Evening star., 1939-05-14

FORT DAVIS, Tex, May ia mile
above the Texas plains tower the So
900 00,000-year-o Jefferson Davis Noun
tains, forming the cracked rim of a
fat-bottomed bowl, 20 miles in radius.
1t is an eerie place. The floods and
rains and frosts of countless centuries
have carved the hard. brown mountain
cliffs surrounding the bowl into Wrinkled
figures of Egyptian mummies standing
eternal vigil over the level. grass covered
and scrub-oak studded plateau-its graz
ing sheep, its sleepy village of brown
Mexicans, its ghostly. adobe walled fort
of Apache war days long since fallen
into ruin.
Over this bowl there is almost year.
round sunshine. The sky is an un-
earthly blue broken by rare, white
patches of high floating clouds. There
are only scattered ranch houses on the
floor of the bowl. 1t is a land of rattle
snakes, panthers and coyotes, of booted
cowboys and moving chuck wagons. 1t
is the scene of forgotten Indian fights,
with the red men hiding behind the
brown mummies for assaults on the mail
couriers and the construction gangs of
the Southern Pacific.
Nearly in the center of this bowl
Mount Locke rises 1900 feet. From the
summit of Mount Locke a great silver
eye looks at the stars. looks through the
black curtains of star dust, looks literally
billions of billions of billions of miles be-
{I1 70 ortI
CULTS of nothing to the far frontiers of
space and time, toward the infinity of
nothingness where time and space vanish
like wisps of smoke.
This is the new Mcdonald Observatory
of the University of Texas and the Uni
versity of Chicago. 1t is Earth's eye
peering farthest into infinity, into the
luminous peace that lies around mans
petty wars and tumults into the ulti-
mate reality of which life and death are
broken lights, and creeds and philoso-
phies are shattered particles.
A Strange Human Story.
Behind it all lies a strange human
story. Ninety years ago the man for
whom these mountains were named was
Secretary of War of the United States.
A few years later he was the chief execu-
tive of land at war with the United
States, the Confederacy. He had never
heard of homespun-clad Texas boy, a
mere buck private in his gray-uniformed
forces, queer, silent soldier who thought
deep thoughts and watched the STAR
sprinkled heavens as he walked on
sentry duty, and wondered at the petty
strife of men under the sardonic peace
fulness of heaven.
Came Appomatox and peace-and at
the end of it all only thousands of white
gravestones, North and South ghostlv
under the stars. Pvt. w. j. Mcdonald
came home, silent, moody, wondering.
He tried many ways of making a living
in the pioneer and war-shattered Texas
At night he watched the stars and con-
templated the futility of all ways of
making living and of living itself in
the perspective OF this majesty He was
the son OF a poor pioneer doctor. Fate
denied him the opportunity to delve far
into the mystery of moonlight and star
light.
He never married. His loves were the
pale lady moon and the resplendent
Venus on spring evenings. After a lot
of fumbling he stumbled into the bank
ing business in Paris, Tex. 1t is recorded
that jeff Davis ex-Pvt. Mcdonald never
quite fitted the traditional picture of the
mid-century banker. 1t all seemed so
petty-these columns of figures and CAL
culations of interest when bright Sirius
was shinging 100 light years away and
the graveyard Of every Texas village