most interesting and delightful quality. No landscape has in the exact
sense such charm as one in which Nature manifests herself in a large and
simple way: one feels with a thrill that she is about to tell the
secret. The earth lay almost in its nakedness beneath the inane dome of
the sky. But over the large simplicity of form one was soon aware of an
exquisite play of hues. The easy undulations, as they ran off to the
unattainable horizon, were so many waves of delicate and varying color.
There were great sweeps of ochre, of gray, of fresh, light green,
pointed with black dots of live-oak, and traversed by tortuous lines of
indigo where the pecan treed creeks pursued their foiled courses, and
troops of little hills grouped themselves about,--pink, pinkish, purple,
purpling blue, white, as they faded from view like the evanescent
cherubs in the corner of an old master. The hills, however, were little
only because the stretch was so vast; it was really a broad plafond upon
which they had solemnly entered to dance a minuet with the playful
shadows of the clouds. The sky possessed everything. There was so much
of it that existence seemed to have become in a sense a celestial--or at
least an aerial--affair: the world was your balloon.

After the third creek-crossing the road ran straight as an avenue
through a broad, level reach, and we flew along gayly. The little
mesquite-trees, prim, dainty, and delicate, stood about in seeming
order, civilizing the landscape and giving it the air of an orchard; the
prairie-dog villages were thrown into a tumult of excitement by our
passage; a chaparral-cock slipped out of a bush, stared an instant,
pulled the string that lifts his tail and top-knot, and settled down for
a race directly under the horses' feet. We passed the point of a hill,
gained a slight rise, and the ranch was in sight. It must be confessed
that it was not in appearance all that the name might imply,--not the
sort of place for which one starts after having provided one's self with