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Page 40
My next camp was near the heart of the basin, at the head of a grand
system of cascades from ten to two hundred feet high, one following
the other in close succession and making a total descent of nearly
seventeen hundred feet. The rocks above me leaned over in a
threatening way and were full of seams, making the camp a very unsafe
one during an earthquake.
Next day the chaparral, in ascending the eastern rim of the basin,
was, if possible, denser and more stubbornly bayoneted than ever. I
followed bear trails, where in some places I found tufts of their hair
that had been pulled out in squeezing a way through; but there was
much of a very interesting character that far overpaid all my pains.
Most of the plants are identical with those of the Sierra, but there
are quite a number of Mexican species. One coniferous tree was all I
found. This is a spruce of a species new to me, Douglasii
macrocarpa.[14]
My last camp was down at the narrow, notched bottom of a dry channel,
the only open way for the life in the neighborhood. I therefore lay
between two fires, built to fence out snakes and wolves.
From the summit of the eastern rim I had a glorious view of the valley
out to the ocean, which would require a whole book for its
description. My bread gave out a day before reaching the settlements,
but I felt all the fresher and clearer for the fast.
XII
Nevada Farms[15]
To the farmer who comes to this thirsty land from beneath rainy skies,
Nevada seems one vast desert, all sage and sand, hopelessly
irredeemable now and forever. And this, under present conditions, is
severely true. For notwithstanding it has gardens, grainfields, and
hayfields generously productive, these compared with the arid
stretches of valley and plain, as beheld in general views from the
mountain tops, are mere specks lying inconspicuously here and there,
in out-of-the-way places, often thirty or forty miles apart.
In leafy regions, blessed with copious rains, we learn to measure the
productive capacity of the soil by its natural vegetation. But this
rule is almost wholly inapplicable here, for, notwithstanding its
savage nakedness, scarce at all veiled by a sparse growth of sage and
linosyris[16], the desert soil of the Great Basin is as rich in the
elements that in rainy regions rise and ripen into food as that of any
other State in the Union. The rocks of its numerous mountain ranges
have been thoroughly crushed and ground by glaciers, thrashed and
vitalized by the sun, and sifted and outspread in lake basins by
powerful torrents that attended the breaking-up of the glacial period,
as if in every way Nature had been making haste to prepare the land
for the husbandman. Soil, climate, topographical conditions, all that
the most exacting could demand, are present, but one thing, water, is
wanting. The present rainfall would be wholly inadequate for
agriculture, even if it were advantageously distributed over the
lowlands, while in fact the greater portion is poured out on the
heights in sudden and violent thundershowers called "cloud-bursts,"
the waters of which are fruitlessly swallowed up in sandy gulches and
deltas a few minutes after their first boisterous appearance. The
principal mountain chains, trending nearly north and south, parallel
with the Sierra and the Wahsatch, receive a good deal of snow during
winter, but no great masses are stored up as fountains for large
perennial streams capable of irrigating considerable areas. Most of
it is melted before the end of May and absorbed by moraines and
gravelly taluses, which send forth small rills that slip quietly down
the upper canyons through narrow strips of flowery verdure, most of
them sinking and vanishing before they reach the base of their
fountain ranges. Perhaps not one in ten of the whole number flow out
into the open plains, not a single drop reaches the sea, and only a
few are large enough to irrigate more than one farm of moderate size.
It is upon these small outflowing rills that most of the Nevada
ranches are located, lying countersunk beneath the general level, just
where the mountains meet the plains, at an average elevation of five
thousand feet above sea level. All the cereals and garden vegetables
thrive here, and yield bountiful crops. Fruit, however, has been, as
yet, grown successfully in only a few specially favored spots.
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