60 



THE DESERT 



JDestruction 

 of natural 



Ufects of 

 mining, 

 lumbering, 

 agriculture. 



To speak about sparing anything because it 

 is beautiful is to waste one's breath and incur 

 ridicule in the bargain. The eesthetic sense — 

 the power to enjoy through the eye, the ear, 

 and the imagination — is just as important a 

 factor in the scheme of human happiness as 

 the corporeal sense of eating and drinking ; but 

 there has never been a time when the world 

 would admit it. The "practical men," who 

 seem forever on the throne, know very well 

 that beauty is only meant for lovers and young 

 persons — stuff to suckle fools withal. The 

 main affair of life is to get the dollar, and if 

 there is any money in cutting the throat of 

 Beauty, why, by all means, cut her throat. That 

 is what the " practical men " have been doing 

 ever since the world began. It is not necessary 

 to dig up ancient history ; for have we not 

 seen, here in California and Oregon, in our 

 own time, the destruction of the fairest valleys 

 the sun ever shone upon by placer and hy- 

 draulic mining ? Have we not seen in Minne- 

 sota and Wisconsin the mightiest forests that 

 ever raised head to the sky slashed to pieces 

 by the axe and turned into a waste of tree- 

 stumps and fallen timber ? Have we not seen 

 the Upper Mississippi, by the destruction of 



