74 WHERE ROLLS THE OREGON 



rock into a green meadow, or coulee, and sighted 

 the dull dead water of Silver Lake with its scalded 

 shores bare and bleaching in the sun. A low edg- 

 ing of rock, the broken footings of a wall, ran 

 around the shallow basin like a rude beading 

 about some vast pewter salver. The thick water 

 was rapidly shrinking. Off in the middle lay 

 an island about a hundred acres in extent, at 

 one end of which, on the surface of the lake, 

 rested a great flock of white pelicans, and gleam- 

 ing like flecks of snow against the green willow 

 copse at the opposite end of the island perched 

 a few white herons. The warden stood speech- 

 less at the sight of snow-white birds in the wil- 

 lows — they had been so nearly exterminated by 

 the plumers, — and his wonder fell upon us all. 

 We had left the car behind the wall of rock, 

 allowing, for the first time, the absolute silence 

 of the desert noon to come upon us. It was a new 

 kind of silence to me, as utterly unlike any that I 

 knew as the desert itself was unlike any stretch 

 of my native landscape. One knows his silences 

 as well, and listens as often to them, as one 

 knows the voices of his birds, or the sounding 

 tongues of stream, or storm, or forest, or shore. 



