THE NORTHERN MYSTERY 269 



jangle of voices submerged in this tremendous 

 calm. Even the thunder of the wheels- 

 bearing, as the ship across the ocean, all 

 that nineteenth -century civilization demands 

 on its voyage from port to port is lost in 

 the low breathing of the desert wind. 



Here no green thing, changing with the 

 changing seasons, grows. The gramma of 

 the high ranges bends and darkens not here 

 beneath the rolling summer cloud ; but to 

 the motionless billows of a desolation com- 

 plete and unspeakable cactus and Spanish 

 dagger cling solitary. The Indian in his 

 dug-out a speck of mortality set in leagues 

 of living death finds no place here. No 

 travel-worn cattle limp painfully, seeking 

 water, neither is the trail marked by writhen 

 forms which have yielded life in torture ; for 

 water is not. 



Piled on the desert's circling edge, above 

 the undulating plain, rises range after range 

 of mountains lofty, fantastically shaped- 

 sentinels of nothing. Yet in forgotten ages 

 it may be that the waters of a lake, now but 

 a rare desert mirage, rippled high over the 

 knees of those pyramids and pinnacles, and 



