DESERT SKY AND CLOUDS 



97 



not perhaps linger over because it is so com- 

 mon. And yet how seldom it is appreciated ! 

 Our attention is called to it in art in a haw- 

 thorn jar as large as a sugar-bowl, made in a 

 certain period, in a certain Oriental school. 

 The aesthetic world is perhaps set agog by 

 this ceramic blue. But what are its depth and 

 purity compared to the ethereal blue ! Yet the 

 color is beautiful in the jar and infinitely more 

 beautiful in the sky that is beautiful in itself 

 and merely as color. It is not necessary that 

 it should mean anything. Line and tint do 

 not always require significance to be beautiful. 

 There is no tale or text or testimony to be tort- 

 ured out of the blue sky. It is a splendid body 

 of color ; no more. 



You cannot always see the wonderful quality 

 of this sky-blue from the desert valley, because 

 it is disturbed by reflections, by sand-storms, by 

 lower air-strata. The report it makes of itself 

 when you begin to gain altitude on a mountain's 

 side is quite different. At four thousand feet 

 the blue is certainly more positive, more intense, 

 than at sea-level ; at six thousand feet it begins 

 to darken and deepen, and it seems to fit in the 

 saddles and notches of the mountains like a 

 block of lapis lazuli ; at eight thousand feet it 



Slue as a 

 color. 



Sky from 

 mountain 

 heights. 



