The Land of Lure

[...]intervals by the bleached bones of animals which had perished of thirst within a short distance of abundance of cool dear water that a caprice of nature had rendered, like fools gold, alluring, but of no value. For fifteen or twenty miles the road ran tortuously among the huge boulders that had fallen from the crest of the solid walls that arose hundreds of feet on either side, the crevices and nooks of which were the haunts of the rattlesnake and lizard. The projecting ledges that occasionally occurred showed signs of being the nesting place of hundreds of hawks that circled in an aimless manner at dizzy heights above this giant crevice. Limpid pools of alkaline water lay teeming beneath the blistering suns rays, their white salty rim unmarked by the footprints of any living thing, accursed by nature and abhorred by all God's creatures, wasting their contents by evaporation during the summer, and replenished by the torrents that rushed through this abandoned water course during the annual spring thaw. That it had been a water course was evidenced by the beds of well worn gravel, devoid of all soil, and the marks of the constant wash of the waves on the face of the cliffs on either side. Who knows but what at some remote period the mighty Columbia river had flowed through this[...].