OUT OF DOORS WITH NATURE. 321 



caravan the solitary vulture coming out of .the cloudless 

 distance the green oasis the dread simoon we see them 

 all! 



An eagle wheeling through the mists above Niagara ! 



The loosened thunder of that great river's fall coming 

 through the silence of a new creation to chord the bass of 

 northern storms through mighty lakes and groaning moun- 

 tain pines Freedom cleaving through the mists of struggle 

 with the sun upon its golden wing the Home of a great 

 people ! 



It is thus that the true mystery of art lies in suggestion ! 

 But your modern painter is not content with this ; he must 

 fill up he must be, to us, a " better nature," and leave us no 

 scope for memory or imagination. He is poorly jealous of 

 the power of the wand he has presumed to wield, and must 

 compel us to be its slaves. But, in spite of the terrors of his 

 denunciation, we shall introduce you to yet another of those 

 wondrous, but simple pictures. 



In traversing, during the winter months, the vast prairies 

 of Texas and the Southwest, you frequently realize all the 

 solitary grandeur of Zahara. The eye aches through the 

 weary stretching distance not an object ! One little cloud 

 holds with the sun the blue heavens above beneath and 

 around you, the grass ! the brown waving grass ! away ! 

 away! with its dreamy undulating surface it widens, 

 widening till blended in a hazy meeting with the sky, the in- 

 finite seems just begun, and boundless space yet stretched 

 before you. 



You begin to feel strangely and hear your heart beat very 

 loud. It seems awful to be the only thing alive to breathe 

 within this vast expanse the world seems dead a parched 

 blank with only one warm vital centre in your own breast. 



You gasp for companionship anything ! anything that 

 moves and has a being, for it is crushing thus to stand alone 

 before the God of this dumb moveless nature ! When sud- 

 denly, a hoarse cry, "Kewrrooh! Kewrrooli ! KewrroohF 



21 



