CLOUD SCENERY OF THE HIGH PLAINS 495 



rately, they are a close assemblage, in north and south belt form, 

 of low and broad plateaus within that central region. They 

 are immense remnantal tables, in light relief, of an older and 

 originally perfect plain, which a few long and feeble streams, 

 wide apart, extending eastward from the distant mountains in 

 parallel courses and without tributaries, have thus blocked out 

 by dissection. Of the Great Plains area these midway plateaus 

 of faint elevation constitute the only true plains — the plains 

 proper. 



The climate of the Great Plains slope has a range from humid 

 in the east to arid in the west. h Midway, therefore — a unit ac- 

 cording to climate as it is a unit topographically — the High 

 Plains subdivision is subhumid or semiarid. A subhumid cli- 

 mate may be defined as one to which drought is normal, the 

 difference between a region of complete aridity — i e., a desert — 

 and one of prevailing drought being that, while both are outside 

 the boundaries of "God's country," the latter directly borders 

 upon it, and periodically becomes the crowded lumber field 

 for its atmospheric paraphernalia out of use, receiving therefrom 

 for a time its accidental leakage. 



And then the inhabitant gets out of doors. He stretches forth 

 his arms and breathes in a. modicum of the real joy of living, 

 with the promise of moisture. He no longer sits stolid, just 

 without his threshold, with back to the landscape. The house 

 dog, too. takes up position at an unaccustomed distance and 

 barks defiance to the multitudinous cry of the ventriloquist 

 co}^ote; and the eldest son greases the wagon and the family go 

 over the horizon to visit their neighbor. 



The clouds come in with a gradual maturing at some point 

 along the sky-line; and immediately that point recedes into in- 

 finite distance. Multitudes of fragments detach themselves, and 

 radiate high over the great flats in drifting flocks of cirrus, 



"Shepherded by the slow, unwilling wind," 



and come to rest as outposts. Then begin the heavy marshalings 

 and for some days these continue. Ranches disappear in prema- 

 ture night under mere accumulation of shadow, and again are 

 sought out in the glare of recessed furnaces of illumination and 

 seemingly consumed. The plain is thundered over continuously, 

 and penetrated at innumerable points by vertical lightning. 

 Fires thus are sometimes originated, and areas as great as a New 

 England state become blackened over with a film of grass char- 



