"Every once in so often the natives looked lustfully down from the hills upon this fatness, made an armed snatch at it, were driven back with bloody contumely, and the heaping of riches upon riches went on. And more and more the oaks were cut down--mark that! for the stories of nations are so inextricably bound up with the stories of trees--until all the plain was cleared and tilled; and then the foothills were denuded, and the wave of destruction crept up the mountain sides, and they, too, were left naked to the sun and the rains. "At first these rains, sweeping down torrentially, unhindered by the lost forests, only enriched the plain with the long-hoarded sweetness of the trees; but by and by the living rivers grew heavy and thick, vomiting mud into the ever shallowing harbors, and the land soured with the undrained stagnant water. Commerce turned more and more to deeper ports, and mosquitoes began to breed in the brackish soil that was making fast between the city and the sea. "Who of all those powerful landowners and rich merchants could ever have dreamed that little buzzing insects could sting a great city to death? But they did. Fevers grew more and more prevalent. The malaria haunted population went more and more languidly about their business. The natives, hardy and vigorous in the hills, were but feebly repulsed. Carthage demanded tribute, and Rome took it, and changed the city's name from Poseidonia to Paestum. After Rome grew weak, Saracen corsairs came in by sea and grasped the slackly defended riches, and the little winged poisoners of the night struck again and again, until grass grew in the streets, and the wharves crumbled where they stood. Finally, the wretched remnant of a great people wandered away into the more wholesome hills, the marshes rotted in the heat and grew up in coarse reeds where corn and vine had flourished, and the city melted back into the wasted earth."[16] Footnote 16: Elizabeth Bisland and Anne Hoyt, _Seekers in Sicily_. John Lane Company. [Illustration: Result of deforestation in China. This land has been ruined by erosion. (Carnegie Institution Research in China.)]