TIME AND CHANGE 



the kind of interest in the country I was most con- 

 scious of during my recent trip to the Pacific Coast 

 and beyond. Indeed, quite a geologic fever raged in 

 me most of the time. The rocks attracted me more 

 than the birds, the sculpturing of the landscapes 

 engaged my attention more than the improvements 

 of the farms — what Nature had done more than 

 what man was doing. The purely scenic aspects of 

 the country are certainly remarkable, and the 

 human aspects interesting, but underneath these 

 things, and striking through them, lies a vast 

 world of time and change that to me is still more 

 remarkable, and still more interesting. I could not 

 look out of the car windows without seeing the 

 spectre of geologic time stalking across the hills 

 and plains. 



As one leaves the prairie States and nears the great 

 Southwest, he finds Nature in a new mood — she is 

 dreaming of canons; both cliffs and soil have canon 

 stamped upon them, so that your eye, if alert, is 

 slowly prepared for the wonders of rock-carving it 

 is to see on the Colorado. The canon form seems 

 inherent in soil and rock. The channels of the little 

 streams are canons, vertical sides of adobe soil, as 

 deep as they are broad, rectangle grooves in the 

 ground. 



Through all this arid region nature is abrupt, an- 

 gular, and sudden — the plain squarely abutting the 

 cliff, the cliff walling the canon; the dry water-course 



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