C._, II., 203), "demons whistle in
the branches, and stooping with outstretched arms sneak among the
trunks to seize the wayfarer;" and Powers (88) writes in regard to
California Indians that they listen to night noises with unspeakable
horror:
"It is difficult for us to conceive of the speechless
terrors which these poor wretches suffer from the screeching
of owls, the shrieking of night-hawks, the rustling of the
trees ... all of which are only channels of poison wherewith
the demons would smite them."
To the primitive mind, the world over, a high mountain is the horror
of horrors, the abode of evil spirits, and an attempt to climb it
certain death. So strong is this superstition that explorers have
often experienced the greatest difficulty in getting natives to serve
as porters of provisions in their ascents of peaks.[6] Even the Greeks
and Romans cared for landscape only in so far as it was humanized
(parks and gardens) and habitable. "Their souls," says Rohde (511),
"could never have been touched by the sublime thrills we
feel in the presence of the dark surges of the sea, the
gloom of a primeval forest, the solitude and silence of
sunlit mountain summits."
And Humboldt, who first noted the absence in Greek and Roman writings
of the admiration of romantic scenery, remarked (24):
"Of the eternal snow of the Alps, glowing in the rosy
light of the morning or evening sun, of the loveliness
of the blue glacier ice, of the stupendous grandeur of
Swiss landscape, no description has come down to us
from them; yet there was a constant procession over
these Alps, from Helvetia to Gallia, of statesmen and
generals with literary men in their train.
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