221 ^^^ mystique of the desert 



sources, the implications and the mood of the desert are 

 something different. For one thing the desert is conserva- 

 tive, not radical. It is more likely to provoke aw^e than to 

 invite conquest. It does not, like the plains, say, "Only 

 turn the sod and uncountable riches v^ill spring up." The 

 heroism which it encourages is the heroism of endurance, 

 not that of conquest. 



Precisely v^hat other things it says depends in part upon 

 the person listening. To the biologist it speaks first of the 

 remarkable flexibility of living things, of the processes of 

 adaptation v^hich are nowhere more remarkable than in 

 the strange devices by which plants and animals have 

 learned to conquer heat and dryness. To the practical- 

 minded conservationist it speaks sternly of other things, 

 because in the desert the problems created by erosion and 

 overexploitation are plainer and more acute than anywhere 

 else. But to the merely contemplative it speaks of courage 

 and endurance of a special kind. 



Here the thought of the contemplative crosses the 

 thought of the conservationist, because- the contemplative 

 realizes that the desert is "the last frontier" in more senses 

 than one. It is the last because it was the latest reached, but 

 it is the last also because it is, in many ways, a frontier 

 which cannot be crossed. It brings man up against his 

 limitations, turns him in upon himself and suggests values 

 which more indulgent regions minimize. Sometimes it in- 

 clines to contemplation men who have never contemplated 

 before. And of all answers to the question "What is a desert 

 good for?" "Contemplation" is perhaps the best. 



The eighteenth century invented a useful distinction 

 which we have almost lost, the distinction between the 

 beautiful and the sublime. The first, even when it escapes 



