glades, and hamlets cheerful with inhabitants.
Only, all was silent; and as you
drew near, the scene trembled, altered, and
was gone!

Hideous black lizards and horned toads
crawl and hop amid this desolation; and
the deadly little sidewinder rattlesnake lies
basking in the blaze of sunshine, which it
distils into venom. Sometimes the level
plain is broken up into savage ridges and
awful canons, along whose arid bottoms no
water streams. As you stagger through their
chaotic bottoms, you see vast boulders poised
overhead, tottering to a fall; a shiver of
earthquake, a breath of hurricane, and they
come crashing and splintering in destruction
down. Along the sides of these acclivities
extend long, level lines and furrows, marks
of where the ocean flowed ages ago. But sometimes
the hills are but accumulations of desert
dust, which shift slowly from place to place
under the action of the wind, melting away
here to be re-erected yonder; mounding
themselves, perhaps, above a living and
struggling human being, to move forward,
anon, leaving where he was a little heap
of withered bones. A fearful place is this
broad abyss, where once murmured the
waters of a prehistoric sea. Let us return