Sometime ago I heard of an old man down on a hill farm in the South, who sat on his front porch as a newcomer to the neighborhood passed by. 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; it's 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 own country through a period of some 7,000 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.

Contents

• Freedom Bought and Sold for Food
• Graveyard of Empires
• In Egypt's Land
• On the Trail of the Israelites
• The Land of Milk and Honey
• Across Syria
• The Hundred Dead Cities
• Looking for the Forest of Lebanon
• China's Sorrow
• Soil Waste in Ancient Cyprus
• Across North Africa
• Timgad, Lost Capitol of a Lost Agriculture
• The Dry Lands of North Africa
• A Word About Land Use in Italy
• Torrent Control in the French Alps
• Intensive Land Use in France
• How the Dutch Farm the Ocean floor
• A Glance at England
• The New World
• The Record of Our Own Land
• Danger Signs in America
• The Way to an Enduring Agriculture
• Lessons From the Old World
• An "Eleventh Commandment"

Issued August 1953.
Slightly revised August 1975.
Reviewed and approved for reprinting August 1994.

Published by U.S. Government Printing Office

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