106 THE DESERT AND THE ROSE 



truth sound asleep, and will continue to sleep for 

 twenty- four hours, possibly even for three days, or 

 quite possibly expire. The god of horses alone 

 knows. So their owner ties them up beneath a tree 

 and goes to sleep himself in the shade of another — 

 if there be any trees. 



But perhaps of all the curiosities within reach, 

 the White Sands are among the most beautiful as 

 well as singular. Imagine scaling a mountain in the 

 Arid Belt, wherein lakes and rivers of any impor- 

 tance — here we pause to bow an apology to the 

 Rio Grande and to the immense lake at this date 

 holding storage water above the Dam — are scarce, 

 and beholding against the cloudless blue of the hor- 

 izon a line of silver breakers running beneath a fine 

 head- wind. These foaming waves are in truth a 

 vast and glittering bed of gypsum, resembling on a 

 nearer approach some mountain region, broken into 

 deep gorges and canons of indescribable beauty and 

 variety and clothed in eternal snows. Nearer yet, 

 and the snow resolves itself into sand sparkling 

 like crystal in the sunlight. The extent of this gyp- 

 sum bed is variously stated, but the "Mountains" 

 are never more than twenty-five feet in height, 

 though wearing the air of mountains just the same. 

 The gypsum is said by some to measure sixty by 

 twenty miles, by others much less. This discrepancy 

 in statement is owing partly to the exclusion of one 

 hundred miles of old lake bed adjoining the sand 

 hills, the surface of which is gemmed with crystals 

 of great size and beauty. The desert wind keeps 

 the sand in such constant motion that nothing grows 



