The Alamogordo Desert 167 



for, as everybody knows, these are in general species of 

 the forest of the far Pacific Coast. As one stands now 

 at last thus at the very summit of his problem, and from 

 some promontory rock of vantage looks out upon the vast 

 plain thus mountain-girt, the indescribable beauty of the 

 scene must first impress him. Far to the west lie the 

 San Andreas, the Organ, and the Oscuro ranges, a long 

 low wall, grey and solid, its serrate summits indentured 

 in the azure sky; below, the plain, brilliantly lighted, 

 soft and brown and lucid, save as the mal pcvis stretches 

 its blackness as a bar sinister across the northern end, 

 while away to the south the gypsum desert seems a cloud 

 of snow beneath our feet, more brilliant than that evan- 

 escent whiteness that floats in the deep blue far above 

 the one the strange counterpart of the other; all is so 

 silent, so changeless, and so fair! 



But just now we heed not the beauty of the land- 

 scape ; other thoughts come crowding upon the observer, 

 all equally insistent and impressive. Evidence of enor- 

 mous physical change thrusts itself upon our astonished 

 attention; not the sunken desert itself alone, that great 

 block already described, but the denuded and sundered 

 mountain walls, the great canons that stretch back for 

 miles, cut down through even the solid limestones at the 

 mountain base a process vast and old. Once the cre- 

 taceous sea rolled here, and when it retreated here were 

 beds of limestone hundreds of feet thick. Where are 

 they now ? Only here and there a remnant on the moun- 

 tain summit; the desert is covered with their debris al- 

 most to the distant sea. 



Nor less is one impressed by the slowness of all this 



