52 



THE DESERT 



Advance of 



Below 

 sea-leBel. 



Desolation 

 of the basin. 



sand blown through the valleys settled in the 

 empty basin ; gravel and bowlder-wash came 

 down from the mountains ; the grease -wood, 

 the salt-bush, and the so-called pepper-grass 

 sprang up in isolated spots. Slowly the desert 

 fastened itself upon the basin. Its heat became 

 too intense to allow the falling rain to reach 

 the earth, its surface was too salt and alkaline 

 to allow of much vegetation, it could support 

 neither animal nor bird life ; it became more 

 deserted than the desert itself. 



And thus it remains to this day. When you 

 are in the bottom of it you are nearly three 

 hundred feet below the level of the sea. Cir- 

 cling about you to the north, south, and west 

 are sierras, some of them over ten thousand feet 

 in height. These form the Eim of the Bowl. 

 And off to the southwest there is a side broken 

 out of the Bowl through which you can pass 

 to the river and the Gulf. The basin is perhaps 

 the hottest place to be found anywhere on the 

 American deserts. And it is also the most for- 

 saken. The bottom itself is, for the great part 

 of it, as flat as a table. It looks like a great 

 plain leading up and out to the horizon — a 

 plain that has been ploughed and rolled smooth. 

 The soil is drifted silt — the deposits made by 



