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Show 124 WESTERN WILDS. basins the land at a distance from the mountains is a complete desert, generally whitened by alkali. For days of travel the face of nature is a dirty white, and in dry weather an acrid and irritating dust powders the traveler until all races are of one hue. In every Terri-tory are found such tracts, known by suggestive names : The Jornada del Muerto, or " Journey of the Dead," in New Mexico ; the Salt Desert, west of Great Salt Lake, covering 5,000 square miles; the Great Nevada Desert, 25,000 square miles of utter desolation ; the White Desert, Red Desert, Mohave Desert, Skull Valley, Death Val-ley, the Mala Pais of the Spaniard and the Mauvaises Terres of the French voyageur. Where the stage route crosses such a tract, the animals labor through a cloud of dust, and the coach drags heavily; the wheels " cry " as they grind in the sand and soda, and the pas-sengers endure as best they can the irritation to eye and nostril and the slime formed upon the body by dust and sweat. This penetrating alkaline powder sifts in at the smallest crevice, and even the clothing in a valise is often covered by it. Such are the worst sections of the West. Next above them are the grassy plains, though still unfit for agriculture. Of the million square miles above bounded, at least one- third produces bunch- grass, which chiefly differs from the verdure of the East in that it never forms a continuous sod or green sward; it grows in scattered clumps, six or eight to the square rod, or thicker where the locality is favorable. One can span a bunch at the roots, but above it spreads; sometimes several bunches grow so as to form a clump a foot wide. It is never of a deep green, and for three- quarters of the year is a regular gray-brown ; hence an Eastern man might ride all day through rich past-ures of it, and think himself in a complete desert. It gets its entire growth in about six weeks, some time between January and July, according to the locality. It then cures upon the* ground, and stands through the year looking very much like bunches of broom- sedge. It is as nutritious as ripe oats, the species with a white top, containing a small black seed, being particularly fattening. With it animals make journeys of a thousand miles without an ounce of grain; with-out it, nine- tenths of America between meridians 100 and 120 would be totally worthless. Probably the most disappointing feature in Rocky Mountain scenery, to all new- comers, is the absence of a green landscape ; for with rare exceptions the traveler's eye does not rest in summer upon an unvary-ing carpet of green as in the East. The bunch- grass is a pale green, or quite gray or yellow; the small sage- brush is white, and the large |