OCR Text |
Show 70 BY PATH AND TRAIL. then in this awesome peninsular furnace, the air is burn ing, the sand hot as volcanic ash, and the silence like unto that which was when God said " Let there be light." The deserts of this mysterious land are regions of sand where earth and sky form a circle as distinct as that traced by a sweep of the compass. Into this desolation of sterility and solitude man enters at his peril, for here the deadly horned rattlesnake, the white scorpion, thirst and sweatless heat invite him to his ruin and offer a constant menace to life. If with de termined purpose he dares his fate and attempts the crossing of the parched and desolate land, the white glare reflected from the treacherous sand threatens him with blindness. At times he encounters the deadly sand storms of this awful wilderness of aridity, the driving and whirling sands blister his face and carry oppression to his breathing. If the water he carries fail him, he may find a depression half full of mockery and disap pointment, for its waters hold in solution alkali, alum or arsenic, and bear madness or death in their alluring ap pearance. If night overtake him and sleep oppress him, he must be careful where he takes his rest, lest a storm break upon him and bury him under its ever- shifting sands, and if he sleeps well he may never awake. And these storms are capricious, for, after welcoming the unhappy man to a hospitable grave in the desert and covering him with a mound many feet high and of liberal circumfer ence, they are not satisfied to let him rest in peace, for, months later, it may be years, they scatter the dune and expose the mummified body. There are here no vultures to clean the bones, for the vulture is the hyena of the air and lives on putrefaction, and there is here no decompos- |