Checking the Waste: A Study in ConservationGregory, Mary Huston
History
Checking the Waste: A Study in Conservation
Gregory, Mary Huston
Conservation of natural resources; United States -- Economic conditions
How Insects Affect Health in Rural Districts. Dept. of Agriculture.
Bulletin 155.
Public Health and Water Pollution. Bulletin 93.
CHAPTER XIII
BEAUTY
America has another resource that differs from all the others, and yet
is no less valuable to us as a nation, for it is upon natural beauty
that we must depend to attract visitors and settlers from other
countries, and also to develop love of country in our own people, and to
arouse in them all the higher sentiments and ideals.
The love of romance and poetry is awakened only by the sight of
beautiful objects, and that nation will produce the highest class of
citizens which has most within it to kindle these lofty ideas. The
savage cares only for the comfort of his body, but as civilization
advances, man devotes more and more thought to those pleasures that come
only through his mind and the cultivation of his tastes.
The United States is particularly fortunate in this respect, for here is
everything to inspire a love of beauty. There is the beauty of changing
seasons, of our wonderful autumn forest coloring, of rivers, mountains,
lakes, sea, and shore.
In addition to the beauty of our landscapes, which is everywhere to be
found, there are many special beauties which are among the world's
wonder-places, and which are visited yearly by thousands of sight-seers,
and each year they attract a greater number of visitors from other
lands. Some of the most remarkable of these are Niagara Falls, the
Yosemite Valley, with its crowning glory, the Yosemite Falls, the
Hetch-Hetchy Falls, Mammoth Cave, the Garden of the Gods, the Grand
Canon of the Colorado, the Agatized Forests of Arizona, Yellowstone
Park, The Natural Bridge of Virginia, Great Salt Lake, and dozens of
others, less wonderful, but scarcely less beautiful, and equal to the
most talked-of beauties of Europe, such as the Palisades of the Hudson,
Lake Champlain, the Shenandoah Valley, the Dalles of Oregon, Pike's
Peak, Mount Rainier, Lookout Mountain, the Adirondacks, and the entire
Rocky Mountain region.
To these must be added the relics of ancient civilization, the homes of
the Cliff Dwellers, the work of the Mound Builders, and such fragments
as still remain of the occupation in various times and places of certain
Indian tribes, and of the Norsemen and the Spaniards.
All these are to be valued for their beauty or historic interest, and
are also valuable as a source of wealth to the community.
The money spent on tourist-travel in Europe is said to be more than
half a billion dollars a year. This vast amount is spent because in
Europe there is so much to delight the eye, because the cities are made
beautiful with artistic buildings filled with art treasures, because
historic places are carefully preserved, because the villages are neat
and well-kept, and the intensive farming which is practised almost
everywhere leaves no waste places to grow up with weeds, and lie
neglected.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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