At eight in the morning we reached the remnant and ruin of what had been
the important military station of “Camp Floyd,” some
forty-five or fifty miles from Salt Lake City. At four P.M. we had doubled
our distance and were ninety or a hundred miles from Salt Lake. And now we
entered upon one of that species of deserts whose concentrated hideousness
shames the diffused and diluted horrors of Sahara—an “alkali”
desert. For sixty-eight miles there was but one break in it. I do not
remember that this was really a break; indeed it seems to me that it was
nothing but a watering depot in the midst of the stretch of
sixty-eight miles. If my memory serves me, there was no well or spring at
this place, but the water was hauled there by mule and ox teams from the
further side of the desert. There was a stage station there. It was
forty-five miles from the beginning of the desert, and twenty-three from
the end of it.
We plowed and dragged and groped along, the whole live-long night, and at
the end of this uncomfortable twelve hours we finished the forty-five mile
part of the desert and got to the stage station where the imported water
was. The sun was just rising. It was easy enough to cross a desert in the
night while we were asleep; and it was pleasant to reflect, in the
morning, that we in actual person had encountered an absolute
desert and could always speak knowingly of deserts in presence of the
ignorant thenceforward. And it was pleasant also to reflect that this was
not an obscure, back country desert, but a very celebrated one, the
metropolis itself, as you may say. All this was very well and very
comfortable and satisfactory—but now we were to cross a desert in daylight.
This was fine—novel—romantic—dramatically adventurous—this,
indeed, was worth living for, worth traveling for! We would write home all
about it.
This enthusiasm, this stern thirst for adventure, wilted under the sultry
August sun and did not last above one hour. One poor little hour—and
then we were ashamed that we had “gushed” so. The poetry was
all in the anticipation—there is none in the reality. Imagine a
vast, waveless ocean stricken dead and turned to ashes; imagine this
solemn waste tufted with ash-dusted sage-bushes; imagine the lifeless
silence and solitude that belong to such a place; imagine a coach,
creeping like a bug through the midst of this shoreless level, and sending
up tumbled volumes of dust as if it were a bug that went by steam; imagine
this aching monotony of toiling and plowing kept up hour after hour, and
the shore still as far away as ever, apparently; imagine team, driver,
coach and passengers so deeply coated with ashes that they are all one
colorless color; imagine ash-drifts roosting above moustaches and eyebrows
like snow accumulations on boughs and bushes. This is the reality of it.
The sun beats down with dead, blistering, relentless malignity; the
perspiration is welling from every pore in man and beast, but scarcely a
sign of it finds its way to the surface—it is absorbed before it
gets there; there is not the faintest breath of air stirring; there is not
a merciful shred of cloud in all the brilliant firmament; there is not a
living creature visible in any direction whither one searches the
blank level that stretches its monotonous miles on every hand; there is
not a sound—not a sigh—not a whisper—not a buzz, or a
whir of wings, or distant pipe of bird—not even a sob from the lost
souls that doubtless people that dead air. And so the occasional sneezing
of the resting mules, and the champing of the bits, grate harshly on the
grim stillness, not dissipating the spell but accenting it and making one
feel more lonesome and forsaken than before.
The mules, under violent swearing, coaxing and whip-cracking, would make
at stated intervals a “spurt,” and drag the coach a hundred or
may be two hundred yards, stirring up a billowy cloud of dust that rolled
back, enveloping the vehicle to the wheel-tops or higher, and making it
seem afloat in a fog. Then a rest followed, with the usual sneezing and
bit-champing. Then another “spurt” of a hundred yards and
another rest at the end of it. All day long we kept this up, without water
for the mules and without ever changing the team. At least we kept it up
ten hours, which, I take it, is a day, and a pretty honest one, in an
alkali desert. It was from four in the morning till two in the afternoon.
And it was so hot! and so close! and our water canteens went dry in the
middle of the day and we got so thirsty! It was so stupid and tiresome and
dull! and the tedious hours did lag and drag and limp along with such a
cruel deliberation! It was so trying to give one’s watch a good long
undisturbed spell and then take it out and find that it had been fooling
away the time and not trying to get ahead any! The alkali dust cut through
our lips, it persecuted our eyes, it ate through the delicate membranes
and made our noses bleed and kept them bleeding—and truly and
seriously the romance all faded far away and disappeared, and left the
desert trip nothing but a harsh reality—a thirsty, sweltering,
longing, hateful reality!
Two miles and a quarter an hour for ten hours—that was what we
accomplished. It was hard to bring the comprehension away down to such a
snail-pace as that, when we had been used to making eight and ten miles an
hour. When we reached the station on the farther verge of the desert, we
were glad, for the first time, that the dictionary was along, because we
never could have found language to tell how glad we were, in any sort of
dictionary but an unabridged one with pictures in it. But there could not
have been found in a whole library of dictionaries language sufficient to
tell how tired those mules were after their twenty-three mile pull. To try
to give the reader an idea of how thirsty they were, would be to
“gild refined gold or paint the lily.”
Somehow, now that it is there, the quotation does not seem to fit—but
no matter, let it stay, anyhow. I think it is a graceful and attractive
thing, and therefore have tried time and time again to work it in where it
would fit, but could not succeed. These efforts have kept my mind
distracted and ill at ease, and made my narrative seem broken and
disjointed, in places. Under these circumstances it seems to me best to
leave it in, as above, since this will afford at least a temporary respite
from the wear and tear of trying to “lead up” to this really
apt and beautiful quotation.
