226 



THE DESERT 



White light. 



Dittant 



The Pacijui, 



And do you notice that the sun is no longer 

 yellow but white, and that the light that comes 

 from it is cold with just the faintest shade of 

 violet about it ? The air, too, is changed. 

 Look at the far-away ridges and peaks, some of 

 them snow-capped, but the majority of them 

 bare ; and see the air how blue and purple it 

 looks along the tops and about the slopes. Peak 

 upon peak and chain upon chain disappear to 

 the north and south in a mysterious veil of gray, 

 blue, and purple. Green pine-clad spurs of the 

 peaks, green slopes of the peaks themselves, 

 keep fading away in blue - green mazes and 

 hazes. Look down into the canyons, into the 

 shadowed depths where the air lies packed in a 

 mass, and the top of the mass seems to reflect 

 purple again. This is a very different air from 

 the glowing mockery that dances in the basin 

 of Death Valley. It is mountain-air and yet 

 has something of the sea in it. Even at this 

 height yon can feel the sea-breezes moving along 

 the western slopes. For the ocean is near at 

 hand — not a hundred miles away as the crow 

 flies. From the mountain-top it looks like a 

 flat blue band appended to the lower edge of 

 the sky, and it counts in the landscape only as 

 a strip of color or light. 



