The Project Gutenberg eBook, Wealth of the World's Waste Places and Oceania, by Jewett Castello Gilson
Title: Wealth of the World's Waste Places and Oceania
Author: Jewett Castello Gilson
Release Date: November 19, 2007 [eBook #23546]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK WEALTH OF THE WORLD'S WASTE PLACES AND OCEANIA***
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From the National Geographic Magazine, copyright 1911
The great Rainbow natural bridge of southern Utah
LINK TO IMAGE
REDWAY'S GEOGRAPHICAL READERS
WEALTH OF THE
WORLD'S WASTE PLACES
AND
OCEANIA
BY
JEWETT C. GILSON
FORMER SUPERINTENDENT OF SCHOOLS, OAKLAND, CALIFORNIA
ILLUSTRATED
CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS
NEW YORK :::::::::::::::::: 1913
Copyright, 1913,
by JEWETT C. GILSON
PREFACE
Although the term "Waste Places" carries an implied meaning of "worthless," yet, interpreted in the light of Nature's methods, each region described, useless as it may apparently seem, possesses a definite relation to the rest of the world, and therefore to the well-being of man. The Sahara is the track of the winds whose moisture fertilizes the flood-plains of the Nile. The Himalaya Mountains condense the rain that gives life to India. From the inhospitable polar regions come the winds and currents that temper the heat of the tropics.
Nature has secreted many of her most useful treasures in most forbidding places. The nitrates which fertilize so much of Europe are drawn from the fiercest of South American deserts, and the gold which measures American commerce is mined in the arctic wilds of Alaska or in the almost inaccessible scarps of the western highlands. The description of these regions and the portrayal of their relation to the rest of the world is the purpose of Part I of this book.
Part II of the book deals with Oceania—more especially with our island possessions in the Pacific Ocean. It presents the salient features of the ocean grand division in the light of most recent knowledge.
The author wishes to give credit to Mr. Jacques W. Redway, F.R.G.S., for suggesting the subject of Part I and for the inspiration he received from the distinguished geographer in developing the subject.
J. C. G.
Oakland, California,
December 25, 1912.
CONTENTS
PART I WEALTH OF THE WORLD'S WASTE PLACES
PAGE Introduction 1 CHAPTER I. The Wealth of the Arid Southwest 4 II. The Grand Canyon of the Colorado 27 III. Yellowstone Park 35 IV. Two Prehistoric Cemeteries—Giant Reptiles and Giant Trees 51 V. Death Valley 58 VI. The Mineral Wealth of the Andes 67 VII. The Czar's Greater Domain 82 VIII. The Mystic Highlands of Asia 97 IX. The Primal Home of the Saracen 105 X. The Sahara 115 XI. Polar Regions—the Conquest of the Arctic 128 XII. Polar Regions—Antarctica 147 XIII. Iceland, the Maid of the NorthPART II OCEANIA
XXII. The Islands of the Pacific 226 XXIII. Australia 233 XXIV. The Great Barrier Reef 244 XXV. The Gold Fields of Australia 250 XXVI. Tasmania 258 XXVII. New Zealand 262 XXVIII. Samoa and Fiji 270 XXIX. The Hawaiian Islands 277 XXX. Guam 285 XXXI. The Philippine Islands 289 XXXII. The Dutch East Indies—Java 301 XXXIII. The Dutch East Indies—Sumatra and Celebes 311 XXXIV. Borneo and Papua 319Illustrations
The Great Rainbow Natural Bridge of Southern Utah Frontispiece PAGE Map of Islands of the Pacific Facing 1 Mohave Desert, California. Buzzards' Roost 6 Gila monsters 9 A giant cactus in ArizonaWEALTH OF THE
WORLD'S WASTE PLACES
AND
OCEANIA
Islands of the Pacific.
LINK TO IMAGE
PART I
WEALTH OF THE
WORLD'S WASTE PLACES
INTRODUCTION
There is a great wealth of literature about what we call the world's productive lands—that is, the densely peopled lands that yield grain, meat, sugar, fruit, and all the various foodstuffs. In any well-equipped library we may find great numbers of useful books that will tell us all about the places where cotton, wool, and silk are grown, or where coal and iron are mined. All these lands are the dwelling places of many people. Networks of railways connect the various cities and villages, and probably a majority of the people living in them have travelled in and about much of the area of these lands.
A large part of the earth's surface is commonly called "unproductive." As a rule this is only another way of saying that such parts of the world produce little foodstuffs. We must not take the word "unproductive" either too literally or too seriously, however, for Dame Nature has a way of secreting some of her choice treasures in places so forbidding and so desolate that only the most resolute and daring men even search for them. For instance, the mineral once much used by the makers of carbonated or "soda" water comes from a part of Greenland that is so bleak, cold, and inhospitable that no human beings can long exist there unless food and fuel are brought them from afar off. The famous "nitrates" of Chile are obtained in the fiercest part of the Andean desert. Not only the food but the water consumed must be carried to the miners, who are but little better than slaves. Most of the gold and silver is obtained in regions that are unfit for human habitation. The largest diamond fields in the world are in a region that will not produce even grass without irrigation—a region that would not be inhabited were there no diamonds. From the most inhospitable highlands of Asia comes a very considerable part of the precious mineral, jade. Death Valley, in the southern part of the United States, on account of its terrific heat, is perhaps the most unhabitable region in the world, but the borax which it produces is used in every civilized country. And so we might name regions by the score that are practically unhabitable, which nevertheless produce things necessary to civilized man.
We call them "waste places," but this is far from true. For the greater part they are quite as necessary as the places we call fertile. Of foodstuffs, for instance, the greater part of the Rocky Mountain highland produces not much more than the State of New York. Yet the presence of this great mountain wall diverts the moist warm air from the Gulf of Mexico northward, making the Mississippi basin one of the foremost granaries of the world. The absence of rain in the west slope of the Peruvian Andes makes much of the western part of Chile and Peru a desert. But that same absence of rain makes the nitrate beds possible; for had there been yearly rains, the nitrates long since would have been leached out. So, the lands the nitrates now fertilize are far greater in area than that of the region of the nitrates.
Then, perhaps, we turn our eyes oceanward. What! wealth in these great wastes? Most certainly, and indispensable wealth at that. Let us forget for a moment that the oceans produce about as much meatstuffs as the land; this is really the least important feature about them. The oceans produce one thing that is absolutely necessary for every living thing almost every hour of the day, and that is fresh water. Every drop of fresh water that falls on the land is born of the ocean. Even the cold, polar oceans are indispensable to life, for their waters are constantly flowing out into the warmer oceans, thereby tempering the water of the latter and preventing it from being too warm for living things.
Thus we see that, after all, Dame Nature is not very unkind to her subjects. Compensation is her great law; if her supplies are "short" in one direction they are "long" in another. And when we take the broader view we must conclude that there are no waste places. It is only when we take the extreme and narrow view that we voice the persiflage of the poet Pope:
"While man exclaims: 'See all things for my use'—
'See man for mine,' replies a pampered goose."
Now, these waste places are of various kinds and in pretty nearly every locality. Some are deserts pure and simple; some are very dry and, to avoid hurting our national feelings, we politely refer to them as "arid regions"; some are so rugged and inaccessible that nothing short of dirigible balloons and aeroplanes could open a general communication with them; still others are in polar regions and too bleak and desolate to produce foodstuffs or support human life. The purpose of these chapters is to present the characteristics of these waste places. Most of them have been conquered by man, and their resources have been opened wide to the world. Possibly others yet remain to be conquered, but "what man has done, man can do."
CHAPTER I
THE WEALTH OF THE ARID SOUTHWEST
Years ago the maps of the United States depicted a vast region west of the Missouri River stippled with dots, which were supposed to imitate sand, and marked with the portentous legend, "Great American Desert." As sturdy pioneers pushed their settlements farther and farther westward, the great American desert began to shrink in size until the roseate descriptions of prospectors and land speculators led one to believe that this whole region needed only a touch of the plough and the harrow to produce the most bountiful crops grown anywhere in the world.
Nevertheless, the great domain extending from the twenty-five-hundred-foot level to the crest of the Sierra Nevada Mountains is a region so deficient in rainfall that, for the greater part, ordinary foodstuffs will not grow without irrigation; so farming must be confined mainly to the flood-plains of the rivers. Here and there considerable areas have been made fertile by capturing rivers, damming their streams so as to create great reservoirs, and then measuring out the waters to the farm lands below. The Salt River dam in Arizona, recently completed, will supply water to two thousand square miles, or about twenty-five thousand fifty-acre farms.
But in spite of all that man has done and can do to make this region fruitful, not far from half a million square miles will ever remain
Indirectly, however, it is worth more than two thousand million dollars yearly to the rest of the United States; for it is a great highland whose rims, the Sierra Nevada and the Rocky Mountain ranges, are about two miles high. Now, these lofty ranges wring almost every drop of moisture from the rain-bearing winds of the Pacific Ocean, leaving them too dry to shed any moisture over the eastern half of the United States. Because of this great mountain barrier, the winds that bring rain and bountiful crops to the Mississippi Valley and the Atlantic slope, follow an easier passage, flowing directly from the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean Sea. And the copious rains are the chief wealth of this midland region.
But the arid western highland possesses a great wealth of its own—a wealth whose influence is world-wide, for it is one of the world's chief storehouses of gold, silver, and copper. Gold and silver are the mediums of commercial transactions, and copper is the chief medium for the transmission of electric power. These metals, therefore, are quite as necessary as are iron and steel. Moreover, this great waste, a seeming incubus on the face of the earth, is each year disclosing more and more of its mineral and agricultural wealth.
Gold is the most widely disseminated of all metals, and is said to be where you find it. That this statement is true has been demonstrated many times, especially during the last few decades. In the north it has been found in the frozen ground of Alaska and Siberia, in the south in the sands on the surf-beaten shores of Tierra del Fuego and in the reefs of the Transvaal, while it is found in numerous places lying between these extremes.
The vast tract of land in the western part of the United States whence most of these metals are obtained has been the scene of many tragedies. It is an inhospitable region, scanty in both animal and vegetable life, where climatic conditions call for heroic daring on the part of those who would search out its hidden mysteries; it is a land of death-dealing mirages, yet containing untold wealth for the miner, and likewise for the husbandman who can irrigate the fallow parched surface.
Mohave Desert, California. Buzzards' Roost
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The bold prospector has unearthed in many places of southern Nevada gold-bearing rock assaying thousands of dollars to the ton, the result being the building up of cities and towns and the construction of connecting railroads to meet the demands of the growing commerce. Until recently, silver was the principal metal sought and found in the State of Nevada; but now gold is king, and his throne has been shifted from one desert camp to another, each laying claim to his abundant presence, while new claimants are ever bringing new treasures into light.
The two most valuable deposits of the precious metals now known in Nevada are at Tonopah and Goldfield, the discovery of the first having been made in 1901 and of the latter in the following year. Some of the Goldfield ore has assayed as high as thirty thousand dollars per ton, and so rich were many of its ores that they were sacked and carefully guarded until landed at the reduction works. In one year and a half from the discovery of gold at Goldfield the output reached four million dollars.
These mines of the Nevada deserts excel in the richness and abundance of their ores, while in the future these camps bid fair to outrival in development all other sections of the United States. A few years ago the southern part of the Silver State was considered utterly worthless and a region to be shunned like a charnel-house, on account of its barren and dangerous character. Now it is the Mecca of the gold-seeker.
These mines have already made many a poor man wealthy and many a wealthy man a millionaire. Each hillock, ledge, or ravine holds a possible fortune, and no hardship and peril is too great for the prospector lured by the hope of a rich find. The prosperous desert mining town, first built of canvas and rough lumber, is soon replaced by a better class of buildings, and water is brought through long miles of pipe from the nearest available source. Anon, electric-lighting and other modern conveniences are added, thereby making life more tolerable in a fierce climate of heat and cold, of fiercer winds and blinding dust.
Not only is gold found in these desert wastes, but borax, nitre, sulphur, silver, salt, soda, opals, garnets, turquoises, onyx, and marble form a part of its resources. Rich gold mines have built the towns of Randsburg and Johannesburg in the midst of the Mohave desert, while finds of rich ore made elsewhere are of frequent occurrence. It is thought that in the near future sufficient nitre can be obtained from the deserts of California and Nevada to render the United States independent of Chile, from whose desert, Atacama, the world's chief supply of this mineral is now obtained.
Perhaps there is no part of the United States more healthy and at the same time more deadly than the southeastern part of California, embraced in those indefinite areas called the Mohave and Colorado deserts. That life and death should lay claim to the same regions with equal strength seems somewhat of a riddle, but a careful investigation of the conditions will make good the claims of both. Here are regions rivalling the Sahara in heat, lack of water, and barrenness, and in many parts as difficult to traverse; regions full of surprises in deceptive mirages, peculiar vegetation, strange animal life, occasional cloud-bursts, purity and exhilarating effects of atmosphere, charm of ever-changing colors reflected from the mountains, wealth of floral display in early spring, and marvellous fertility of soil when touched by the magic wand of water. All these and a certain weirdness of beauty difficult to define give these great wastes a peculiar attraction of their own which only those who have spent much time there can understand and appreciate.
For the dread white plague in its early stages there is no medicine and no other climate that can equal the pure, healing atmosphere of these deserts. A new lease of life may be gained by the nerve-racked man or woman who will lay aside all home worries and spend a few months at some congenial home on one or another of these deserts.