ILLUSTRATIONS

The Crest of the Wahsatch Range
    From a point about four miles north of Salt Lake City, Utah. 
        From a photograph by Herbert W. Gleason

At Shasta Soda Springs
    A view of Mossbrae Falls, where a subterranean stream coming
    down from the glaciers of Mt.  Shasta breaks through the
    vegetation and flows into the Sacramento River. 
        From a photograph by Herbert W. Gleason

Mount Shasta after a Snowstorm
    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