INTRODUCTORY 3 



civilization was unborn or young. True, mountain- 

 eers have of old loved their mountains, but that was 

 due, we may guess, more to appreciation of the pro- 

 tection they gave from foes, in times of chronic war 

 and foray, than to any sense of their beauty and 

 sublimity. 



But now the pendulum tends to the other extreme. 

 After centuries of home, security, satisfaction of 

 want, we come to a revulsion. Ease and tame ways 

 of living having reached, for most of us, the present 

 far stage, there has arisen a zest for things rugged 

 and wild. Hardship looks attractive, scarcity be- 

 comes desirable, starkness turns an unexpected side 

 of beauty. If the sun that has pleased me with 

 warmth has power to blast as well, Homo sum, let 

 him try it on. If Mother Earth has rooms from which 

 she would bar me with threats, let her make the 

 threats good if she can. If the eye loves verdure and 

 low, cool tones of color, let it take a Spartan course 

 of whitest light and fiercest color- wave. These things 

 also are part of our estate, and we cannot afford to 

 leave them out of the accounts. Thus, the desolate, 

 gaunt, and dreadful in Nature at last have their 

 day: the risk is, indeed, that they may run to over- 

 valuation. (Perhaps even the pranks of those funny 

 fellows the "futurists," "cubists," and "vorticists," 

 in poetry, music, and art, might be explained by 

 this clue: civilization has got on their nerves, and 

 they simply have to scream.) 



As scenery merely, the desert is the last field that 

 could take the fancy. The forest, even if gloomy, 

 gives a sense of companionship, and is filled with 



