Art Out-of-Doors 
have at command the shores and waters 
of a veritable ocean, and to the use which 
has been made of these a very large part 
of the beauty as well as of the individu- 
ality of our Fair is due. 
Only a landscape-architect, and a very great 
one, could have foreseen how, by regulating 
that lake-overflow which seemed to others a 
fatally deterrent feature of the proposed site, 
he might turn a big, barren swamp into a 
palatial pleasure - ground — creating wide 
water-ways instead of avenues, using the ex- 
cavated earth to solidify the building-sites, 
varying the character of these sites and 
water-ways, thus preparing for formal, ar- 
chitectonic beauty in one portion of the 
grounds and for irregular, picturesque beauty 
in another portion, and yet so associating 
and harmonizing the two that the transition 
from straight quays and canals to the broken 
outlines of islands and lagoons might be- 
come the finest feature of the imposing 
whole. But Mr. Olmsted foresaw all this, 
and he and his associates have done it all ; 
and, moreover, while thus actually creating 
a large part of the Fair-grounds, they have 
356 
