THE KANAB DESEET— PIPE SEEING. 
79 
rich pasturage to horses and cattle. To-day hardly a blade of grass is to 
be found within ten miles of the spring, unless upon the crags and mesas 
of the Vermilion Cliffs behind it. The horses and cattle have disappeared, 
and the bones of many of the latter are bleached upon the plains in front 
of it. The cause of the failure of pasturage is twofold. There is little 
doubt that during the last ten or twelve years the climate of the surround- 
ing country has grown more arid. The occasional summer showers which 
kept the grasses alive seldom come now, and through the long summer and 
autumn droughts the grasses perished even to their roots before they had 
time to seed. All of them belong to varieties which reproduce from seed, 
and whose roots live but three or four years. Even if there had been no 
drought the feeding of cattle would have impoverished and perhaps wholly 
destroyed the gi’ass by cropping it clean before the seeds were mature, as 
has been the case very generally throughout Utah and Nevada. 
Northeastward the Vermilion Cliffs extend in endless perspective 
towards Kanab, and beyond to the Paria. Northwestward, with growing 
magnitude, they extend towards the Virgen, ever forming a mighty back- 
ground to the picture. To the southward stretches the desert, blank, life- 
less, and as expressionless as the sea. For five or six miles south of the 
Pipe Spring promontory there is a gentle descending slope, ssid thence 
onward the surface feebly ascends through a distance of thirty miles to the 
brink of the Grrand Canon. Thus the range of vision is wide, for we ovei’- 
look a gentle depression of great extent. Though the general impression 
conveyed is that of a smooth or slightly modulated countiy, yet we com- 
mand a far greater expanse than would be possible among the prairies. 
To the southeastward the Kaibab looms up, seemingly at no great distance, 
and to the southwestward the flat roof of Mount Trumbull is more than a 
blue cloud in the horizon. Towards this latter mountain we take a straight 
course. The first few miles lie across drifting sands bare of all vegetation. 
The air is like a furnace, but so long as the water holds out the heat is not 
enervating and brings no lassitude. Everything is calm and still, except 
here and there a hot whiiding blast, which sends up a tall, slender column 
of dust, diffusing itself in the air. At a slow pace, the sand-hills at length 
are passed and we enter upon a hard, firm soil, over which we move more 
