p>At eight in the morning we reached the remnant and ruin of
what had been the important military station of “Camp Floyd,”
some forty-five or fifty miles from Salt Lake City. At four P.M.
we had doubled our distance and were ninety or a hundred miles
from Salt Lake. And now we entered upon one of that species of
deserts whose concentrated hideousness shames the diffused and
diluted horrors of Sahara—an “alkali” desert. For sixty-eight
miles there was but one break in it. I do not remember that this
was really a break; indeed it seems to me that it was nothing but
a watering depot in the midst of the stretch of sixty-eight
miles. If my memory serves me, there was no well or spring at
this place, but the water was hauled there by mule and ox teams
from the further side of the desert. There was a stage station
there. It was forty-five miles from the beginning of the desert,
and twenty-three from the end of it.
We plowed and dragged and groped along, the whole live-long
night, and at the end of this uncomfortable twelve hours we
finished the forty-five-mile part of the desert and got to the
stage station where the imported water was. The sun was just
rising. It was easy enough to cross a desert in the night while
we were asleep; and it was pleasant to reflect, in the morning,
that we in actual person had encountered an absolute desert and
could always speak knowingly of deserts in presence of the
ignorant thenceforward. And it was pleasant also to reflect that
this was not an obscure, back country desert, but a very
celebrated one, the metropolis itself, as you may say. All this
was very well and very comfortable and satisfactory—but now we
were to cross a desert in daylight. This was
fine—novel—romantic—dramatically adventurous—this, indeed,
was worth living for, worth traveling for! We would write home
all about it.
This enthusiasm, this stern thirst for adventure, wilted under
the sultry August sun and did not last above one hour. One poor
little hour—and then we were ashamed that we had “gushed” so.
The poetry was all in the anticipation—there is none in the
reality. Imagine a vast, waveless ocean stricken dead and turned
to ashes; imagine this solemn waste tufted with ash-dusted
sage-bushes; imagine the lifeless silence and solitude that
belong to such a place; imagine a coach, creeping like a bug
through the midst of this shoreless level, and sending up tumbled
volumes of dust as if it were a bug that went by steam; imagine
this aching monotony of toiling and plowing kept up hour after
hour, and the shore still as far away as ever, apparently;
imagine team, driver, coach and passengers so deeply coated with
ashes that they are all one colorless color; imagine ash-drifts
roosting above moustaches and eyebrows like snow accumulations on
boughs and bushes. This is the reality of it.
The sun beats down with dead, blistering, relentless
malignity; the perspiration is welling from every pore in man and
beast, but scarcely a sign of it finds its way to the surface—it
is absorbed before it gets there; there is not the faintest
breath of air stirring; there is not a merciful shred of cloud in
all the brilliant firmament; there is not a living creature
visible in any direction whither one searches the blank level
that stretches its monotonous miles on every hand; there is not a
sound—not a sigh—not a whisper—not a buzz, or a whir of wings,
or distant pipe of bird—not even a sob from the lost souls that
doubtless people that dead air. And so the occasional sneezing of
the resting mules, and the champing of the bits, grate harshly on
the grim stillness, not dissipating the spell but accenting it
and making one feel more lonesome and forsaken than before.
The mules, under violent swearing, coaxing and whip-cracking,
would make at stated intervals a “spurt,” and drag the coach a
hundred or may be two hundred yards, stirring up a billowy cloud
of dust that rolled back, enveloping the vehicle to the
wheel-tops or higher, and making it seem afloat in a fog. Then a
rest followed, with the usual sneezing and bit-champing. Then
another “spurt” of a hundred yards and another rest at the end of
it. All day long we kept this up, without water for the mules and
without ever changing the team. At least we kept it up ten hours,
which, I take it, is a day, and a pretty honest one, in an alkali
desert. It was from four in the morning till two in the
afternoon. And it was so hot! and so close! and our water
canteens went dry in the middle of the day and we got so thirsty!
It was so stupid and tiresome and dull! and the tedious hours did
lag and drag and limp along with such a cruel deliberation! It
was so trying to give one’s watch a good long undisturbed spell
and then take it out and find that it had been fooling away the
time and not trying to get ahead any! The alkali dust cut through
our lips, it persecuted our eyes, it ate through the delicate
membranes and made our noses bleed and kept them bleeding—and
truly and seriously the romance all faded far away and
disappeared, and left the desert trip nothing but a harsh
reality—a thirsty, sweltering, longing, hateful reality!
Two miles and a quarter an hour for ten hours—that was what
we accomplished. It was hard to bring the comprehension away down
to such a snail-pace as that, when we had been used to making
eight and ten miles an hour. When we reached the station on the
farther verge of the desert, we were glad, for the first time,
that the dictionary was along, because we never could have found
language to tell how glad we were, in any sort of dictionary but
an unabridged one with pictures in it. But there could not have
been found in a whole library of dictionaries language sufficient
to tell how tired those mules were after their twenty-three mile
pull. To try to give the reader an idea of how thirsty they were,
would be to “gild refined gold or paint the lily.”
Somehow, now that it is there, the quotation does not seem to
fit—but no matter, let it stay, anyhow. I think it is a graceful
and attractive thing, and therefore have tried time and time
again to work it in where it would fit, but could not succeed.
These efforts have kept my mind distracted and ill at ease, and
made my narrative seem broken and disjointed, in places. Under
these circumstances it seems to me best to leave it in, as above,
since this will afford at least a temporary respite from the wear
and tear of trying to “lead up” to this really apt and beautiful
quotation.
