spotless snow. Away off to
the north-east, beyond the brown and gray pastures, across a far line
distinct in dull color, lay the Painted Desert, like a mirage, like a
really painted landscape, glowing in red and orange and pink, an immense
city rather than a landscape, with towers and terraces and facades,
melting into indistinctness as in a rosy mist, spectral but constant,
weltering in a tropic glow and heat, walls and columns and shafts, the
wreck of an Oriental capital on a wide violet plain, suffused with
brilliant color softened into exquisite shades. All over this region
nature has such surprises, that laugh at our inadequate conception of
her resources.

Our camp for the night was at the next place where water could be
obtained, a station of the Arizona Cattle Company. Abundant water is
piped down to it from mountain springs. The log-house and stable of the
cow-boys were unoccupied, and we pitched our tent on a knoll by the
corral. The night was absolutely dry, and sparkling with the starlight.
A part of the company spread their blankets on the ground under the sky.
It is apt to be cold in this region towards morning, but lodging in the
open air is no hardship in this delicious climate. The next day the way
part of the distance, with only a road marked by wagon wheels, was
through extensive and barren-looking cattle ranges, through pretty vales
of grass surrounded by stunted cedars, and over stormy ridges and plains
of sand and small bowlders. The water having failed at Red Horse, the
only place where it is usually found in the day's march, our horses went
without, and we had resource to our canteens. The whole country is
essentially arid, but snow falls in the winter-time, and its melting,
with occasional showers in the summer, create what are called surface
wells, made by drainage. Many of them go dry by June. There had been no
rain in the region since the last of March, but clouds were gathering
daily, and showers are always expected in July. The phenomenon of rain
on this baked surface, in this hot air, and with this immense horizon,
is very interesting. Showers in this tentative time are local. In our
journey we saw showers far off, we experienced a dash for ten minutes,
but it was local, covering not more than a mile or two square. We have
in sight a vast canopy of blue sky, of forming and dispersing clouds. It
is difficult for them to drop their moisture in the rising columns of
hot air. The result at tim