CLOUD SCENERY OF THE HIGH PLAINS* 



By Willard D. Johnson, 

 U. S. Geological Survey 



There is no scenery of the High Plains except that which once 

 a year for a brief period the sky affords, and which then on a 

 vast scale it builds upon them in clouds of extraordinary splen- 

 dor, or lends to them in elaborate illusion of light and shadow. 



Ordinarily, through nearly the entire annual round, there is 

 no material for landscape effect, except the straight line of the 

 horizon, with a featureless breadth of sun-faded brown below it 

 and above a merely broader space of faded blue. There is no- 

 where a curving line, and though as a scientific fact there is vast 

 extension of dead flat plain, there is little suggestion of it to the 

 imagination when the sky is empty of clouds. 



The horizon is, in fact, not distant, as seen from the ground. 

 It is not so distant as that at sea, for normally it is viewed from 

 an elevation much lower than the deck of a ship, and there is 

 no lift of a wave at intervals to extend it. The ranchman gets 

 a widened view from his windmill tower on oiling days, but his 

 accustomed point of observation is the back of a horse. With 

 his motion in the saddle, antelope, feeding along the sky-line, will 

 have the deceptive appearance of moving vertically in unison, 

 so responsive is that boundary of vision to vertical change in the 

 position of the eye. The ranchman's wife views the world from 

 the doorway, and hers is a still narrower horizon. And the small 

 boy, as he soon learns, can step off the radius to his. He finds, 

 moreover, that to do so is no great adventure. He lives in a 

 pent-up Utica, but he has the measure of it. He discovers that 

 he is tethered in effect to his windmill tower; that to put that 

 familiar object hull down, and finally out of sight, is to go adrift. 

 Beyond would be the open sea. Indeed, he has his foot at the 

 edge of it when, on looking back, tiptoeing, he can but just dis- 

 cern the rim of the windmill wheel turning dark and solitary 

 against the sky. 



*The photographs from which the accompanying illustrations were made were taken 

 by the author near Meade, southwestern Kansas, in June, 1897. A bichromate of pot- 

 ash ray filter was used, and isochromatic plates. The time of day was immediately 

 after sunset. The direction faced was due south. 



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