A SEASHORE ONE MILE UP 



ready for swift action, that I found now the 

 difficulty of transcribing scenes which in general 

 had become too intimate and well-known for the 

 perspective of description. 



It was interesting to see, as we climbed, how 

 soon man and his works dwindled and vanished. 

 A village became a unicolor of brown husks, one 

 of which had burst and scattered its seeds over a 

 little area — this being the open market with 

 several score of people and burros. Then the 

 houses went. Horse-grinding sugar mills at this 

 height became fairy rings, such as the wind-blown 

 tips of grass-blades describe in snow or sand. 

 Pigs could be seen long after human beings, for 

 their bodies were low-hung, near the ground, and 

 cast a solid shadow. With the long distance 

 visibility of pigs still in mind it was interesting to 

 notice that on the flat country near the shore, 

 from two thousand feet, the most conspicuous and 

 beautiful thing was the mirror-like sheen on an 

 occasional mud-puddle. Soon my last thought of 

 man went and I realized that I was looking down 

 at Earth Herself, from space. No such feeling 

 ever comes from the edge of the most lofty preci- 

 pice; this is cosmic. I have flown hundreds of 

 times and yet the feeling is always new. 



Higher and higher we climbed, and now the 

 great folded mountains dwindled, the lakes dimin- 

 ished to puddles, the shore to a colored string. Up 

 to now, we had been concerned only with Haiti — 

 the island, — between other islands, in the sea and 



101 



