18. CHAPTER XVIII.
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.