Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 39.djvu/728

710 that of ordinary life, a phraseology consecrated to the inspiration of the divine afflatus; as the noble old poet, Spenser, expressed it, 'a ladder of the gods.' In this, and in this alone, did the native poets pour out their wild chants. These, I say, were their simple resources. Do not look upon them with contempt. At no time has poetry felt that it could dispense with them"; and—the author draws illustrations of the fact from Poe, Tennyson, and Clarence Mangan. A great many of these American songs "are wholly without intelligible meaning; both verse and refrain are merely interjectional; they are sound and fury, signifying nothing. Such are the war-songs of the Iroquois and many others which I could name. But in defense of these I would ask you to remember that they are sung, not written to be read, and they must be judged by the laws of vocal music. . . . These broken syllables, these choked utterances, these inarticulate cries are the emotional outbursts of sentiment and passion, the oldest, the most heartfelt, the most untutored language of human feeling, the spontaneous revelations of that common nature which makes the whole world kin."

The Salt Marsh of the Kavir.—Lieutenant H. B. Vaughan, who made a journey of 1,164 miles in eastern Persia, thus describes one of the most curious features of the country, the salt swamp of the Kavir: "As we quitted the defile, a sudden turn in the road presented to our astonished gaze what at first sight looked like a vast frozen sea, stretching away to the right as far as the eye could reach in one vast glistening expanse. A more careful examination proved it to be nothing more than salt formed into one immense sheet of dazzling brilliancy, while here and there upon its surface, pools of water, showing up in the most intense blue, were visible. Away to the north of it stood a distant row of low red hills. A peculiar haze, perhaps caused by evaporation, hangs over the whole scene, which, though softening the features of the distant hills, does not obliterate their details. This, which I now see before me, is the great salt swamp, to the presence of which the Dasht-i Kavir owes its name. This swamp, lying at a low level in the center of the great desert, receives into its bed the drainage from an immense tract of territory. All the rivers flowing into it are more or less salt, and carry down to it annually a great volume of water. The fierce heat of the desert during the summer months causes a rapid evaporation, the result being that the salt constantly increases in proportion to the water, until at last the ground becomes caked with it. The Persians say that many years ago a sea rolled its waves over the whole of the depression where I am now traveling, and that it was navigated by ships which used to sail from Semnau to Kashan. My guide told me the following legend: 'One day, many years ago, long before the time of the Prophet, a holy man arrived at Kashan, took a boat, and ordered the man to sail him across to some point or other. The boatman, being of a suspicious turn of mind, insisted on payment of the fare before landing. This condition was accepted, but the amount offered was held insufficient, and a pour boire was demanded in addition. After a dispute the point was yielded, and the old man said nothing more until he reached the shore, when, taking up a handful of earth from the ground, he threw it into the sea, uttering the words, "Avaricious boatmen shall here ply their trade no more." The sea instantly disappeared, and in its place came the desert as it now stands; while the fish became turned into stones, the boatman who tried to swindle was struck with blindness, and the holy man went on his way rejoicing.' I suggested to my guide that this was rather a severe punishment for so small a fault, and that an earthquake or a severe storm which would have sent all the boatmen to the bottom of the sea might have been sufficient to meet all the requirements of the case. He said he didn't know about that; anyhow, this was the story as he had heard it recounted by his tribe, who had lived on the borders of the desert for ages."

The Leaves of the Tulip Tree.—In the examination of some young plants of the tulip tree (Liriodendron tulipifera), Mr. Theodor Holm observed that, though their germination did not present anything of particular interest, a peculiar feature appeared in their young foliage leaves. The two or three leaves showed a great similarity among