shapes, of dreariness, through and in and out of every thrup and thrum
of weariness, scarcely hoping ever more to find our way out and discover
memory of men for us, when all of a sudden we saw a grand sight. The
day had been dreadfully hot and baffling, with sudden swirls of red dust
arising, and driving the great drought into us. To walk had been worse
than to drag one's way through a stubbly bed of sting-nettles. But now
the quick sting of the sun was gone, and his power descending in the
balance toward the flat places of the land and sea. And suddenly we
looked forth upon an immeasurable spread of these.

We stood at the gate of the sandy range, which here, like a vast brown
patch, disfigures the beauty of the sierra. On either side, in purple
distance, sprang sky-piercing obelisks and vapor-mantled glaciers,
spangled with bright snow, and shodden with eternal forest. Before us
lay the broad, luxuriant plains of California, checkered with more tints
than any other piece of earth can show, sleeping in alluvial ease,
and veined with soft blue waters. And through a gap in the brown coast
range, at twenty leagues of distance, a light (so faint as to seem a
shadow) hovered above the Pacific.

But none of all this grandeur touched our hearts except the water gleam.
Parched with thirst, I caught my father's arm and tried to urge him
on toward the blue enchantment of ecstatic living water. But, to my
surprise, he staggered back, and his face grew as white as the distant
snow. I managed to get him to a sandy ledge, with the help of his own
endeavors, and there let him rest and try to speak, while my frightened
heart throbbed over his.

"My little child," he said at last, as if we were fallen back ten years,
"put your hand where I can feel it."