A view from the west, near Sisson.
From a photograph by Pillsbury's Pictures, Inc.
Mormon Lilies The plant is known in Utah as the Sego Lily, and in
California and elsewhere as the Mariposa Tulip (Calochortus Nuttallii).
From a photograph by Herbert W. Gleason
Along the Oregon Sea Bluffs A view near the town of Ecola, Oregon.
From a photograph by Herbert W. Gleason
O'Neill's Point A favorite point of observation overlooking the Grand
Canyon Of Arizona. Now called by the Indian name, Yavapai Point. From a
photograph by Herbert W. Gleason
I. WILD WOOL
Moral improvers have calls to preach. I have a friend who has a call to
plough, and woe to the daisy sod or azalea thicket that falls under
the savage redemption of his keen steel shares. Not content with the
so-called subjugation of every terrestrial bog, rock, and moorland, he
would fain discover some method of reclamation applicable to the ocean
and the sky, that in due calendar time they might be brought to bud and
blossom as the rose. Our efforts are of no avail when we seek to turn
his attention to wild roses, or to the fact that both ocean and sky are
already about as rosy as possible--the one with stars, the other with
dulse, and foam, and wild light. The practical developments of his
culture are orchards and clover-fields wearing a smiling, benevolent
aspect, truly excellent in their way, though a near view discloses
something barbarous in them all. Wildness charms not my friend, charm it
never so wisely: and whatsoever may be the character of his heaven,
his earth seems only a chaos of agricultural possibilities calling for
grubbing-hoes and manures.
Sometimes I venture to approach him with a plea for wildness, when he
good-naturedly shakes a big mellow apple in my face, reiterating his
favorite aphorism, "Culture is an orchard apple; Nature is a crab." Not
all culture, however, is equally destructive and inappreciative. Azure
skies and crystal waters find loving recognition, and few there be who
would welcome the axe among mountain pines, or would care to apply
any correction to the tones and costumes of mountain waterfalls.
Nevertheless, the barbarous notion is almost universally entertained by
civilized man, that there is in all the manufactures of Nature something
essentially coarse which can and must be eradicated by human culture.
I was, therefore, delighted in finding that the wild wool growing upon
mountain sheep in the n
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