The Heart of the Desert 173 



sunset on the Sierras from this portion of the desert. 

 Leaving the hills, we enter a forest of yucca, the weird 

 distorted branches, seemingly stricken by the blast of 

 death, reaching out at one ; a forest of fearsome shape 

 and feature that occupies a belt four or five miles wide, 

 then melting into the sands of the desert with distant 

 buttes on the line over the edge of the world ; cities, 

 temples, towers, minarets of the fancy, that lure one on 

 and on. 



But turn to the Sierra Madre at sundown and tell 

 me whether the desert has called you in vain. Watch 

 the purple shadows creep out of distant canons and 

 encompass the pallid desert. See the banners of encar- 

 nadine painting each cliff and peak until the entire range 

 is suffused with a warm glow, as though some roseate 

 lace-like film had been drawn over them as they sank 

 into the deep gloom of the night. 



But what have the deserts to do with sport ? you will 

 ask. I might reply that the study of the desert affords 

 infinite pastime. Come down through the forest of 

 yucca, where the mountains sink away to the sage- 

 brush, when the winter has come, when the sky is clear, 

 and the rain has washed from the air every scintillating 

 atom , come into the shadow of this clump of desert 

 brush on the edge of a wash. Your eye may see no- 

 thing in this vague landscape, this blaze of colour and 

 tint, that Lungren knows and paints so well ; but if 

 your luck is with you and is of a specious quality, sud- 

 denly something moves far away in the centre of the 



