characteristics of barrenness, inhospitality, and misery.

 

There are no inhabitants of this land of despair. A band of Pawnees or of

Blackfeet may occasionally traverse it in order to reach other hunting-grounds,

but the hardiest of the braves are glad to lose sight of those awesome plains,

and to find themselves once more upon their prairies. The coyote skulks among

the scrub, the buzzard flaps heavily through the air, and the clumsy grizzly

bear lumbers through the dark ravines, and picks up such sustenance as it can

amongst the rocks.

 

These are the sole dwellers in the wilderness.

 

In the whole world there can be no more dreary view than that from the northern

slope of the Sierra Blanco. As far as the eye can reach stretches the great flat

plain-land, all dusted over with patches of alkali, and intersected by clumps of

the dwarfish chaparral bushes. On the extreme verge of the horizon lie a long

chain of mountain peaks, with their rugged summits flecked with snow. In this

great stretch of country there is no sign of life, nor of anything appertaining

to life.

 

There is no bird in the steel-blue heaven, no movement upon the dull, grey

earth—above all, there is absolute silence. Listen as one may, there is no

shadow of a sound in all that mighty wilderness; nothing but silence—complete

and heart-subduing silence.