14 



THE DESERT 



The desert 

 colors. 



Looking 

 down to the 

 desert. 



They knew the long undulations of the valley- 

 plain were covered with sharp, broken rock, but 

 from this height surely they must have noticed 

 how soft as velvet they looked, how smoothly 

 they rolled from one into another, how perfect- 

 ly they curved, how symmetrically they waved. 

 And the long lines of the divides, lessening to 

 the west their ridges of grease-wood showing 

 a peculiar green like the crests of sea-waves 

 in storm did they not see them ? Did they 

 not look down on the low neighboring hills and 

 know that they were pink, terra-cotta, orange- 

 colored all the strange hues that may be com- 

 pounded of clay and mineral with here and 

 there a crowning mass of white quartz or a far- 

 extending outcrop of shale stained blue and 

 green with copper ? Doubtless, a wealth of 

 color and atmospheric effect was wasted upon 

 the aboriginal retina ; but did it not take note 

 of the deep orange sunsets, the golden fringed 

 heaps of cumulus, and the tongues of fire that 

 curled from every little cirrus cloud that lin- 

 gered in the western sky ? 



And how often they must have looked out 

 and down to the great basin of the desert where 

 cloud and sky, mountain and mesa, seemed to 

 dissolve into a pink mist ! It was not an un- 



