Desert island

“ From his high perch, one sees before him and below him, a wall of dreary mountains, shorn of vegetation, glaring fiercely in the sun; it fences in a level desert of yellow sand, smooth as velvet and threaded far away with fine lines that stand for roads, and dotted with creeping mites we know are camel-trains and journeying men; right in the midst of the desert is spread a billowy expanse of green foliage; and nestling in its heart sits the great white city, like an island of pearls and opals gleaming out of a sea of emeralds. ”

“ The beginning of the desert was marked off by a wall, to call it so, for it was more of a long mound of stones. They say it reaches right across the island, but how they know it is another question, for I doubt if any one has made the journey in a hundred years, the natives sticking chiefly to the sea and their little colonies along the coast, and that part being mortal high and steep and full of cliffs. Up to the west side of the wall the ground has been cleared, and there are cocoa-palms and mummy-apples and guavas, and lots of sensitive. Just across, the bush begins outright ”

“ As to a house, we might sleep very comfortably, in such weather as this, under these Tournefortias, and never so much as think of taking cold; or we could soon build a serviceable hut, which would be proof against sun and rain, of the trunks and boughs of trees, with a thatch of palm-leaves for a roof. Then in regard to arms, of course, if it should be our fate to set up for desert islanders, we should be well supplied in that line. I never heard of any one, from Robinson Crusoe down, being cast away on a desert island, without a good store of guns, pistols, cutlasses, etcetera, etcetera. ”

“ He holds it sacred unto those
Who bravely fell before their foes,
And rarely dares its desert wall.
Here breaks nor sound of strife or sign;
Rare times a red man comes this way,
Alone, and battle-scarred and gray,
And then he bends devout before
The maid who keeps the cabin door,
And deems her sacred and divine.
Within the island's heart, 'tis said,
Tall trees are bending down with bread,
And that a fountain pure as truth,
And deep and mossy bound and fair,
Is bubbling from the forest there,—
Perchance the fabled fount of youth! 202
An isle where never cares betide ”

“ The reader may now complete the circuit of the island at leisure. In taking leave of these hills, I would observe that although not every one is possessed of a knowledge of woodcraft, or of the muscles of a mountaineer, it is far better to depart the beaten paths and to seek out new conquests. For my own part, I may safely guarantee that in finding himself for the first time on Mount Desert, the visitor will be as thoroughly surprised as impressed in the presence of natural scenes so pronounced in character, and so unique in their relation to and environment by the sea. ”

“ Fritz and I ascended one of these hills, on which a few pines and broom were growing, and perceived beyond them a barren tract, stretching to the sea, where the coral reefs rose to the level of the water, and appeared to extend far into the sea. Any navigators, sailing along these shores, would pronounce the island inaccessible and entirely barren. This is not the fact; the grass is very thick, and the trees of noble growth ”

“ When the sun set, it set behind the prairie waves. I was oblivious of any changes during the night, and at rosy dawn an ocean of long green grass encircled us round. Still on—belts of timber diversify the prospect—we rush into a thick wood, and, emerging from it, arrive at Rock Island, an unfinished-looking settlement, which might bear the name of the Desert City, situated at the confluence of the Rock River and Mississippi. We stop at a little wharf, where waits a little steamer of uncouth construction ”

“ One of our contemporaries draws a fanciful picture of life on some gorgeous Southern Pacific isle, out of the track of steamers, and pictures the Nine Men living in a condition of Oriental splendour, an existence of dolce far niente. Such a supposition is, of course, on the face of it absurd. Such an island exists only in the fancy of the romantic writer. The uninhabited portions of the globe are few, and are, in the main, of the character of the Sahara desert. Wherever life can be sustained, wherever comfort and freedom from disease wait the newcomer, be sure the newcomer has already arrived. ”

“ This immense island is gridironed through its whole mass with mountains, ranging southwest and northeast, and hence not easily penetrable except at those remote ends; it is backed by table-lands of varying breadth between the Northern and the Saharan Atlas, which form its outer walls, and the conglomeration of successive ranges at varying altitudes, with their high plateaus, is cut with deep gullies, valleys, pockets, fastnesses of all sorts—a formidable country for defence and of difficult communication. ”

“ The islands of the New England coast have become beacons of her history. Mount Desert, Monhegan, and the Isles of Shoals, Clark's Island, Nantucket, The Vineyard, and Rhode Island have havens where the historian or antiquary must put in before landing on broader ground. I might name a score of [Pg 28] others of lesser note; these are planets in our watery system. On this line many peaceful summer campaigns have been brought to a happy conclusion. Not a few have described the more genial aspects of Mount Desert. It has in fact given employment to many busy pens and famous pencils. ”

“ When a traveler sees one of these fertile spots afar off, he feels as a tempest-tossed sailor does at sight of land. It is delightful to quit the hot, baking sun, sit in shadow under the trees, and rest the eyes, long wearied with dazzling sands, on the sweet green and the clear spring. Oases, these islands are called. Long distances divide them. It is often a race for life to get across from one to the other. Sometimes people do not get across! In 1805, a caravan of 2,000 persons died miserably of heat and thirst in the great desert, and the sand covered them up. ”

“ Their appearance is strikingly different, being wooded and bristling on the sides, shooting up in craggy heights, hoary and white on the uppermost peaks and ridges, as if bitten by the cold and frost, and bared by the bleak winds of the sea. The Great Desert ranges, on the contrary, are naked as nakedness can be, dull, dreary, and dead, smoothed over as velvet, of black and purple hues, and look more like mountains which children might paint than the sterile realities of Old Sahara. ”

“ It is hard to forget the ship which carries one safely over the ocean, whose plank intervenes between our life and a bottomless grave of waters: so we tourists of The Desert acquire a peculiar affection for the melancholy animal, whose slow but faithful step carries us through the hideous wastes of sand and stone, where all life is extinct, and where, if left a moment behind the camel's track, certain death follows. ”

“ From Salt Lake City to Washoe and the Sierra Nevada Mountains, the road lies through the most horrible desert conceivable by the mind of man. For the sand of the Sahara we find substituted an impalpable powder of alkali, white as the driven snow, stretching for ninety miles at a time in one uninterrupted dazzling sheet, which supports not even that last obstinate vidette of vegetation, the wild-sage brush. Its springs are far between, and, without a single exception, mere receptacles of a salt, potash, and sulphur hell-broth, which no man would drink, save in extremis. ”

“ For all time they have stood as over-masters of the Great Desert. Proudly they overlook the far-flung wastes beneath them, where foot-hills die out among black, stony, boulder-strewn plains, and “lakes” of sand, relieved, here and there, by odd-shaped pill-box or church-like kopjes that stand as miniature guardians of the mountains behind them—beyond, right to the faint horizon, nothing but the great dead plains of the desert. ”

“ Although sand dunes devoid of vegetation are characteristic of the Sahara and some other deserts of the world, those of the United States support a variety of plant and animal life which, through generations of adaptation, are able to meet the conditions imposed by this environment (see frontispiece) . Persons who misunderstand our deserts fear them, while others who have visited them become fascinated and return periodically or settle down and live in them. ”

“ Over many wide regions of the south-western desert country of Arizona and New Mexico lies an eternal spell of silence and mystery. Across the sand-ridges come many foreign things, both animate and inanimate, which are engulfed in its immensity, which frequently disappear for all time from the sight of men, blotted out like a bird which flies free from a lighted room into the outside darkness. As though in compensation for that which it has taken, the desert from time to time allows new marvels, riven from its vitals, to emerge. ”

“ As I contemplated the sandy wilderness before me, it required a special effort of the imagination to believe that it was once the home of a powerful race which has long disappeared. It recalled, rather, scenes I had witnessed in the arid Sahara or in the barren wastes of northern Chile and southern Peru. The only traces now left here of their once mighty empire are the numerous tells which dot the wide expanse of the desert plain. Beneath the superincumbent earth of these frequent mounds, are all that remains of the homes of the people who inhabited these parts in the long, long ago. ”

“ A high wind continued all night. I fancied myself at sea, but preferred the Ocean Desert, its groaning hurricane, its hideous barrenness, to the heaving and roaring of the Ocean of Waters. We passed another desert mosque; it was only a simple line, slightly curved for the Keblah. There were also some letters written on the earth, in Arabic, passages from the Koran. Other writing on the ground is always smoothed over, and not allowed to remain. Part of the road was covered with heaps of stone, as if done to clear it, as well as to direct travellers en route. ”

“ It is desert, barren, inhospitable, dangerous, yet thousands of people make it their chosen home. Over its surface roam the Bedouins of the United States, fearless horsemen, daring travellers, who rival in picturesqueness, if not in evil, their compeers of the deserts by the Nile. Down in the deep canyon water-ways of the desert-streams dwell other peoples whose life is as strange, weird, wild, and fascinating as that of any people of earth. ”

“ Beyond this belt of vegetation, this girdle of fertility, Nature wears a sombre aspect—the stony look of a corpse; for the immense Desert of the Sahara begins. The transition from the one region to the other, from the land of plenty to the land of want and famine, from the land of bright lakes, and copious streams, and green pastures, to the land of rocky heights and barren sandy wastes, is as startling as the change which sometimes occurs in human life—the change of a moment, from bustling and exuberant happiness to profound sorrow. ”

“ Such were the loud and startling words which resounded through the air, above the vast watery desert of the Pacific, about four o’clock in the evening of the 23rd of March, 1865. ”

“ Within the memory of comparatively young men a third of the territory of the United States beyond the Mississippi bore the name of the "Great American Desert." It was a region vast beyond accurate human conception, in extent as great as half of Europe, midribbed with the stupendous, shaggy bulk of the Rocky Mountains, from which it descended in both directions in illimitable rolling plains and rugged mesas, rising here to the height of snow-crowned mountains, and falling there to the ancient salty beds of lost seas, lower than the level of the ocean. ”

“ Frequently you may see, on the sandy wastes of Africa, or the desolate plains of Asia and the New World, these carcasses laid out in two interminable rows; indicating the gloomy track which should be followed by the traveller, and never failing to remind him of the tribute Death levies upon mankind in these accursed regions. Thus does the Desert show itself more relentless than even the hungry ocean, which at least devours its victims whole, and affronts the eye with no traces of its murders. ”

“ Before us to the south-east small isolated hills stand up like islands in the sea, and beyond them the horizon of the desert lies as level as that of the ocean. Through this great sandy waste the caravans travel from oasis to oasis, but in the north there is a tract, called the Kevir, within which not the smallest oasis can be found. Not a clump of grass, not even a blade, is to be seen, for the desert is saturated with salt, and when it rains in winter the briny clay becomes as slippery as ice. ”

“ What the vine is to the Italian, the oak to the Englishman, the cocoa-nut tree to the Polynesian, is the date-palm to the Arab. And more—far more. This single tree has peopled the Desert. A civilization, rudimentary compared with that of the West, sufficiently advanced if you contrast it with that of the Malay or the South Sea Islander, finds in it its standing-point, its centre, its support. And without it the tribes of the Sahara would cease to be. ”

“ Many tracts are there, of larger area than all the British Islands, where the desert is scarce varied by an oasis, and where the very rivers pursue their course amidst rocks and barren sands, without a blade of vegetation on their banks. Usually, however, a narrow selvage of green—caused by the growth of cotton woods, willows, and a few humbler plants—denotes the course of a stream,—a glad sight at all times to the weary and thirsting traveller. ”