s. But of what good is the love of Nature that consists only
in classification and dissection? I carry no note-book with me when I
go down the wadi or out into the fields. I am content if I bring back
a few impressions of some reassuring instance of faith, a few
pictures, and an armful of wild flowers and odoriferous shrubs. Let
the learned manual maker concern himself with the facts; he is content
with jotting down in his note-book the names and lineage of every
insect and every herb.

"But Man? What is he to these scientific Naturalists? If they meet a
stranger on the road, they pass him by, their eyes intent on the
breviary of Nature, somewhat after the fashion of my priests, who are
fond of praying in the open-air at sundown. No, I do not have to prove
to my Brothers that my love of Nature is but second to my love of
life. I am interested in my fellow men as in my fellow trees and
flowers. 'The beauty of Nature,' Emerson again, 'must always seem
unreal and mocking until the landscape has human figures, that are as
good as itself.' And 'tis well, if they are but half as good. To me,
the discovery of a woodman in the wadi were as pleasing as the
discovery of a woodchuck or a woodswallow or a woodbine. For in the
soul of the woodman is a song, I muse, as sweet as the rhythmic
strains of the goldfinch, if it could be evoked. But the soul plodding
up the hill under its heavy overshadowing burden, what breath has it
left for song? The man bowed beneath the load, the soul bowed beneath
the man! Alas, I seem to behold but moving burdens in my country. And
yet, my swarthy and shrunken, but firm-fibred people plod along,
content, patient, meek; and when they reach the summit of the hill
with their crushing burdens, they still have breath enough to troll a
favourite ditty or serenade the night.

'I come to thee, O Night,
I'm at thy feet;
I can not see, O Night,
But thy breath is sweet.'

"And so is the breath of the pines. Here, the air is surcharged with
perfume. In it floats the aromatic soul of many a flower. But the
perfume-soul of the pines seems to tower over all others, just as its
material shape lifts its artistic head over the oak, the cercis, and
the terabinth. And though tall and stately, my native pines are not
forbidding. They are so pruned that the snags serve as a most
convenient ladder. Such was my pleasure mounting for the green cones,
the salted pinons of which are delicious. But I