outcropping of
clay-amber and cream and cinnamon and green, all exquisitely vivid and
clear. This bright spot appeared to be isolated. Far above it rose other
clay slopes of variegated hues, red and russet and mauve and gray, and
colors indescribably merged, all running in veins through this range of
hills. We faced the west again, and descending this valley were soon
greeted by a region of clay hills, bare, cone-shaped, fantastic in
shade, slope, and ridge, with a high sharp peak dominating all. The
colors were mauve, taupe, pearl-gray, all stained by a descending band
of crimson, as if a higher slope had been stabbed to let its life blood
flow down. The softness, the richness and beauty of this texture of
earth amazed and delighted my eyes.

Quite unprepared, at time approaching sunset, we reached and rounded a
sharp curve, to see down and far away, and to be held mute in our
tracks. Between a white-mantled mountain range on the left and the
dark-striped lofty range on the right I could see far down into a gulf,
a hazy void, a vast stark valley that seemed streaked and ridged and
canyoned, an abyss into which veils of rain were dropping and over which
broken clouds hung, pierced by red and gold rays.

Death Valley! Far down and far away still, yet confounding at first
sight! I gazed spellbound. It oppressed my heart. Nielsen stood like a
statue, silent, absorbed for a moment, then he strode on. I followed,
and every second saw more and different aspects, that could not,
however, change the first stunning impression. Immense, unreal, weird! I
went on down the widening canyon, looking into that changing void. How
full of color! It smoked. The traceries of streams or shining white
washes brightened the floor of the long dark pit. Patches and plains of
white, borax flats or alkali, showed up like snow. A red haze, sinister
and sombre, hung over the eastern ramparts of this valley, and over the
western drooped gray veils of rain, like thinnest lacy clouds, through
which gleams of the sun shone.

Nielsen plodded on, mindful of our mules. But I lingered, and at last
checked my reluctant steps at an open high point with commanding and
magnificent view. As I did not attempt the impossible--to write down
thoughts and sensations--afterward I could remember only a few. How
desolate and grand! The far-away, lonely and terrible places of the
earth were the most beautiful and elevating. Life's little day seemed so
easy to underst