SOME WONDERS BY THE WAY.--YOSEMITE.--MARIPOSA TREES.--MONTEREY.
I went to it with reluctance. I shrink from attempting to say anything
about it. If you knew that there was one spot on the earth where Nature
kept her secret of secrets, the key to the action of her most gigantic
and patient forces through the long eras, the marvel of constructive and
destructive energy, in features of sublimity made possible to mental
endurance by the most exquisite devices of painting and sculpture, the
wonder which is without parallel or comparison, would you not hesitate
to approach it? Would you not wander and delay with this and that
wonder, and this and that beauty and nobility of scenery, putting off
the day when the imagination, which is our highest gift, must be
extinguished by the reality? The mind has this judicious timidity. Do we
not loiter in the avenue of the temple, dallying with the vista of giant
plane-trees and statues, and noting the carving and the color, mentally
shrinking from the moment when the full glory shall burst upon us? We
turn and look when we are near a summit, we pick a flower, we note the
shape of the clouds, the passing breeze, before we take the last step
that shall reveal to us the vast panorama of mountains and valleys.
I cannot bring myself to any description of the Grand Cañon of the
Colorado by any other route, mental or physical, than that by which we
reached it, by the way of such beauty as Monterey, such a wonder as the
Yosemite, and the infinite and picturesque deserts of New Mexico and
Arizona. I think the mind needs the training in the desert scenery to
enable it to grasp the unique sublimity of the Grand Cañon.
The road to the Yosemite, after leaving the branch of the Southern
Pacific at Raymond, is an unnecessarily fatiguing one. The journey by
stage--sixty-five miles--is accomplished in less than two
days--thirty-nine miles the first day, and twenty-six the second. The
driving is necessarily slow, because two mountain ridges have to be
surmounted, at an elevation each of about 6500 feet. The road is not a
"road" at all as the term is understood in Switzerland, Spain, or in any
highly civilized region--that is, a graded, smooth, hard, and
sufficiently broad track. It is a makeshift highway, generally narrow
(often too narrow for two teams to pass), cast up with loose material,
or excavated on the slopes with frequent short curves and double curves.
Like all mountain roads which skirt precipices, it may seem "pokerish,"
but it is safe enough if the drivers are skilful and careful (all the
drivers on this route are not only excellent, but exceedingly civil as
well), and there is no break in wagon or harness. At the season this
trip is made the weather is apt to be warm, but this would not matter so
much if the road were not intolerably dusty. Over a great part of the
way the dust rises in clouds and is stifling. On a well-engineered road,
with a good road-bed, the time of passage might not be shortened, but
the journey would be made with positive comfort and enjoyment, for
though there is a certain monotony in the scenery, there is the wild
freshness of nature, now and then an extensive prospect, a sight of the
snow-clad Nevadas, and vast stretches of woodland; and a part of the way
the forests are magnificent, especially the stupendous growth of the
sugar-pine. These noble forests are now protected by their
inaccessibility.
From 1855 to 1864, nine years, the Yosemite had 653 visitors; in 1864
there were 147. The number increased steadily till 1869, the year the
overland railroad was completed, when it jumped to 1122. Between 4000
and 5000 persons visit it now each year. The number would be enormously
increased if it could be reached by rail, and doubtless a road will be
built to the valley in the near future, perhaps up the Merced River. I
believe that the pilgrims who used to go to the Yosemite on foot or on
horseback regret the building of the stage road, the enjoyment of the
wonderful valley being somehow cheapened by the comparative ease of
reaching it. It is feared that a railway would still further cheapen, if
it did not vulgarize it, and that passengers by train would miss the
mountain scenery, the splendid forests, the surprises of the way (like
the first view of the valley from Inspiration Point), and that the
Mariposa big trees would be farther off the route than they are now. The
traveller sees them now by driving eight miles from Wawona, the end of
the first day's staging. But the romance for the few there is in staging
will have to give way to the greater comfort of the many by rail.
[Illustration: THE YOSEMITE DOME.]
The railway will do no more injury to the Yosemite than it has done to
Niagara, and, in fact, will be the means of immensely increasing the
comfort of the visitor's stay there, besides enabling tens of thousands
of people to see it who cannot stand the fatigue of the stage ride over
the present road. The Yosemite will remain as it is. The simplicity of
its grand features is unassailable so long as the Government protects
the forests that surround it and the streams that pour into it. The
visitor who goes there by rail will find plenty of adventure for days
and weeks in following the mountain trails, ascending to the great
points of view, exploring the cañons, or climbing so as to command the
vast stretch of the snowy Sierras. Or, if he is not inclined to
adventure, the valley itself will satisfy his highest imaginative
flights of the sublime in rock masses and perpendicular ledges, and his
sense of beauty in the graceful water-falls, rainbow colors, and
exquisite lines of domes and pinnacles. It is in the grouping of objects
of sublimity and beauty that the Yosemite excels. The narrow valley,
with its gigantic walls, which vary in every change of the point of
view, lends itself to the most astonishing scenic effects, and these the
photograph has reproduced, so that the world is familiar with the
striking features of the valley, and has a tolerably correct idea of the
sublimity of some of these features. What the photograph cannot do is to
give an impression of the unique grouping, of the majesty, and at times
crushing weight upon the mind of the forms and masses, of the
atmospheric splendor and illusion, and of the total value of such an
assemblage of wonders. The level surface of the peaceful, park-like
valley has much to do with the impression. The effect of El Capitan,
seen across a meadow and rising from a beautiful park, is much greater
than if it were encountered in a savage mountain gorge. The traveller
may have seen elsewhere greater water-falls, and domes and spires of
rock as surprising, but he has nowhere else seen such a combination as
this. He may be fortified against surprise by the photographs he has
seen and the reports of word painters, but he will not escape (say, at
Inspiration Point, or Artist Point, or other lookouts), a quickening of
the pulse and an elation which is physical as well as mental, in the
sight of such unexpected sublimity and beauty. And familiarity will
scarcely take off the edge of his delight, so varied are the effects in
the passing hours and changing lights. The Rainbow Fall, when water is
abundant, is exceedingly impressive as well as beautiful. Seen from the
carriage road, pouring out of the sky overhead, it gives a sense of
power, and at the proper hour before sunset, when the vast mass of
leaping, foaming water is shot through with the colors of the spectrum,
it is one of the most exquisite sights the world can offer; the
elemental forces are overwhelming, but the loveliness is engaging. One
turns from this to the noble mass of El Capitan with a shock of
surprise, however often it may have been seen. This is the hour also, in
the time of high-water, to see the reflection of the Yosemite Falls. As
a spectacle it is infinitely finer than anything at Mirror Lake, and is
unique in its way. To behold this beautiful series of falls, flowing
down out of the blue sky above, and flowing up out of an equally blue
sky in the depths of the earth, is a sight not to be forgotten. And
when the observer passes from these displays to the sight of the aerial
domes in the upper end of the valley, new wonders opening at every turn
of the forest road, his excitement has little chance of subsiding: he
may be even a little oppressed. The valley, so verdant and friendly with
grass and trees and flowers, is so narrow compared with the height of
its perpendicular guardian walls, and this little secluded spot is so
imprisoned in the gigantic mountains, that man has a feeling of
helplessness in it. This powerlessness in the presence of elemental
forces was heightened by the deluge of water. There had been an immense
fall of snow the winter before, the Merced was a raging torrent,
overflowing its banks, and from every ledge poured a miniature cataract.
[Illustration: COAST OF MONTEREY.]
Noble simplicity is the key-note to the scenery of the Yosemite, and
this is enhanced by the park-like appearance of the floor of the valley.
The stems of the fine trees are in harmony with the perpendicular lines,
and their foliage adds the necessary contrast to the gray rock masses.
In order to preserve these forest-trees, the underbrush, which is
liable to make a conflagration in a dry season, should be removed
generally, and the view of the great features be left unimpeded. The
minor cañons and the trails are, of course, left as much as possible to
the riot of vegetation. The State Commission, which labors under the
disadvantages of getting its supplies from a Legislature that does not
appreciate the value of the Yosemite to California, has developed the
trails judiciously, and established a model trail service. The Yosemite,
it need not be said, is a great attraction to tourists from all parts of
the world; it is the interest of the State, therefore, to increase their
number by improving the facilities for reaching it, and by resolutely
preserving all the surrounding region from ravage.
[Illustration: CYPRESS POINT.]
[Illustration: NEAR SEAL ROCK.]
This is as true of the Mariposa big tree region as of the valley.
Indeed, more care is needed for the trees than for the great chasm, for
man cannot permanently injure the distinctive features of the latter,
while the destruction of the sequoias will be an irreparable loss to the
State and to the world. The _Sequoia gigantea_ differs in leaf, and size
and shape of cone, from the great _Sequoia semper virens_ on the coast
near Santa Cruz; neither can be spared. The Mariposa trees, scattered
along on a mountain ridge 6500 feet above the sea, do not easily obtain
their victory, for they are a part of a magnificent forest of other
growths, among which the noble sugar-pine is conspicuous for its
enormous size and graceful vigor. The sequoias dominate among splendid
rivals only by a magnitude that has no comparison elsewhere in the
world. I think no one can anticipate the effect that one of these
monarchs will have upon him. He has read that a coach and six can drive
through one of the trees that is standing; that another is thirty-three
feet in diameter, and that its vast stem, 350 feet high, is crowned with
a mass of foliage that seems to brush against the sky. He might be
prepared for a tower 100 feet in circumference, and even 400 feet high,
standing upon a level plain; but this living growth is quite another
affair. Each tree is an individual, and has a personal character. No man
can stand in the presence of one of these giants without a new sense of
the age of the world and the insignificant span of one human life; but
he is also overpowered by a sense of some gigantic personality. It does
not relieve him to think of this as the Methuselah of trees, or to call
it by the name of some great poet or captain. The awe the tree inspires
is of itself. As one lies and looks up at the enormous bulk, it seems
not so much the bulk, so lightly is it carried, as the spirit of the
tree--the elastic vigor, the patience, the endurance of storm and
change, the confident might, and the soaring, almost contemptuous pride,
that overwhelm the puny spectator. It is just because man can measure
himself, his littleness, his brevity of existence, with this growth out
of the earth, that he is more personally impressed by it than he might
be by the mere variation in the contour of the globe which is called a
mountain. The imagination makes a plausible effort to comprehend it, and
is foiled. No; clearly it is not mere size that impresses one; it is the
dignity, the character in the tree, the authority and power of
antiquity. Side by side of these venerable forms are young sequoias,
great trees themselves, that have only just begun their millennial
career--trees that will, if spared, perpetuate to remote ages this race
of giants, and in two to four thousand years from now take the place of
their great-grandfathers, who are sinking under the weight of years, and
one by one measuring their length on the earth.
[Illustration: LAGUNA, FROM THE SOUTH-EAST.]
The transition from the sublime to the exquisitely lovely in nature can
nowhere else be made with more celerity than from the Sierras to the
coast at Monterey; California abounds in such contrasts and surprises.
After the great stirring of the emotions by the Yosemite and the
Mariposa, the Hotel del Monte Park and vicinity offer repose, and make
an appeal to the sense of beauty and refinement. Yet even here something
unique is again encountered. I do not refer to the extraordinary beauty
of the giant live-oaks and the landscape-gardening about the hotel,
which have made Monterey famous the world over, but to the sea-beach
drive of sixteen miles, which can scarcely be rivalled elsewhere either
for marine loveliness or variety of coast scenery. It has points like
the ocean drive at Newport, but is altogether on a grander scale, and
shows a more poetic union of shore and sea; besides, it offers the
curious and fascinating spectacles of the rocks inhabited by the
sea-lions, and the Cypress Point. These huge, uncouth creatures can be
seen elsewhere, but probably nowhere else on this coast are they massed
in greater numbers. The trees of Cypress Point are unique, this species
of cypress having been found nowhere else. The long, never-ceasing swell
of the Pacific incessantly flows up the many crescent sand beaches,
casting up shells of brilliant hues, sea-weed, and kelp, which seems
instinct with animal life, and flotsam from the far-off islands. But the
rocks that lie off the shore, and the jagged points that project in
fanciful forms, break the even great swell, and send the waters, churned
into spray and foam, into the air with a thousand hues in the sun. The
shock of these sharp collisions mingles with the heavy ocean boom.
Cypress Point is one of the most conspicuous of these projections, and
its strange trees creep out upon the ragged ledges almost to the water's
edge. These cypresses are quite as instinct with individual life and
quite as fantastic as any that Doré drew for his "Inferno." They are as
gnarled and twisted as olive-trees two centuries old, but their
attitudes seem not only to show struggle with the elements, but agony in
that struggle. The agony may be that of torture in the tempest, or of
some fabled creatures fleeing and pursued, stretching out their long
arms in terror, and fixed in that writhing fear. They are creatures of
the sea quite as much as of the land, and they give to this lovely coast
a strange charm and fascination.
CHAPTER, XVI.
FASCINATIONS OF THE DESERT.--THE LAGUNA PUEBLO.
The traveller to California by the Santa Fé route comes into the arid
regions gradually, and finds each day a variety of objects of interest
that upsets his conception of a monotonous desert land. If he chooses to
break the continental journey midway, he can turn aside at Las Vegas to
the Hot Springs. Here, at the head of a picturesque valley, is the
Montezuma Hotel, a luxurious and handsome house, 6767 feet above
sea-level, a great surprise in the midst of the broken and somewhat
savage New Mexican scenery. The low hills covered with pines and piñons,
the romantic glens, and the wide views from the elevations about the
hotel, make it an attractive place; and a great deal has been done, in
the erection of bath-houses, ornamental gardening, and the grading of
roads and walks, to make it a comfortable place. The latitude and the
dryness of the atmosphere insure for the traveller from the North in our
winter an agreeable reception, and the elevation makes the spot in the
summer a desirable resort from Southern heat. It is a sanitarium as well
as a pleasure resort. The Hot Springs have much the same character as
the Töplitz waters in Bohemia, and the saturated earth--the
_Mütterlager_--furnishes the curative "mud baths" which are enjoyed at
Marienbad and Carlsbad. The union of the climate, which is so favorable
in diseases of the respiratory organs, with the waters, which do so much
for rheumatic sufferers, gives a distinction to Las Vegas Hot Springs.
This New Mexican air--there is none purer on the globe--is an enemy to
hay-fever and malarial diseases. It was a wise enterprise to provide
that those who wish to try its efficacy can do so at the Montezuma
without giving up any of the comforts of civilized life.
[Illustration: CHURCH AT LAGUNA.]
It is difficult to explain to one who has not seen it, or will not put
himself in the leisurely frame of mind to enjoy it, the charms of the
desert of the high plateaus of New Mexico and Arizona. Its arid
character is not so impressive as its ancientness; and the part which
interests us is not only the procession of the long geologic eras,
visible in the extinct volcanoes, the _barrancas_, the painted buttes,
the petrified forests, but as well in the evidences of civilizations
gone by, or the remains of them surviving in our day--the cliff
dwellings, the ruins of cities that were thriving when Coronado sent his
lieutenants through the region three centuries ago, and the present
residences of the Pueblo Indians, either villages perched upon an almost
inaccessible rock like Acamo, or clusters of adobe dwellings like Isleta
and Laguna. The Pueblo Indians, of whom the Zuñis are a tribe, have been
dwellers in villages and cultivators of the soil and of the arts of
peace immemorially, a gentle, amiable race. It is indeed such a race as
one would expect to find in the land of the sun and the cactus. Their
manners and their arts attest their antiquity and a long refinement in
fixed dwellings and occupations. The whole region is a most interesting
field for the antiquarian.
We stopped one day at Laguna, which is on the Santa Fé line west of
Isleta, another Indian pueblo at the Atlantic and Pacific junction,
where the road crosses the Rio Grande del Norte west of Albuquerque.
Near Laguna a little stream called the Rio Puerco flows southward and
joins the Rio Grande. There is verdure along these streams, and gardens
and fruit orchards repay the rude irrigation. In spite of these
watercourses the aspect of the landscape is wild and desert-like--low
barren hills and ragged ledges, wide sweeps of sand and dry gray bushes,
with mountains and long lines of horizontal ledges in the distance.
Laguna is built upon a rounded elevation of rock. Its appearance is
exactly that of a Syrian village, the same cluster of little, square,
flat-roofed houses in terraces, the same brown color, and under the same
pale blue sky. And the resemblance was completed by the figures of the
women on the roofs, or moving down the slope, erect and supple, carrying
on the head a water jar, and holding together by one hand the mantle
worn like a Spanish _rebozo_. The village is irregularly built, without
much regard to streets or alleys, and it has no special side of entrance
or approach. Every side presents a blank wall of adobe, and the entrance
seems quite by chance. Yet the way we went over, the smooth slope was
worn here and there in channels three or four inches deep, as if by the
passing feet of many generations. The only semblance of architectural
regularity is in the plaza, not perfectly square, upon which some of the
houses look, and where the annual dances take place. The houses have the
effect of being built in terraces rising one above the other, but it is
hard to say exactly what a house is--whether it is anything more than
one room. You can reach some of the houses only by aid of a ladder. You
enter others from the street. If you will go farther you must climb a
ladder which brings you to the roof that is used as the sitting-room or
door-yard of the next room. From this room you may still ascend to
others, or you may pass through low and small door-ways to other
apartments. It is all haphazard, but exceedingly picturesque. You may
find some of the family in every room, or they may be gathered, women
and babies, on a roof which is protected by a parapet. At the time of
our visit the men were all away at work in their fields. Notwithstanding
the houses are only sun-dried bricks, and the village is without water
or street commissioners, I was struck by the universal cleanliness.
There was no refuse in the corners or alleys, no odors, and many of the
rooms were patterns of neatness. To be sure, an old woman here and there
kept her hens in an adjoining apartment above her own, and there was the
litter of children and of rather careless house-keeping. But, taken
altogether, the town is an example for some more civilized, whose
inhabitants wash oftener and dress better than these Indians.
[Illustration: TERRACED HOUSES, PUEBLO OF LAGUNA.]
We were put on friendly terms with the whole settlement through three or
four young maidens who had been at the Carlisle school, and spoke
English very prettily. They were of the ages of fifteen and sixteen, and
some of them had been five years away. They came back, so far as I could
learn, gladly to their own people and to the old ways. They had resumed
the Indian dress, which is much more becoming to them, as I think they
know, than that which had been imposed upon them. I saw no books. They
do not read any now, and they appear to be perfectly content with the
idle drudgery of their semi-savage condition. In time they will marry in
their tribe, and the school episode will be a thing of the past. But not
altogether. The pretty Josephine, who was our best cicerone about the
place, a girl of lovely eyes and modest mien, showed us with pride her
own room, or "house," as she called it, neat as could be, simply
furnished with an iron bedstead and snow-white cot, a mirror, chair, and
table, and a trunk, and some "advertising" prints on the walls. She said
that she was needed at home to cook for her aged mother, and her present
ambition was to make money enough by the sale of pottery and curios to
buy a cooking stove, so that she could cook more as the whites do. The
house-work of the family had mainly fallen upon her; but it was not
burdensome, I fancied, and she and the other girls of her age had
leisure to go to the station on the arrival of every train, in hope of
selling something to the passengers, and to sit on the rocks in the sun
and dream as maidens do. I fancy it would be better for Josephine and
for all the rest if there were no station and no passing trains. The
elder women were uniformly ugly, but not repulsive like the Mojaves; the
place swarmed with children, and the babies, aged women, and pleasing
young girls grouped most effectively on the roofs.
The whole community were very complaisant and friendly when we came to
know them well, which we did in the course of an hour, and they enjoyed
as much as we did the bargaining for pottery. They have for sale a great
quantity of small pieces, fantastic in form and brilliantly
colored--toys, in fact; but we found in their houses many beautiful jars
of large size and excellent shape, decorated most effectively. The
ordinary utensils for cooking and for cooling water are generally pretty
in design and painted artistically. Like the ancient Peruvians, they
make many vessels in the forms of beasts and birds. Some of the designs
of the decoration are highly conventionalized, and others are just in
the proper artistic line of the natural--a spray with a bird, or a
sunflower on its stalk. The ware is all unglazed, exceedingly light and
thin, and baked so hard that it has a metallic sound when struck. Some
of the large jars are classic in shape, and recall in form and
decoration the ancient Cypriote ware, but the colors are commonly
brilliant and barbaric. The designs seem to be indigenous, and to betray
little Spanish influence. The art displayed in this pottery is indeed
wonderful, and, to my eye, much more effective and lastingly pleasing
than much of our cultivated decoration. A couple of handsome jars that I
bought of an old woman, she assured me she made and decorated herself;
but I saw no ovens there, nor any signs of manufacture, and suppose
that most of the ware is made at Acoma.
It did not seem to be a very religious community, although the town has
a Catholic church, and I understand that Protestant services are
sometimes held in the place. The church is not much frequented, and the
only evidence of devotion I encountered was in a woman who wore a large
and handsome silver cross, made by the Navajos. When I asked its price,
she clasped it to her bosom, with an upward look full of faith and of
refusal to part with her religion at any price. The church, which is
adobe, and at least two centuries old, is one of the most interesting I
have seen anywhere. It is a simple parallelogram, 104 feet long and 21
feet broad, the gable having an opening in which the bells hang. The
interior is exceedingly curious, and its decorations are worth
reproduction. The floor is of earth, and many of the tribe who were
distinguished and died long ago are said to repose under its smooth
surface, with nothing to mark their place of sepulture. It has an open
timber roof, the beams supported upon carved corbels. The ceiling is
made of wooden sticks, about two inches in diameter and some four feet
long, painted in alternated colors--red, blue, orange, and black--and so
twisted or woven together as to produce the effect of plaited straw, a
most novel and agreeable decoration. Over the entrance is a small
gallery, the under roof of which is composed of sticks laid in straw
pattern and colored. All around the wall runs a most striking dado, an
odd, angular pattern, with conventionalized birds at intervals, painted
in strong yet _fade_ colors--red, yellow, black, and white. The north
wall is without windows; all the light, when the door is closed, comes
from two irregular windows, without glass, high up in the south wall.
[Illustration: GRAND CAÑON ON THE COLORADO--VIEW FROM POINT SUBLIME.]
The chancel walls are covered with frescos, and there are several quaint
paintings, some of them not very bad in color and drawing. The altar,
which is supported at the sides by twisted wooden pillars, carved with a
knife, is hung with ancient sheepskins brightly painted. Back of the
altar are some archaic wooden images, colored; and over the altar, on
the ceiling, are the stars of heaven, and the sun and the moon, each
with a face in it. The interior was scrupulously clean and sweet and
restful to one coming in from the glare of the sun on the desert. It was
evidently little used, and the Indians who accompanied us seemed under
no strong impression of its sanctity; but we liked to linger in it, it
was so _bizarre_, so picturesque, and exhibited in its rude decoration
so much taste. Two or three small birds flitting about seemed to enjoy
the coolness and the subdued light, and were undisturbed by our
presence.
These are children of the desert, kin in their condition and the
influences that formed them to the sedentary tribes of upper Egypt and
Arabia, who pitch their villages upon the rocky eminences, and depend
for subsistence upon irrigation and scant pasturage. Their habits are
those of the dwellers in an arid land which has little in common with
the wilderness--the inhospitable northern wilderness of rain and frost
and snow. Rain, to be sure, insures some sort of vegetation in the most
forbidding and intractable country, but that does not save the harsh
landscape from being unattractive. The high plateaus of New Mexico and
Arizona have everything that the rainy wilderness lacks--sunshine,
heaven's own air, immense breadth of horizon, color and infinite beauty
of outline, and a warm soil with unlimited possibilities when moistened.
All that these deserts need is water. A fatal want? No. That is simply
saying that science can do for this region what it cannot do for the
high wilderness of frost--by the transportation of water transform it
into gardens of bloom and fields of fruitfulness. The wilderness shall
be made to feed the desert.
[Illustration: INTERIOR OF THE CHURCH AT LAGUNA.]
I confess that these deserts in the warm latitudes fascinate me. Perhaps
it is because I perceive in them such a chance for the triumph of the
skill of man, seeing how, here and there, his energy has pushed the
desert out of his path across the continent. But I fear that I am not so
practical. To many the desert in its stony sterility, its desolateness,
its unbroken solitude, its fantastic savageness, is either appalling or
repulsive. To them it is tiresome and monotonous. The vast plains of
Kansas and Nebraska are monotonous even in the agricultural green of
summer. Not so to me the desert. It is as changeable in its lights and
colors as the ocean. It is even in its general features of sameness
never long the same. If you traverse it on foot or on horseback, there
is ever some minor novelty. And on the swift train, if you draw down the
curtain against the glare, or turn to your book, you are sure to miss
something of interest--a deep cañon rift in the plain, a turn that gives
a wide view glowing in a hundred hues in the sun, a savage gorge with
beetling rocks, a solitary butte or red truncated pyramid thrust up into
the blue sky, a horizontal ledge cutting the horizon line as straight as
a ruler for miles, a pointed cliff uplifted sheer from the plain and
laid in regular courses of Cyclopean masonry, the battlements of a fort,
a terraced castle with towers and esplanade, a great trough of a valley,
gray and parched, enclosed by far purple mountains. And then the
unlimited freedom of it, its infinite expansion, its air like wine to
the senses, the floods of sunshine, the waves of color, the translucent
atmosphere that aids the imagination to create in the distance all
architectural splendors and realms of peace. It is all like a mirage and
a dream. We pass swiftly, and make a moving panorama of beauty in hues,
of strangeness in forms, of sublimity in extent, of overawing and savage
antiquity. I would miss none of it. And when we pass to the accustomed
again, to the fields of verdure and the forests and the hills of green,
and are limited in view and shut in by that which we love, after all,
better than the arid land, I have a great longing to see again the
desert, to be a part of its vastness, and to feel once more the freedom
and inspiration of its illimitable horizons.