Jefferson Worth spoke. "Drive on, Texas."

And so, with the yellow dust-devils dancing along their road and
that yellow cloud in the distance, they moved down the slope--down
into The King's Basin--into La Palma de la Mano de Dios, The Hollow
of God's Hand.

"Is that true, sir?" asked Abe of the Seer.

"Is what true, son?"

"What Texas said about the ocean."

"Yes it's true. The lowest point of this Basin is nearly three
hundred feet below sea level. The railroad we are going to build
follows right around the rim on the other side over there. This
slope that we are going down now is the ancient beach." Then, while
they pushed on into the silence and the heat of that dreadful land,
the engineer told the boy and his companions how the ages had
wrought with river and wave and sun and wind to make The King's
Basin Desert.

Wolf Wells they found dry as Texas had anticipated. Phantom Lake
also was dry. Occasionally they crossed dry, ancient water courses
made by the river when the land was being formed; sometimes there
were glassy, hard, bare alkali flats; again the trail led through
jungle-like patches of desert growth or twisted and wound between
high hummocks. Always there was the wide, hot sky, the glaring flood
of light unbroken by shadow masses to relieve the eye and reflected
hotly from the sandy floor of the old sea-bed.