Omaha daily bee., 1917-01-08
By GARRETT p. SERVISS.


As teacher OF geography the auto
mobile is unrivalled. It carries you
SO quickly from place to place and so
VIGOROUSLY UP commanding hills,
which seemed unconquerable in the
old days of painting horses, that it
turns the country into a moving pic
ture, whose beauties and wonders un-
roll in and endless panorama before
your eyes.
Formerly the farmer. if he had a
spanking team, could give his family,
during holidays ride, a fair view of
portion of the township. five or
ten miles square. in which they lived.
Now, with his auto, he can take them
over the whole county, and far away
into adjoining counties, showing them
an area of the earth large enough to
make very respectable telescope
patch as seen from the>moon.
And during such trips the aspect
OF the country seems completely
changed, while. the relations of the
EVIDENT The courses of the streams,
the intersections OF the ranges of hills,
the lie of the valleys, the nesting
places of villages, the pockets of corn,
the sheltered expanses of wheat land,
the favored valleys where the elms
grow old and lofty and the breezy
heights where the squirrels play
among the hickories-all fall into
certain order, the recognition Of
which is lesson in practical geogra-
ply,
And then there are the surprises,
which are often very great and de-
lightful. Recently took ride around
the Mohawk valley, starting from
Amstef dam, which, unlike its flat
namesake in Holland, loves steep
streets. We were all natives of the
| valley and thought that we knew its
scenery well. We flew through the
township of Florida. | spent my boy
hood looking across the brawling'
Schoharie at the hills of Florida rid
ing occasionally over its roads.
But now l found that I had never
known Florida as it is. Seeing it bit
by bit, now a little and then little,
had been like getting an idea of
house by examining specimens of its
bricks. But the swiftly succeeding
views afforded by the auto, like the
progressive poses of cinematograph,
combined all the details into har-
monious whole, and the township of
Florida stood revealed like beautiful
face.
A little way over the border, in
Schenectady county, we spun higher
and higher, until, through woods,
we shot out on the verge of hill,
where, without any preparation Tor
what was in store, we saw before us,
| and beneath us, as instantaneously as
if a curtain had dropped. the most
beautiful, and, in its unexpectedness,
the most astonishing landscape that
| have ever looked upon--and have
seen some of this worlds most famous
views.
Considering that this scene lies in
one of the Oldest inhabited regions of
the old state of New York and is the
| gift offered to its visitors, not by a
mountain, but by mere hill only
some 1,500 feet in height, and clothed
to its summit with farms, it doubt
less seems extravagant to speak OF 1t
as have done.
All of US in the party had been born
almost within sight of the place, but
only one had even a dim recollection
of having heard of its existence. We
had not set out to find it; the auto had
brought US to it.
Such scene cannot be described; !;
one can only mention some Of its ele-
ments. Nature has a formula for
these things, and the first require
ment, after suitable elevation, which
need not be very great, is isolation.
The hill that am writing of is few
miles from the village of Mariaville,
which itself lies beside little lake
1900 feet above sea level. The sum-
nit from which the view is obtained
rises moderately above all its imme-
date surroundings. 1t is kind of
hill peninsula projecting into an at
mospheric ocean, whose bottom, coul-
posed of farm lands, gradually shelves
down deeper and deeper, and sweeps
away on all sides for many miles until
it begins to rise again to meet the
hills and mountains that form its
farther coasts.
Seen through the transparent fluid
of the air, slightly blued in the dis
tance, the farms, with their fences,
hedges, groves, houses, barns. grain
fields, corn fields, white buckwheat
fields, stretch away, smaller and
smaller to the eye, apparently as nu-
merous as stars-you would say there