Still farther to the north in Syria, we came upon a region where erosion had done its worst in an area of more than a million acres of rolling limestone country between Hama, Alleppo, and Antioch. French archaeologists, Father Mattern, and others found in this man-made desert more than l00 dead cities.

Butler of Princeton rediscovered this region a generation ago. These were not cities as we know them, but villages and market towns. The ruins of these towns were not buried. They were left as stark skeletons in beautifully cut stone, standing high on bare rock (fig. 4). Here, erosion had done its worst. If the soils had remained, even though the cities were destroyed and the populations dispersed, the area might be repeopled again and the cities rebuilt. But now that the soils are gone, all is gone.

Figure 4. -- Ruins of one of the Hundred Dead Cities of Syria. From 3 to 6 feet of soil has been washed off most of the hillsides. This city will remain dead because the land around it can no longer support a city.

We are told that in A. D. 610-612 a Persian army invaded this thriving region. Less than a generation later, in 633-638, the nomads out of the Arabian Desert completed the destruction of the villages and dispersal of the population. Thus, all the measures for conserving soil and water that had been built up through centuries were allowed to fall into disuse and ruin. Then erosion was unleashed to do its deadly work in making this area a man-made desert.