One seems to inhale fresh vitality from its unpeopled immensity.

I never could understand why a desert is not generally considered beautiful; the kind, at least, we have in the South-west, with all the cacti, the yucca, and the other flowering plants unfamiliar to European or Eastern eyes, and the lines of coloured cliffs and the deep canyons.

There is far more beauty and variety of colour than in the summer meadow-stretches and hills of the Atlantic States.

So the good Padre Kino, after all, was perhaps to be congratulated on having those thirty years, interesting years, before the wilds could be made commonplace.
Arizona did not seem to yield kindly to the civilisers; indeed, it was like the Colorado River, repellent and unbreakable.

The padres crossed it and recrossed it on the southwestern corner, but they made no impression.