16 



THE DESEET 



Desert 

 mystery. 



Swnd and 

 gypsum. 



Stmdr 

 whirls. 



buried in sand, not decayed, but withered like 

 the grass on the lomas. 



Mystery — a mystery as luminous and yet as 

 impenetrable as its own mirage — seemed always 

 hanging over that low-lyiug waste. It was a 

 vast pit dug under the mountain bases. The 

 mountains themselves were bare crags of fire in 

 the sunlight, and the sands of the pit grew 

 only cactus and grease-wood. There were tracts 

 where nothing at all grew — miles upon miles of 

 absolute waste with the pony's feet breaking 

 through an alkaline crust. And again, there 

 were dry lakes covered with silt ; and vast beds 

 of sand and gypsum, white as snow and fine as 

 dust. The pony's feet plunged in and came 

 out leaving no trail. The surface smoothed over 

 as though it were water. Fifty miles away one 

 could see the desert sand-whirls moving slowly 

 over the beds in tall columns two thousand 

 feet high and shining like shafts of marble in 

 the sunlight. How majestically they moved, 

 their feet upon earth, their heads towering 

 into the sky ! 



And then the desert winds that raised at 

 times such furious clouds of sand ! All the 

 air shone like gold-dust and the sun turned 

 red as blood. Ah ! what a stifling sulphureous 



