THE LAND OF LITTLE RAIN 



And yet — and yet — is it not perhaps 

 to satisfy expectation that one falls into the 

 tragic key in writing of desertness ? The 

 more yoii wish of it the more you get, and 

 in the mean time lose much of pleasantness. 

 In that country which begins at the foot of 

 the east slope of the Sierras and spreads 

 out by less and less lofty hill ranges toward 

 the Great Basin, it is possible to live with 

 great zest, to have red blood and delicate 

 joys, to pass and repass about one's daily 

 performance an area that would make an 

 Atlantic seaboard State, and that with no 

 peril, and, according to our way of thought, 

 no particular difficulty. At any rate, it was 

 not people who went into the desert merely 

 to write it up who invented the fabled 

 Hassaympa, of whose waters, if any drink, 

 they can no more see fact as naked fact, 

 but all radiant with the color of romance. 

 20 



