evaporating, leaves hard dry levels of pure desertness that get the
local name of dry lakes. Where the mountains are steep and the
rains heavy, the pool is never quite dry, but dark and bitter,
rimmed about with the efflorescence of alkaline deposits. A thin
crust of it lies along the marsh over the vegetating area, which
has neither beauty nor freshness. In the broad wastes open to the
wind the sand drifts in hummocks about the stubby shrubs, and
between them the soil shows saline traces. The sculpture of the
hills here is more wind than water work, though the quick storms do
sometimes scar them past many a year's redeeming. In all the
Western desert edges there are essays in miniature at the famed,
terrible Grand Canon, to which, if you keep on long enough in this
country, you will come at last.

Since this is a hill country one expects to find springs, but
not to depend upon them; for when found they are often brackish and
unwholesome, or maddening, slow dribbles in a thirsty soil. Here
you find the hot sink of Death Valley, or high rolling districts
where the air has always a tang of frost. Here are the long heavy
winds and breathless calms on the tilted mesas where dust devils
dance, whirling up into a wide, pale sky. Here you have no rain
when all the earth cries for it, or quick downpours called
cloud-bursts for violence. A land of lost rivers, with little in
it to love; yet a land that once visited must be come back to
inevitably. If it were not so there would be little told of it.

This is the country of three seasons. From June on to
November it lies hot, still, and unbearable, sick with violent
unrelieving storms; then on until April, chill, quiescent, drinking
its scant rain and scanter snows; from April to the hot season