Steep Trails - Chapter 16

(paragraphs 6-8)


6 The wealth Nevada has already given to the world is indeed wonderful, but the only grand marvel is the energy expended in its development. The pure waste visible in the ruins of the towns never fails to produce a saddening effect.

7 The dim old ruins of Europe, so eagerly sought after by travelers, have something pleasing about them, whatever their historical associations. They at least lend some beauty to the landscape. Their picturesque towers and arches seem to be kindly adopted by nature and planted with wildflowers and wreathed with ivy. Their rugged angles are soothed and freshened and embossed with green mosses, fresh life and decay mingling in pleasing measures. The old ruins of the East have also served their time, and like the weather-beaten mountains, are wasting harmoniously. The same is in some degree true of the dead mining towns of California.

8 But those lying to the eastward of the Sierra throughout the ranges of the Great Basin waste in the dry wilderness like the bones of cattle that have died of thirst. Many of them do not represent any good accomplishment and have no right to be. They are monuments of fraud and ignorance -- sins against science. The drifts and tunnels in the rocks may perhaps be regarded as the prayers of the prospector, offered for the wealth he so earnestly craves. Like prayers of any kind not in harmony with nature, they are unanswered. But, after all, effort, however misapplied, is better than stagnation. Better to toil blindly, beating every stone in turn for grains of gold, whether they contain any or not, than to lie down in apathetic decay.

Muir, John. "Nevada's Dead Town." Steep Trails. Houghton Mifflin Company. 1918. Boston. In the public domain. Adapted by Educational Leadership Solutions, Inc.

What about the ruins of towns saddens Muir? (paragraph 6)