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Their kind host and his family then explain to them how they came to live where they do, and what a lovely place it is. Reid is very knowledgeable about animals and also plants. Much of the rest of the book is taken up with tales of encounters with various animals, and with stories of the uses of many trees and shrubs. It is written in an unusual style, but in fact, because of the shortness of the chapters, it can hold the reader's attention very well. As with several other books by this author it had been very badly typeset, apparently using old and damaged type.
This made the OCRed version of the text come out very full of misreads, but it was fun tidying this up. Apologies if any more misreads come to light. There is a great desert in the interior of North America. It is almost as large as the famous Saara of Africa. It is fifteen hundred miles long, and a thousand wide.
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Now, if it were of a regular shape that is to say, a parallelogram you could at once compute its area, by multiplying the length upon the breadth; and you would obtain one million and a half for the result one million and a half of square miles. Tamar rated it really liked it Feb 01, Menia rated it it was amazing Mar 26, Dmitry Gorodock rated it it was amazing Apr 22, Hannah rated it it was amazing Oct 08, Tiruvalam Gopaal rated it liked it Jul 22, George rated it liked it Sep 03, Sergey Barsamyan rated it it was amazing Jan 25, Garry B Thate rated it it was ok Jan 05, Oksana rated it really liked it Sep 06, James Harms rated it really liked it Feb 08, LostInParadise rated it really liked it Jul 25, Sekhmet rated it really liked it Jul 25, Tommie Gallagher rated it it was amazing Apr 27, Evgeniy Vasilev rated it really liked it Dec 02, Cristhian rated it liked it May 05, Bindweed rated it it was ok May 28, Chris Barraclough rated it it was amazing Oct 27, Orkeatu rated it liked it Mar 15, This is your idea of a desert, is it not?
Well, it is not altogether the correct one. It is true that in almost every desert there are these sandy plains, yet are there other parts of its surface of a far different character, equally deserving the name of desert. There are, also, fertile spots, at wide distances from each other, covered with trees, and shrubs, and beautiful vegetation.
Some of these spots are small, while others are of large extent, and inhabited by independent tribes, and even whole kingdoms of people.
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There are other plains, equally large, where no sand appears, but brown barren earth utterly destitute of vegetation. There are others, again, on which grows a stunted shrub with leaves of a pale silvery colour. In some places it grows so thickly, interlocking its twisted and knotty branches, that a horseman can hardly ride through among them.
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Other plains are met with that present a black aspect to the traveller. These are covered with lava, that at some distant period of time has been vomited forth from volcanic mountains, and now lies frozen up, and broken into small fragments like the stones upon a new-made road. Still other plains present themselves in the American Desert. Some are white, as if snow had fallen freshly upon them, and yet it is not snow, but salt!
Yes; pure white salt — covering the ground six inches deep, and for fifty miles in every direction! Others, again, have a similar appearance; but instead of salt, you find the substance which covers them to be soda — a beautiful efflorescence of soda! There are mountains, too — indeed, one-half of this Desert is very mountainous; and the great chain of the Rocky Mountains — of which you have no doubt heard — runs sheer through it from north to south, and divides it into two nearly equal parts. But there are other mountains besides these; mountains of every height, and sometimes in their shape and colour presenting very striking and singular appearance.
The Desert Home The Adventures of a Lost Family in the Wilderness
Some of them run for miles in horizontal ridges like the roofs of houses, and seemingly so narrow at their tops that one might sit astride of them. Others, again, of a conical form, stand out in the plain apart from the rest, and look like teacups turned upside down in the middle of a table. These mountains are of many colours.
Some are dark, or dark-green, or blue when seen from a distance. They are of this colour when covered by forests of pine or cedar, both of which trees are found in great plenty among the mountains of the Desert. There are many mountains, where no trees are seen, nor any signs of vegetation along their sides.
Huge naked rocks of granite appear piled upon each other, or jutting out over dark and frowning chasms. There are peaks perfectly white, because they are covered with a thick mantle of snow. These can always be seen from the greatest distance, as the snow lying upon them all the year without melting proves them to be of vast elevation above the level of the sea. There are other peaks almost as white, and yet it is not with snow.
They are of a milky hue, and stunted cedar-trees may be seen clinging in seams and crevices along their sides. These are mountains of pure limestone, or the white quartz rock. There are mountains, again, upon which neither tree nor leaf is to be; seen; but, in their stead, the most vivid colours of red and green and yellow and white, appearing in stripes along their sides, as though they had been freshly painted.
These stripes mark the strata of different coloured rocks, of which the mountains are composed.
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And there are still other mountains in the Great American Desert, to startle the traveller with their strange appearance. They are those that glitter with the mica and selenite. These, when seen from a distance flashing under the sun, look as though they were mountains of silver and gold! Strange rivers are they.
Some run over broad shallow beds of bright sand. Large rivers — hundreds of yards in width, with sparkling waters. Follow them down their course. What do you find? Instead of growing larger, like the rivers of your own land, they become less and less, until at length their waters sink into the sands, and you see nothing but the dry channel for miles after miles!
Go still farther down, and again the water appears, and increases in volume, until — thousands of miles from the sea — large ships can float upon their bosom. Such are the Arkansas and the Platte.
The Desert Home: The Adventures of a Lost Family in the Wilderness
Often these banks extend for hundreds of miles, so steep at all points that one cannot go down to the bed of their stream; and often — often — the traveller has perished with thirst, while the roar of their water was sounding in his ears! Such are the Colorado and the Snake. Still others go sweeping through the broad plains, tearing up the clay with their mighty floods, and year after year changing their channels, until they are sometimes an hundred miles from their ancient beds.
Here they are found gurgling for many leagues under ground — under vast rafts formed by the trees which they have borne downward in their current. There you find them winding by a thousand loops like the sinuosities of a great serpent, rolling sluggishly along, with waters red and turbid as though they were rivers of blood! Such are the Brazos and the Red River. Strange rivers are they that struggle through the mountains, and valleys, and plateau-lands of the Great American Desert.
Not less strange are its lakes. Some lie in the deep recesses of hills that dip down so steeply you cannot reach their shores; while the mountains around them are so bleak and naked, that not even a bird ever wings its flight across their silent waters. Other lakes are seen in broad, barren plains; and yet, a few years after, the traveller finds them not — they have dried up and disappeared.