20 SNAKE RIVER PLAINS OF IDAHO. [bull. 199. 
exceptional attractions. One must become familiar with their charac- 
teristics, however, and learn to judge them by their own standard 
before their beauties are fully revealed. To the traveler from humid 
lands, where every hillside is clothed with verdure and every brook 
flows through a shadowy vale, they will at first seem repellent deserts, 
on which a long sojourn would be intolerable. This, I think, will be the 
first impression, especially if beheld at noontide in summer or beneath a 
gray wintry sky. But to one who rides for weeks or months across 
their seemingly boundless surfaces, sleeping at night beneath the stars, 
they are found to have charms un thought of by the casual passer-by. 
In the glare of the unclouded summer sun the plains are featureless, 
or perhaps their expression is distorted and rendered grotesque or 
vague and meaningless by the deceptive mirage. At such time the 
flat land vanishes in distant haze, and the bordering mountains, if visi- 
ble at all, are but uncertain flickering shadows on a glowing sk} r . In 
the clear side lights of early morning, however, all uncertainty and 
indefiniteness vanish. The flat land has details everywhere on its sur- 
face. The mountains stand boldly forth as sculptured forms of ame- 
thyst and sapphire, every line on their deeply engraved slopes, 
although leagues distant, clearly visible. When the sun is high in 
the cloudless heavens the plains are gray, russet brown, and faded 
yellow, but with the rising of the sun and again near sunset they 
become not only 1 illiant and superb in color, but pass through 
innumerable variations in tone and tint. When the approaching 
dawn is first perceived, the sun seemingly a great fire beneath the 
distant edge of the plain, a curtain is quickly drawn aside, revealing a: 
limitless picture suggestive of the view a mariner sometimes has on 
approaching a bold coast while the actual shore line is still below the 
horizon. The distant mountains, rising range above range and cul 
minating in some far-off sun-kissed peak, are of the most delicate blue 
while all below is dark and shadowy. As the sun mounts higher the 
colors deepen, becoming violet and purple, of a strength and purity 
never seen where rain is frequent. Purple in all its rich and varied 
shades is the prevailing color imparted to arid lands when the sun is 
low in the heavens. As the dawn passes and the light becomev 
stronger the rich hues fade, the mountains recede and perhaps vanisl 
in the all-pervading haze, details become obscure even in the immedi 
ate foreground, and the eye is pained by the penetrating light. Th< 
shadows, if canyon walls are near, are sharply outlined and appea: 
black in contrast with the intense light reflected from the sun-bathe||| 
surfaces. 
As evening approaches there is a gradual change from glare tj 
shadow. The broad plains become a sea of purple on which float th 
still shimmering mountains. The shadows creep higher and higheil: ' 
until each serrate crest becomes a line of light, margining ruggejj' 
