Impressions of the Desert | 197 
rough blotches of pigment. To get the har- 
mony of colour and the play of light one must 
have distance. To that, the desert owes its 
spell; it is distance, perhaps, and not the 
desert itself, which is enchanting. Like the 
surface of the moon it is beautiful to those 
alone who are far off. 
For several hours I wandered about in the 
fierce sunshine, pausing in the meagre shade 
of a palo verde to eat my lunch and empty 
my canteen, intent upon hearing what the 
desert had to say for itself. After a time the 
result was a baffled and purposeless feeling: 
there was no goal in view, nothing to ride to. 
It affected one in this respect like mid-ocean, 
and the tendency would be to move in a circle. 
That was one thing the desert told me. More 
and more it was evident how much it owes to 
perspective. If one could have climbed a 
mountain and seen another desert afar off 
shimmering in the sun, that would have lured 
as this had done before. All beauty was in 
the distance: and that was another thing the 
desert had to say—that which it emphasised 
above all. 
It was now the mountains I had left that 
lured me; they that were soft and entrancing. 
From the plain the solitary ranges seemed 
