“California,” says he, “is a whale swimming around the desert of Nevada; Idaho is a mountain throne and its curve is the curve of Montana. Wyoming fits into the angle of Utah. New Mexico is under Colorado, and its capital, Sante Fé, is the spiritual capital of America. Texas plunges southward like a root--don’t draw it too small. Oklahoma is a pistol pointing west. Nebraska is another pistol pointing west. North and South Dakota are western blankets. Louisiana is a cavalier’s boot. Illinois is like an ear of Indian corn. Arkansas, Missouri, and Iowa move westward with the slant of the mountains and the rivers. All America, as you will see, has a grandiose north-westerly-south-easterly direction or kink caused by the Rocky Mountains primarily, and by the Mississippi and Missouri Rivers secondarily. The Rocky Mountains control the continent. That is why we are travelling north-west. It is quite natural. It is America’s way. It is written in her rocks and by her waters. “As the families migrated from Virginia to Kentucky and Illinois and Minnesota--so we go following nature’s trail out to the wilderness.” [Illustration] _North-west, north-west! Give us north-westerly breezes. Let us be mad north-north-west, Rather than southerly sober and sane. Some one once wrote on a madhouse wall, That the madder we were the nearer to God; The saner, the further from Man. God give us the divine kink North-north-west, north-north-west, When you can’t tell a hawk from a handsaw,-- Hamlet only became Hamlet when he learned the secret._ [Illustration: YOU HAVE COME TO BE ALONE WITH YOUR HEART] XI. NATIONAL WILDERNESSES GLACIER in Montana, Yellowstone in Wyoming, Sequoia and Yosemite in California, Grand Canyon in Arizona, besides Mount McKinley in Alaska and many minor reservations and national forests--they ought truly to be called by some name other than parks. The same also is true for Canada, which possesses its wonderful Dominion Parks such as those of Waterton and Lake Louise. The name “park” has evidently been given to popularise them. Such places in Russia are called “wildernesses,” and are resorted to for meditation. They are called literally “empty places,” the same word that is used in the Bible for wilderness. Tolstoy when he died was on his way to the wilderness--to the “Empty Place of Optin.” In England, in our conventional phrase, we should be likely to call them “retreats,” like the retreat on the Island of Iona. But the idea is that they should provide in our life what is meant when it is written: _The Spirit drove Him into the wilderness_; or _He went up into the mountain to pray._ In the midst of the hurly-burly comes the happy thought--“I will arise now and go to my wilderness, to my retreat, to my empty place.”