Use a preset vim colorscheme in bash (Mac OSX)

I'm trying to use the desert colorscheme for vim in bash on my Mac OS X. I changed my .vimrc file to include the line

colorscheme desert

There was no .vim directory in my home directory, so i made one and made a colors directory inside that. Then I downloaded desert.vim开发者_JAVA百科 and put it in the colors directory. The colorscheme is still not working. Any experienced vimmers know what I might have missed?

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You have to set a VIM varible for it to work. Add this line to your .vimrc:

let $VIM ='~/.vim/'

In fact this line tells vim to check for folder "~/.vim/" to load plugins, colors, syntaxes, etc ...

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This should work, or there is an important piece of information missing. Note that the desert colorscheme comes with the vim provided by OS X so you shouldn't even need to install it.