296 CALIFORNIA DESERT TRAILS 



these days. Marvels of science and invention so 

 crowd upon us that the faculty, kept at stretch, 

 loses its elasticity. It is a pity, for along with wonder 

 goes imagination, and even reverence. In this staling 

 of the mind whole tracts of life are left untouched, 

 with all their harvest of spiritual food. Novelty is 

 a spice we cannot do without, but the great things 

 are not novel. So night by night the motion-picture 

 shows are crammed, while unless a comet comes 

 along (and a big one too) the pageant of ' ' this brave 

 o'erhanging firmament, this majestical roof fretted 

 with golden fire," is not thought worth a glance. 

 As for "jocund day standing tiptoe on the misty 

 mountain-top," who is going to get out of bed for 

 that? 



Hour after hour went silently by while Kaweah 

 kept up his steady pace. Sometimes I checked him 

 while I let the silence and solitude possess me. In 

 the great indefinite space and under the full half- 

 sphere of sky glittering with stars from zenith to 

 horizon, I might have been the sole inhabitant of 

 the planet. The faint, momentary breeze seemed to 

 come from infinite distance ; was born perhaps in Cey- 

 lon, and had ranged over starlit oceans and untrod- 

 den Asian peaks to pass me here, then roam on, and 

 on, and die, maybe, among the snows of Spitzbergen. 

 Geography took on a vital meaning. Ahead I seemed 

 to look over the plains of Texas to the eastern sea- 

 board, the Bermudas, the Canaries, Europe with 

 its struggling, staggering nations. I felt the draw of 

 my own land, the lodestone till death of every 

 Briton. Behind was the vastness of the Pacific, the 



