dreamily,
"and the longest railroad, and the largest lake, and the highest
monument, and the biggest department store, and now I see the highest
waterfall. Just think of it!"

If one has illusions concerning the average tourist, let him compare the
hundreds who gape at the paint pots and geysers of Yellowstone with the
dozens who exult in the sublimated glory of the colorful canyon. Or let
him listen to the table-talk of a party returned from Crater Lake. Or
let him recall the statistical superlatives which made up his friend's
last letter from the Grand Canyon.

I am not condemning wonder, which, in its place, is a legitimate and
pleasurable emotion. As a condiment to sharpen and accent an abounding
sense of beauty it has real and abiding value.

Love of beauty is practically a universal passion. It is that which
lures millions into the fields, valleys, woods, and mountains on every
holiday, which crowds our ocean lanes and railroads. The fact that few
of these rejoicing millions are aware of their own motive, and that,
strangely enough, a few even would be ashamed to make the admission if
they became aware of it, has nothing to do with the fact. It's a wise
man that knows his own motives. The fact that still fewer, whether
aware or not of the reason of their happiness, are capable of making the
least expression of it, also has nothing to do with the fact. The
tourist woman whom I met at the foot of Yosemite Falls may have felt
secretly suffocated by the filmy grandeur of the incomparable spectacle,
notwithstanding that she was conscious of no higher emotion than the
cheap wonder of a superlative. The Grand Canyon's rim is the stillest
crowded place I know. I've stood among a hundred people on a precipice
and heard the whir of a bird's wings in the abyss. Probably the majority
of those silent gazers were suffering something akin to pain at their
inability to give vent to the emotions bursting within them.

I believe that the statement can not be successfully challenged that, as
a people, our enjoyment of scenery is almost wholly emotional. Love of
beauty spiced by wonder is the equipment for enjoyment of the average
intelligent traveller of to-day. Now add to this a more or less equal
part of the intellectual pleasure of comprehension and you have the
equipment of the average intelligent traveller of to-morrow. To hasten
this to-morrow is one of the several objects of this book.

To see in the carved and colorful