Page:Isaiah Bowman - Desert Trails of Atacama (1924).pdf/19

 forth and carries a significant culture into bordering commu- nities or is itself absorbed by bordering communities that are altered in the process, then the migration is of very great im- portance. [ think we have too long assumed that the mere movement of peoples is the important thing, whereas the truth would appear to lic at the opposite extreme. Uf the effect of the migration is important, then the migration is important; but it must be first shown that there has been an effect.

Whether or not migrations have affected the life of a desert people, that life tends to go on living up to the limit of its known resources and to use them with all the intelligence at its command; so that those who stay in desert valleys and oases live a self-contained life.

On the western, or seaward, border of the great Andean chain the desert holds sway for nearly two thousand miles. Down into the border of the desert come streams from the higher country where snows and summer rains give birth to a multitude of mountain torrents. The villages and tiny settle- ments lie scattered along the foot of the Andes. Each commu- nity lives a life unto itself. Isolation is here an outstanding fact, traffic with the outside world being both fecble and irreg- ular. All the settlements exhibit social and political organiza- tions shaped by the geographical conditions that surround them. They are locally famous for this product or that and, though far away from the great centers of commerce, are not wholly unaffected by modern civilization. We are not to imag- ine because a railroad has been built near by or a mine has been opened calling for such labor as the desert can spare, that a desert community has been revolutionized. Even in such cases nature continues to stamp her character upon the life of the desert dweller. I wish to emphasize this point because it is cus- tomary to say when man has built a railroad into the desert or the mountains that he has conquered them, that thereby man is bending nature to his will, that he is annihilating what for- merly frustrated him. But even if railroads are run across the