Chap. VII. THE STONY DESERT. 535 
inundated by a torrent of rain. Towards midnight we 
reached a spot where the water stood several inches deep 
on the ground : the storm, which we had seen at a 
distance, had discharged itself here, and the sandy clay 
had prevented the waters sinking into the ground. We 
unyoked our animals, and let them drink. At day- 
break we passed Sackett's Wells, a spring lying at a 
short distance from the road : it would not itself have 
yielded water enough for our beasts, but, thanks to the 
timely fall of the rains, we had enough, and to spare for 
any travellers who might come after us. 
The ground of the desert begins here to be rocky, and 
takes at every step a wilder character — detached boulders, 
and fragments of stone of every kind, consisting of granite, 
syenite, feldspar, crystallized masses of quartz, petrified 
wood, jasper, mica shining like silver, common sedimen- 
tary and white saline limestone, numerous shells and 
other substances, lie scattered about. At length the road 
descended from the height which it had gradually attained, 
into a narrow ravine of gypsum. The desert, in its north- 
western part, forms a flat contrefort, from which the road 
descends instead of rising, towards the mountains. The 
wild scene is the more surprising, as the traveller might 
have expected the very reverse. From the flat plain the 
traveller is suddenly transported into a chaos of furrows, 
precipices, horizontal and slanting slabs, ridges, pyramids, 
and every kind of formation of the ground; and high, 
naked, rocky mountains rise behind them. The ravines 
are cut in yellow and green clay, in which are seen 
glittering everywhere slabs and fibrous masses of gypsum. 
The whole presents an aspect of indescribable sterility, 
though even in this region of death a few shrubs appear, 
such as a cactus, a few leafless bushes, especially an 
