28 



THE DESERT 



dry river-beds. All told there is hardly enough 

 covering to hide the anatomy of the earth. 

 And the winds are always blowing it aside. 

 You have noticed how bare and bony the hills 

 of New England are in winter when the trees 

 are leafless and the grasses are dead ? You have 

 seen the rocks loom up harsh and sharp, the 

 ledges assume angles, and the backbone and ribs 

 of the open field crop out of the soil ? The 

 desert is not unlike that all the year round. 

 To be sure there are snow-like driftings of sand 

 that muffle certain edges. Valleys, hills, and 

 even mountains are turned into rounded lines 

 by it at times. But the drift rolled high in 

 one place was cut out from some other place ; 

 and always there are vertebra showing elbows 

 and shoulders protruding through the yellow 

 byssus of sand. 



The shifting sands ! Slowly they move, wave 

 upon wave, drift upon drift ; but by day and 

 by night they gather, gather, gather. They 

 overwhelm, they bury, they destroy, and then 

 a spirit of restlessness seizes them and they 

 move off elsewhere, swirl upon swirl, line upon 

 line, in serpentine windings that enfold some 

 new growth or fill in some new valley in the 

 waste. So it happens that the surface of tho 



