After his 1929 sojourn in Palestine, this promotional
photo was taken for a lecture tour of the United States -
the time period treated in the passage below.

From I Planted Trees

By Richard St. Barbe Baker

(Original spelling, punctuation and grammar retained.)

Excerpt from Chapter Fifteen

Westward Bound

["A Terrifying Experience"]

…From Chicago I went south for a while before continuing my journey west. In southern Illinois I went to stay with a farmer from Yorkshire, who had married my great friend’s nanny. I spent some days helping him before moving on into Texas. I had several other lectures on the way, and eventually arrived at the Grand Canyon one early morning soon after sunrise.

It was a terrifying experience, and one I shall always remember. I stood on the lip of the Canyon and gazed across a great expanse where water erosion had done its worst. Four miles below was the Colorado River, cutting its way downwards with the rounded stones carried along in its swift-moving currents. Tragic—yet there was beauty in the tragedy as the sun cast clouded shadows on the peaks of rocky formations, which had withstood the battering of the wind and rain throughout the centuries when the less rigid formations had subsided and been washed into the murky river. As I stood, awe-struck and speechless, other travelers arrived on either side of me and in turn stood and stared. Five, ten, fifteen, twenty minutes passed before a word was spoken, and then it was but a signal to take up another point of vantage further along the lip of this most gigantic scar which harrowed the surface of the fair earth. As we moved along a narrow path in full view of the terrific amphitheatre, which stretched for fifteen miles just as far as the eye could see, I noticed little trees here and there bravely holding the earth with their roots, striving hard, it seemed, to check further devastation. Sometimes the soil had already been washed clear of their roots, and it was only a matter of time before they would be forced to give up the struggle and submit to their inevitable fate.

Much has been said and written of gulley erosion, where the land has not only lost its soil material, its fertility and stability, but also its water-holding capacity. The Grand Canyon, to the average American and tourist from Europe, is considered only for its scenic effect, but actually it is one of the most glaring examples of what can happen when, for one reason or another, the surface of the earth loses its protective covering, the trees. In past millenniums there had been great upheavals, whole forests had been laid low, and in the course of the centuries had become fossilized, silica replacing the fibrous structure and woody tissues of their trunks. Down in the valley below, not so far from the Grand Canyon, may be seen a petrified forest, where the rains have washed away soil and sand which once covered the trees, while yet another solitary giant may be seen embedded in its stony matrix. Here was food for thought, and one might have pondered for many days on the momentous happenings of past ages. Where the river has washed the silt from sandstone rocks, the footprints of dinosaurs and prehistoric reptiles can be seen, clearly imprinted and preserved for our inspection, millions of years since they roamed among the mud flats of Arizona.

But I must be on my way westward. I dropped down the valley and came upwards once again to the great Colorado Dam, one of the acclaimed engineering feats of America. For here the rushing river had been captured for a while to provide water for the growing city of Los Angeles, miles away. The skill of the most brilliant engineers had been taxed to the uttermost, for already the mud and silt carried down by the river were lowering the water capacity by a million gallons a day. Nature could be a tyrant dictator and fiercely react adversely to the sons of earth who were attempting to battle against her. If only the catchment area had been clothed with the garb of the forest, the great population of the coast might have drunk fresh water instead of a rectified fluid.