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Show 176 WESTERN WILDS. anxiety, and sustaining fatigue by thoughts of how much worse the travel would be in the daytime. Soon after midnight the storm ceased; and at two in the morning, I found myself on the western slope of River Bed, and in another hour the telegraph poles loomed up out of the darkness. Never would I have believed that a man could be so glad to see a telegraph pole. Thence the road was plain: the sky was clear, though the air was very cold, and I thought to sleep till daylight. But it wouldn't do. I couldn't cuddle to sage-brush, and stiff with cold, I got up and toiled on. Looking back from the rising ground over the desert, I saw the most sublime scene I have witnessed for many a day. There was not a cloud in the sky, the air was in a dead calm, and the gibbous moon was just sinking behind the Dugway Range. Bathed in its mellow light the white plain took on a glory that was indescribable. The mountain ranges and isolated red buttes glowed like silver on one side, and on the other cast great pointed shadows for miles upon the white surface. The snow- clad peaks above Deep Creek shone with a dazzling light; the blue peaks of Granite Mountain seemed to be painted against the clear sky, while on its western face the porphyry dykes gleamed like burnished copper. Between the mountains where the view of the plain was un-obstructed, it seemed to rise and fade away into the horizon. I forgot cold and hunger m gazing upon the sight. Soon, however, mountain, peak, butte, and plain, seemed to sink down into an abyss, as the moon disappeared; and for an hour I had only the stars to guide me. Then suddenly from the peak I had made my landmark, a purple streamerstretched away to the zenith ; then another between that and the southern horizon ; then another and another, and soon the wr holc firmament took on a purple glow, while the rugged top of the Onan-noquah Range seemed clearly outlined against the eastern sky. Then the purple hue gave way to a pale rosy color, the rose to crimson, and the crimson again to yellow; one by one the stars faded out, and I saw the snowy tops of Deep Creek Mountain faintly tipped with the LOST ON THK DKSEltT. |
