Chapter XII 



The Heart of the Desert 



The Pronghorn 



IT is among the strange anomalies of life that some 

 men see a charm in regions that others describe 

 as God-forgotten ; localities where Nature is at 

 her worst, where the elements are abroad, searching 

 for life, falling upon every living thing. I have crossed 

 the great American deserts many times ; have seen 

 them in all their moods, have driven over parts of them 

 when the limit of heat endurance was seemingly reached, 

 and never found any one who cared to live there; yet it 

 is rare to find one who fails to recognise the peculiar at- 

 traction of these sand wastes, the home of the mirage 

 and sand-storm. I recall the sunset illumination of the 

 Sangre de Cristo Mountains, which rise in what some 

 might call a desert, yet far from it, and have since ob- 

 served the same effect in the Sierra Madre from the 

 desert to the east of Mojave. No more forbidding vista 

 ever filled human vision than parts of this desert, consti- 



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