And how very shy people are about accepting a pink air, a blue shadow, or a field of yellow grass—sunlit lemon-yellow grass! They have been brought up from youth to believe that air is colorless, that shadows are brown or gray or sooty black, and that grass is green—bottle-green. The preconceived impression of the mind refuses to make room for the actual impression of the eyes, and in consequence we are misled and deluded.
Deception by sunlight.
But do the eyes themselves always report the truth? Yes; the truth of appearances, but as regards the reality they may deceive you quite as completely as the mind deceives you about the apparent. And for the deception of the eyes there is no wizard’s cell or magician’s cabinet so admirably fitted for jugglery as this bare desert under sunlight. Its combination of light and air seem like reflecting mirrors that forever throw the misshapen image in unexpected places, in unexpected lights and colors.
Distorted forms and colors.
Changed appearance of mountains.
What, for instance, could be more perplexing than the odd distortions in the forms and colors of the desert mountains! A range of these mountains may often look abnormally grand, even majestic in the early morning as they stand against the eastern sky. The outlines of the ridges and peaks may be clear cut, the light and shade of the canyons and barrancas well marked, the cool morning colors of the face-walls and foot-hills distinctly placed and holding their proper value in the scene. But by noon the whole range has apparently lost its lines and shrunken in size. Under the beating rays of the sun and surrounded by wavering heated atmosphere its shadow masses have been grayed down, neutralized, perhaps totally obliterated; and the long mountain surface appears as flat as a garden wall, as smooth as a row of sand-dunes. There is no indication of barranca or canyon. The air has a blue-steel glow that muffles light and completely wrecks color. Seen through it the escarpments show only dull blue and gray. All the reds, yellows, and pinks of the rocks are gone; the surfaces wear a burnt-out aspect as though fire had eaten into them and left behind only a comb of volcanic ash.
Changes in line, light, and color.
At evening, however, the range seems to return to its majesty and magnitude. The peaks reach up, the bases broaden, the walls break into gashes, the ridges harden into profiles. The sun is westering, and the light falling more obliquely seems to bring out the shadows in the canyons and barrancas. Last of all the colors come slowly back to their normal condition, as the flush of life to one recovering from a trance. One by one they begin to glow on chasm, wall, and needled summit. The air, too, changes from steel-blue to yellow, from yellow to pink, from pink to lilac, until at last with the sun on the rim of the earth, the mountains, the air, the clouds, and the sky are all glowing with the tints of ruby, topaz, rose-diamond—hues of splendor, of grandeur, of glory.
Suppose, if you please, a similar range of mountains thirty miles away on the desert. Even at long distance it shows an imposing bulk against the sky, and you think if you were close to it, wall and peak would loom colossal. How surprised you are then as you ride toward it, hour after hour, to find that it does not seem to grow in size. When you reach the foot-hills the high mountains seem little larger than when seen at a distance. You are further surprised that what appeared like a flat-faced range with its bases touching an imaginary curb-stone for miles, is in reality a group-range with retiring mountains on either side that lead off on acute angles. The group is round, and has as much breadth as length. And still greater is your surprise when you discover that the green top of the gray-based mountain, which has been puzzling you for so many hours, does not belong to the gray base at all. It is a pine-clad top resting upon another and more massive base far back in the group. It is the highest and most central peak of the range.
False perspective.