing. So insistent was I on this point that
finally we were told of one orchard that was planted in this manner.
We went to see it. The trees were planted on the contour, the land was
bench-terraced and slopes above the orchard were furrowed on the
contour and planted to hardy trees. By these measures all the rain that
fell the season before, one of the wettest in many years, was absorbed
by the soil. No runoff occurred after this work was done, to cut gullies
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down slope and to damage the orchards below. When I asked where
the man responsible for this had learned these measures, he told me
that he had learned them at the Institute of Water Economy in Tiflis,
Georgia, in Trans-Caucasia.
Across Syria
We crossed the Jordan again into a region famous in Biblical
times for its oaks, wheat fields and well-nourished herds, where we
found the ruins of Jorash, one of the ten cities of the Decapolis, and
Jerash the second. Archaeologists tell us that Jerash was once the
center of some 250,000 people. But today only a village of 3000 marks
this great center of culture, and the country about is sparsely populated
with semi-nomads. The ruins of this once powerful city of Greek and
Roman culture are buried to a depth of 13 feet with erosional debris
washed from eroding slopes. Excavation by archaeologists has
disclosed the beauty and grandeur of the main street of Jerash that was
lined with stately columns with beautifully carved capitals for which
the city was famous throughout the Near East.
We searched out the sources of water that nourished Jerash and
found a series of springs protected by masonry built in the GraecoRoman times. We examined these carefully with the archaeologists to
discover whether the present water level had changed with respect to
the original structures and whether the openings through which the
springs gushed was the same as that of ancient times. We found no
suggestion that the water level was any lower than it was when the
structures were built or that the openings were different. It seems that
the water supply had not failed, but when we examined the slopes
surrounding Jerash we found the soils washed off to bed rock in spite
of rock walled terraces. The soils had been washed off the slopes and
lodged in the valleys, there to be cultivated by the semi-nomads who
lived in black goat-hair tents, whereas in Roman times this area
supplied grain to Rome and supported thriving communities and rich
villas, ruins of which we found in the vicinity.
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Fig. 5. This hillside in Trans-Jordan was once covered with a layer of productive
soil. Sheet erosion probably removed most of the topsoil during the first century of
use. Gullies then began to form. As the gullies grew thicker and deeper, practically
all topsoil and subsoil were removed from the entire slope. Man has put this land
back almost to the state it was in when nature first started to build soil on it.
Fig. 6. Ancient rock-walled bench terraces protect this Lebanon hillside after
thousands of years of use. It is estimated that the terracing of some Lebanon hillsides
cost at least $2,000 per acre, if we should figure the cost of labor at 40 cents per
hour. Such expensive methods of protecting the land are practical only where people
have no other land on which to produce their food.
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Elsewhere we found how the battle with soil erosion had been
won by the construction and maintenance of a remarkable series of
rock-walled terraces from the bases to the crests of slopes, like
fantastic stair-cases. At Beit Eddine in the mountains of Lebanon east
of Beirut, we round the slopes terraced even up to grades of 76 per
cent. At wages of 40 cents per hour it would cost $2000 to $5000 an
acre to build such structures on 50 to 75 per cent slopes. These vast
works, an arresting monument to the labor of tillers of soil throughout
thousands of years, show the length to which a people will go to save
their soils when necessity for food requires it.
Some say we cannot afford to build terraces at such fabulous
costs; but these people did so, and we would do as much if it were
necessary to survive. We spent more than 300 billion dollars to defend
our land against foreign foes during World War II; we would do as
much to save our land from erosion if it were necessary. Our war effort
averaged more than $150 for every acre of land in continental United
States and more than $700 for every acre of cultivated land. Who says
we cannot afford it? But, fortunately, by the science of conservation
we can save our soils for sustained use at a mere fraction of the cost or
defending our land from invasion by the Army or planes of an enemy
country.
The mountains of ancient Phoenicia were once covered by the
famous forests of cedars of Lebanon. An inscription on the temple of
Karnak as translated by Breasted, announces the arrival in Egypt
before 2900 B.C. of 40 ships laden with timber of cedar out of
Lebanon. You also recall that it was King Solomon, nearly 3000 years
ago, who made an agreement with Hiram, King of Tyre, to furnish him
cypress and cedars out of these forests for the construction of the
temple at Jerusalem. Solomon supplied 80,000 lumberjacks to work in
the forest and 70,000 to skid the logs to the sea. It must have been a
heavy forest for such a woods force. What has become of this famous
forest that once covered nearly 2000 square miles?
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This forest was protected in Roman times to grow timber for the
Roman fleet as told by inscribed monuments. In the mountains or
Lebanon, many monuments were round marked with the letters,
"H.D.S." Their meaning was not understood until a stone was found
and carried to the museum or the American University at Beirut. The
inscription is interpreted to read: "Emperor Hadrian Augustus, Forest
Boundary" (Emp. Hdn. Aug. Definitie Silvarum), indicating that in the
time or Emperor Hadrian the boundaries of these forests were marked
for protection.
But today only 4 small groves of this famous Lebanon cedar forest
are left, the most important or which is the Tripoli grove of trees in the
cup of a valley. An examination of the grove revealed some 400 trees
of which 43 are old veterans or wolf trees. As we read the story written
in tree rings, it appears that about 300 years ago the grove had nearly
disappeared with no less than 43 scattered veterans standing. These
trees with wide-spreading branches had grown up in an open stand.
About that time a little church was built in their midst that made the
grove sacred; a stone wall was built about the grove to keep out the
goats that grazed over the mountains. Seeds from the veterans fell to
the ground, germinated and grew up into a fine close-growing stand of
tall straight trees that show how the cedars or Lebanon will make good
construction timber when grown in forest conditions.
Such natural restocking also shows that this famous forest has not
disappeared because or adverse change of climate, but that under the
present climate it would extend itself if it were safeguarded against the
rapacious goats that graze down every accessible living plant upon
these mountains.
As we read in the Hold Lands records of decline and ruin and
oblivion of great empires of the past, we were moved by the ineffable
sadness and tragedy of mans failures to find a lasting adjustment to his
land resources. Time after time as I pondered tragic ruins or great
centers or power and culture and the even more tragic ruins of the
lands that supported these teeming centers of population, the question
would come to mind: Must our fair country of America rise to great
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power and strength only to decline and fall, because we fail to find a
solution to this age-old problem of a permanent source of abundant
and adequate food? Have we the intelligence -- have we the will to
establish here a lasting nation where the dream of liberty for all is
planted? Here is a challenge to the perennial youth of our land!
China's Sorrow
Before proceeding to Cyprus and North Africa, let's take a look at
China, whose civilization probably arose somewhat later than that
which developed in the Near East and was partly influenced by it.
Mixed agriculture, irrigation, the ox-drawn plow, and terracing of
slopes are notable similarities in the two regions.
It was in China, while I was engaged in an international project
for famine prevention in 1922-27, that the full and fateful significance
of soil erosion was first burned into my consciousness.
During an agricultural exploration into regions of North China
seriously affected by the famine of 1920-21, I examined the site where
the Yellow River in 1852 broke from its enormous system of inner and
outer dikes. As we traveled across the flat plains of Henan we saw a
great flat-topped hill looming up before us. We traveled on over the
elevated plain for seven miles to another great dike that stretched
across the landscape from horizon to horizon. We mounted this dike
and, behold! there lay before us the Yellow River, the Hwang Ho, a
great width of brown water flowing quietly that spring morning into a
tawny haze in the east.
A brisk chilly wind tugged at our clothing, as we contemplated
this scene of tremendous implications. Here lay the river known as
China's Sorrow for thousands of years, apparently harmless, in a
channel fully 40 to 50 feet above the plain of the great delta. This
gigantic river had been lifted up off the plain over its entire 400-mile
course across its delta and had been held in this channel by the hand
labor of men, without machines or engines, without steel cables or
construction timber and without stone. The longer I pondered this aweinspiring scene, the more was I amazed at the magnitude of the
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Fig. 7. A severely gullied area in the loess hills of North China These hills were once
covered with trees and grass; but cultivation started the ruinous process of erosion
There are thousands of acres like this in China today. It produces nothing except
yellow mud to clog the Yellow River with silt.
Fig. 8. These bench terraces in ShanSi province, China, again illustrate the extent to
which people will go to save their soil when they do not have enough good land to
produce their food.
Further west in the midst of the famous and vast loessial deposits of
North China, we found in another exploration in the Province of
Shensi, how an irrigation system that was first established in 246 B.C.
had been put out of use by silt. Here again silt was the villain in the
tragedy of the land. Silt was undoing the anxious and unending labor
of the Chinese to establish a lasting adjustment to their land. We
sought out the origin of the silt that had brought an end to an irrigation
project which had fed the sons of Han during the Golden Age of
China. The origin was found in areas where soil erosion had eaten out
of the land gargantuan gullies 600 feet deep, that were advancing
headward into the great mantle of fertile loessial soil. One may see
remnants of terraces that were in use before the landscape was riddled
by huge gullies. It was while contemplating such scenes that I resolved
to challenge the conclusions of the great German geologist, Baron von
Richthofen, and of Ellsworth Huntington, that the decadence of North
China was due to desiccation or pulsations of the climate.
Temple forests gave the clue; they demonstrated beyond a doubt
that the present climate would support a generous growth of vegetation
capable of preventing erosion on such a scale. Human occupation of
the land had set in motion processes of soil wastage that were in
themselves sufficient to account for the decadence and decline of this
part of China, without adverse change of climate. In other words, soil
erosion unless controlled, will undermine a civilization. I could see
that it had already done so, and, unless ways to control it were found,
it would bring desolation to others including my own country.
It was in the presence of such tragic scenes on a gigantic scale that
I resolved to run down the nature of soil erosion, which had proved to
be the insidious enemy of civilization and to devote my lifetime to
study of ways to conserve the lands on which mankind depends. Out
of this experience grew a series of scientific studies in China during
the years 1923-27, as reported elsewhere, which were transferred to
the United States in 1927 and have been incorporated in erosion and
stream-flow investigations of the U. S. Forest Service and later in our
movement for land conservation in the United States, under the
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cross section across North Africa from the Mediterranean to the Sahara
Desert, from 40 inches of rainfall to 4 inches, from Carthage on the
coast to Biskra at the edge of mysterious Sahara.
In Tunisia we found that it rains in the desert of North Africa in
winter time now as it did in the time of Caesar, who in 44 B.C.
complained of how a great rainstorm with wind had blown over the
tents of his army encampment and flooded the camp. It rains hard
enough to produce flash floods in the wadies. At one place muddy
water swept across the highway in such volume that we decided to
wait until the next day until the flash flow had gone down before
proceeding.
As we make a rapid survey of land use across Tunisia and Algeria
from the Mediterranean coast to the edge of the Sahara, through the
center of what was the granary of Rome, we shall begin at Carthage
the principal city of North Africa in Phoenician times.
We stood on the site of ancient Carthage, one of the colonies of
Phoenicia that grew to be great and powerful -- the city that produced
Hannibal and became a dangerous rival of Rome. In 146 B.C. at the
end of the Third Punic War, Scipio destroyed Carthage, but out of the
doomed city he saved 28 volumes of a work on agriculture written by
a Carthaginian by the name of Mago, who was recognized by the
Greeks and Romans as the foremost authority on agriculture in the
Mediterranean. These works of Mago were translations in the existing
works of such Roman writers on agricultural subjects as Columella,
Varro, and Cato. This incident tells us that the traditions of conserving
soils and waters that we believe were first discovered on the slopes of
ancient Phoenicia had been brought by their colonists to North Africa;
we suspected these measures furnished the basis of the great
agricultural production that was so important to the Romans during the
Empire.
Over a large portion of the ancient granary of Rome we found the
soil washed off to bed rock and the hills seriously gullied from
overgrazing. The valley floors are usually still cultivated but are still
eroding in great gullies fed by accelerated storm runoff from barren
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slopes. This was in an area that once supported many great cities in
Roman times.
We found at Djemila the ghosts of Cuicul, a city that was once
great and populous and rich but later was covered completely, except
for about 3 feet of a single column, by erosion debris washed off
slopes of surrounding hills. For 20 years French archaeologists had
been excavating this remarkable Roman city and unearthed great
temples, two great forums, splendid Christian churches, and great
warehouses for wheat and olive oil. All this had been buried by
erosional debris washed from the eroding slopes above it. The
surrounding slopes once covered with olive groves are now cut up
with active gullies.
The modern village that falls heir to this once beautiful Roman
city houses only a few inhabitants. The flat lands are still farmed to
grain but the slopes once planted to olives are bare and eroding and
wasting away. What is the reason for this astounding decline and ruin?
Timgad, Lost Capital of a Lost Agriculture
Further to the south we stopped to study the ruins of another great
Roman city of North Africa, Thamugadi, now called Timgad. This city
was founded by Trajan in the first century A.D., laid out in
symmetrical pattern and adorned with magnificent buildings, with a
forum embellished by statuary and carved porticoes, a public library, a
theater to seat some 2500 persons, 17 great Roman baths, and, if you
please, with marble flush toilets for the public. After the invasion of
the nomads in the seventh century had completed the destruction of the
city and dispersal of its population, this great center of Roman culture
and power was lost to knowledge for 1200 years. It was buried by the
dust of wind erosion from surrounding farm lands until only a portion
of Hadrian's arch and 3 columns remained like tombstones above the
undulating mounds to indicate that once a great city was there.
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Fig. 9. (L-132) In the middle distance may be seen the ruins of the ancient Roman
city of Cuicul. It was a rich and prosperous city in North Africa when that region was
known as the "granary the Roman Empire." Note that the ruin of the land, as seen in
the distance and foreground, is almost as complete as the ruin of the city.
Fig 10. This small flock of scrawny sheep graze on the scant vegetation that may be
found near the ruins of Cuicul. This is about the only productive use the land now
has; the gullied hillsides in the distance do not even support enough vegetation for
that.
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Fig. 11. The ruins of Timgad -- another ancient Roman city of North Africa. The few
squalid huts, seen in the middle distance, now house about 300 inhabitants; which is
all that the eroded land will support at present -- another example of a city that
remains dead because the land that supported it is dead.
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Fig. 12 (previous page) L-l41. This large grove of olive trees are thriving on the
plains near Sfax, Tunisia. The scattered groves of this kind that may be found in
North Africa today show that the climate is still suitable for agriculture where
productive soil is still on the land.
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feet. This cistern was filled in two years and now waters the herds of
semi-nomads who inhabit this portion of North Africa.
Still farther toward the desert about 70 miles south of Tebessa we
found a remarkable example of ancient measures for the conservation
of water At some time in the Roman or possibly pre-Roman period,
peoples of this region built check dams to divert storm water around
the slope -- in canals that the French are now cleaning out again -- to
spread upon a remarkable series of bench terraces. This area of
unusual interest raises a number of puzzling questions which we are
not yet able to answer. If these terraces were cultivated to crops in
times past they are the best evidence we have that climate has become
drier since they were first built. But if they were built for spreading
water to increase forage production for grazing herds then, as the
French are using them today, they are not evidence for an adverse
change of climate. This evidence alone could leave us in doubt, but
other evidence would indicate that water spreading was most used here
for crops.
This region of North Africa is similar to the Navajo country in the
United States where in recent years our Soil Conservation Service has
developed measures for spreading storm water on alluvial valley floors
to increase forage growth for herds of Navajo sheep. It would be
interesting to know the date and the reason for building these terraces.
They may indicate that with Roman occupation of North Africa the
native tribes were driven beyond the border of the Roman Empire and
were forced to devise these refined measures for conservation and use
of water in a dry area; or they may indicate that North Africa was, so
densely populated that it was necessary to use these refinements in the
conservation of water to support the population on the margins of a
crowded region. Whatever may be the answers to these questions, the
French Government during our visit in North Africa in 1939, was in
the course of restoring these ancient practices of diverting storm water
with check dams around slopes in canals to spread it upon the gentle
slopes that had been flattened by a remarkable series of bench terraces.
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Fig. 13. A terraced citrus orchard in southern France. This land has been in
cultivation for at least a thousand years and probably much longer than that; for it is
believed that the terraces were first built by the Phoenicians more than 2,500 years
ago.
Fig. 14. (L-83) Large sand dunes in southwestern France that are moving at the rate
of about 60 feet each year. These dunes are literally engulfing the forest that may be
seen at the base of the dunes.
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Fig. 15. Contour strip cropping in southwestern Germany. Some farmers of Europe
have been using this method to help control erosion. for hundreds of years.
Fig. 16. (L-4) A view of productive farmland in Holland that was literally reclaimed
from the sea. This land was on the floor of the sea only 7 years before this picture
was made The Dutch diked off the sea and leached out the excess salt and minerals
at a cost of about $200 per acre
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difficulty with soil erosion, for rains come as mists and slopes are
gentle and fields are usually farmed to closegrowing crops of small
grains. England is well suited to grassland farming and to the growing
of small grains. Clean-tilled crops have never been in general use. So
we found fields in England that have been cultivated for 1000 years or
more where the yields of wheat, have been raised to averages between
40 to 60 bushels per acre. The maximum yield thus far is 96 bushels to
the acre. The principal problems before the farmers of England are
rotations, seed selection and farm implements.
The recent war made new demands on the lands of England. Prior
to blockading action by the enemy, the British Isles depended on
imports for two-thirds of their total food supply. One-third of their
population was fed from their own lands, requiring about 12 million
acres of cultivated land for this purpose. In war time, fully 50 per cent
more land was plowed to grow food crops; and most of it is still in
cultivation. Pasture land and grassland on slopes are being cultivated.
Soil erosion, may become a problem more serious than ever before in
British agriculture, because of the extraordinary demands for the
growing of food.
The New World
And now we cross the Atlantic, following the, course of
civilization to the new land which by one of the most remarkable facts
of history was kept for the most part isolated from the peoples of the
Old World until civilization had advanced through a period of fully
6000 years.
The peoples found here, presumably descendants of tribes coming
from Asia in the distant past, had been handicapped in the
development of agriculture by, lack of large animals. suitable for
domestication and by ignorance of the wheel or the use of iron. They
had, however, learned to conserve water and soils in a notable way,
especially in the terrace agriculture of Peru and Central America and
in the Hopi country of Southwestern United States. Some have held
that this knowledge was brought across the South Pacific by way of
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islands, on many of which such practices are still found. In any case,
lacking iron or even bronze tools, these peoples for the most part still
depended largely on hunting, fishing and gathering along with shifting.
cultivation for their livelihood, and the soil resources seem to have
been for the most part almost unimpaired.
To the peoples of the Old World, the Americas were a land of
promise, a release from the oppressions, economic and political,
brought on by congested populations and failures of peoples to find
righteous adjustments to their long used land resources.
North America, as the first colonists entered it, was a vast area of
good land, more bountiful in raw materials for a complex civilization
than ever was vouchsafed any people. "The spacious Mississippi
Valley is the most expansive habitation of mankind in the world," says
the historian, Henry Truslow Adams. Its soils were fat with
accumulated fertility, of the ages; its mountains were full of mineral;
its forests of timber; its clear rivers were teeming with fish., All these
were abundant -- soil productivity, raw materials, and power for a
remarkable civilization. How new is this land in comparison with the
Holy Lands?
The hardy pioneers, who first settled the eastern seaboard and then
the west, found a land beautiful for its rocks and rills, for its forests
and valleys and for its majestic purple mountains; beautiful for its
wide open plains and spacious skies; for the majesty of its scenery in
lakes and snow-capped mountains. Our forefathers found a land
wonderful for indescribable grandeur of scenery; wonderful for its
great expanse as they continued the westward course of civilization to
the shores of the Pacific.
Here was the last frontier of this westward march; for there are no
more new continents to discover, to explore and to exploit. If we are to
discover a way of establishing an enduring civilization we must do it
here, for this is our last stand! We have not yet fully discovered this
way; we are searching for the way and the light. Here is a challenge of
the ages to old and young alike; a chance to solve this age-old problem
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whereas his ridiculing neighbors have only subsoil to farm, for they
have lost all their topsoil by erosion.
Leaving crop litter which is sometimes called "stubble mulch" and
"crop residue" at the ground surface in farming operations, is one of
the most significant and important contributions to American
agriculture and deserves to be spread wide through the country.
Certain adaptations of the method need to be made to meet the
problems of different farming regions, but the new principle is the
contribution of importance. There is not time to go into variations of
the Gowder crop litter method of farming, except to herald it as a
discovery as important to agriculture of the New World and these
times as the invention of the plow was to the Old World.
Danger Signs in America
Sheet erosion develops into gullies if allowed to continue
unchecked for a few years. Such gullies become numberless gutters to
lead off storm waters and flash floods that gouge out miniature gorges
and ruin the land for further cultivation. Material washed out of such
gullies is swept down into river valleys to shoal streams, to fill
reservoirs, and to destroy water storage for hydro-electric power and
for irrigation.
One of the most important findings of this survey of the use of
land in 7000 years is that tillers of soil have encountered their greatest
problem throughout the ages in trying to establish a permanent
agriculture on sloping lands. We have read the record as written on the
land, of failures from place to place but of few instances of success.
This same problem is with us in our new land of America, where
millions of acres have been destroyed for further cultivation and
abandoned.
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Fig 17. This formerly fine American farm home has been abandoned for much the
same reason that many cities of the old world were abandoned -- the eroded land
around it will no longer support a prosperous farm family.
Fig. 18. This prosperous American farm is being farmed the conservation way. The
terraces, strip crops, contour rows, and other soil and water conservation measures
protect the land against erosion and help to build up soil fertility.
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were laid out to carry water harmlessly through one farm and another
to natural drainage channels. One terrace outlet system may serve in
this way as many as 5 farms. By this approach to conservation it is
possible to treat the land in accord with its adaptabilities and to control
storm waters according to hydraulic principles. This is indeed
physiographic engineering that builds a lasting basis for a thriving
civilization.
This does not mean that we have yet found the final answer to full
control of soil erosion that will assure permanent agriculture, but we
are on the way to that solution. Our present practices may not yet stop
erosion, but will reduce it more and more as application of measures is
more and more complete. These measures and others will need further
improvement and adaptation to the problems as use of land becomes
more and more intensive. Such is the way out to this ageold problem
of establishing an enduring agriculture on sloping lands.
It is true that our level lands of the alluvial valleys have their
problems of drainage both in the irrigated and rain supplied area. But
these problems do not include the wastage of the physical body of the
soil resource. The soil remains in these flat lands, leaving us the
freedom of choice of drainage when the lands are economically ripe
for us. Our chief problem among many in the land conservation
movement in the United States is to conserve lands under cultivation
and grazing on slopes.
Wind erosion is a spectacular problem restricted to a smaller area
of the country where it is, however, serious and destructive. Wind
erosion attacks level as well as sloping lands cultivated in semi-humid
and semi-arid parts of the country. Wind erosion sorts the soil more
thoroughly than water erosion, lifting fine and fertile particles of soil
aloft to be flown to "parts unknown" and leaving behind coarser and
heavier particles that become sandy hummocks, then sand dunes that
begin an inexorable march of destruction. Such was the case in the socalled "dust bowl" of the Great Plains.
Control of wind erosion is based first upon a suiting of the land to,
its capabilities, by conserving all or most all of the rain that falls on it,
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