THE WILDERNESS 37 



to torture weak mortals. With some little 

 difference of local colour, there is a dreadful 

 sameness about the " bad lands " all the world 

 over. Here is the Great Thirst : in the Plateau 

 of Gobi, in the Sahara, in the burning sands of 

 Arizona, or the " Never Never" of Australia, 

 everywhere the cloudless, brazen skies, the 

 pitiless sun, the parched earth. The Gardener 

 has planted this waste with spiteful vegetation, 

 spinifex and algarobo scrub, wait-a-bit thorn, 

 saltbush, cactus, and aloes. Ghoulish vultures 

 wheel in the blue on the look-out for some 

 fallen camel, and lazy sand-vipers bask in the 

 sun, scarcely distinguishable from the earth 

 they lie on. The desert may be beautiful in 

 pictures or in poetry, but the reality of it is 

 horrible, and its beauty is the beauty of death. 

 Each type of scenery has its characteristic 

 creatures, and the influence of the soil, climate 

 and vegetation on their form and character is 

 part of the interesting and much-misunderstood 

 subject of environment, any discussion of which 

 is outside the scope of these pages. What we 

 can at any rate appreciate is the association of 

 jungle, desert, plain and mountain each with its 

 own appropriate group of wild animals. We 

 should not, for instance, expect to find the 

 majority of monkeys far from the forest. We 

 should not look for a grazing animal like the 

 bison in the desert, nor should we seek alpine 



