THEVOICEOFTHEDESERT 24 



Men of most races have long been accustomed to speak 

 with scorn of the few peoples who happen to live where 

 nature makes things too easy. In the inclemency of their 

 weather, the stoniness of their soil, or the rigors of their 

 winter they find secret virtues so that even the London 

 fog has occasionally found Englishmen to praise it. No 

 doubt part of all this is mere prejudice at worst, making 

 a virtue out of necessity at best. But undoubtedly there 

 is also something in it. We grow strong against the pres- 

 sure of a difficulty, and ingenious by solving problems. 

 Individuality and character are developed by challenge. 

 We tend to admire trees, as well as men, who bear the 

 stamp of their successful struggles with a certain amount 

 of adversity. People who have not had too easy a time of 

 it develop flavor. And there is no doubt about the fact 

 that desert life has character. Plants and animals are so 

 obviously and visibly what they are because of the prob- 

 lems they have solved. They are part of some whole. They 

 belong. Animals and plants, as well as men, become espe- 

 cially interesting when they do fit their environment, 

 when to some extent they reveal what their response, to 

 it has been. And nowhere more than -in the desert do they 

 reveal it. 



I have lived in this house and been lord of these few 

 acres for nearly five years and the creatures who share the 

 desert with me have already summed me up as a softy 

 and have grown contemptuously familiar. It is not only 

 that the cactus wrens sit on the backs of my porch chairs. 

 The round-tailed ground squirrels — plain, sand-colored, 

 chipmunk-like animals — are digging rather too many bur- 

 rows rather too close about the house. The jack rabbits 

 — normally the most timid as well as the fleetest of crea- 



