pictures of an flnlanf) Sea, pictures of an Unlanb Sea Hlfrefc Xambourne Ubc 5>eseret Mews Publishers* Copyrighted by ALFRED LAMBOURNE, 1902. Bancroft Ll^rarv preface. These pictures, if such slight memoranda can fitly be called pictures, now appear in their fourth guise. They were, in part, first issued as news- paper and magazine articles, and secondly as an illustrated pamphlet. The latter publication was given an extensive circulation on both sides the Atlantic, having passed through many issues, so that, in that form at least, they appear to contain some ten years having elapsed between the first and last editions a lasting vitality. They were also distributed in book form as presentation sou venirs, very few of these, however, having been seen by the public. It was the interest accorded to the earlier issues of the word pictures that led to their being b ought out in the present volume, and in which an entirely new arrangement of the mat ter they contain has been made. As will readily be seen, the pictures are com posed almost entirely of paragraphs taken from an irregular diary, segregated, of course, from other matter contained therein, and re-arranged with now and then a conjunctional word or sentence^ and a few explanatory and imaginative para- EVA PREFACE graphs. They have, I fear, a degree of harshness in transition that will, no doubt, be unpleasant to the reader, for I have thought it best to leave each entry in the rough. In one instance there has been a direct transference of thought, and several para graphs have been taken from now discarded arti cles and given here a place. They are, on the whole, purely descriptive, although containing a few extracts from entries made in the introspec tive or speculative mood. In the present arrangement a license was taken for the sake of unity. The plan allows of the mat ter being arranged for artistic effect, that is, irre spective oj the order in which it was obtained. The imaginary part lessens not, I trust, the value of that which is truth. The lines of demarcation are plain, and there is no encroachment of inven tion upon fact. I mean in the descriptions the main part of the text. It was the writer's desire to carry out to the full the plan here outlined. He did build a hut on the now noted island, and in tended to live therein. He would, had it been possible to him, have made out of what is now but a past dream, an unquestioned reality, so that, after all, although a certain amount of the frame work which holds these descriptions together, is fiction pure and simple, it is a truth in the writer's mind. The arrangement by which he surrendered his homestead entry No. 12592 to the State of PREFACE Utah, the legal fight thereafter, the questions as to whether the land was of a mineral or of an agri cultural character, are matters of local and de partmental record. The receipts for attorney's fees; papers of hearing; demurrers, answers to demurrers, etc., without end, are facts, and so too, are the circulars, catalogues, etc., which I received whilst planning my vineyard; a vineyard which the daily papers declared at the time, was to be like unto that of Naboth, whose luxuriant beauty caused a tragic episode in the history of ancient Zion. Captain Stansbury first pointed out (in his report of surveys 1849 50} how very much in the way of unusual scenery might be enjoyed on a cruise that would comprehend all parts of the Inland Sea; and its briny waters and their sur roundings, as viewed from the southern mainland, certainly make such a circumnavigation appear desirable. It was on such a lengthened cruise that the picturesque nature of Gunnison Island was made apparent to the writer, and he felt his desire to live upon it. This, too, was long before his homesteading of the place was a possibility. The pictures are the result of that first and subsequent visits, and through an intimate acquaintance with the moods of the Inland Sea. Perhaps the pictures contain too much of the superlative vein; but nothing has been exagger- PREFACE ated. That which is distinctive to the place of their making that has been dwelt upon. All that is told as having been seen was seen, and may be seen again by any who may so desire. Even uuhile I write, the engineers are at work on the Lucin cut off, a piece of railroading skill that will take the traveling public who make the overland trip across the main reach of the Inland Sea, and within sight of Gunnison Island, so that by the many the truth or untruth of these pictures may then be known. The paragraphs were selected to one selection, many discarded to form strong, simple word-pictures; to give an impress such as was made upon the mind of him who wrote them. The writer, however, does not try to corroborate or to chime in with any previous statements. He told to his diary his own emotions and seeings alone. May he here express what has been his hope in arranging these pages that whatever shortcom ings the work may contain, the new reader, who soever or wheresoever he may be, will pardon the putting forth of an uncompleted task, and at the same time see in the design, something of a true artistic purpose, a harmony in this recalling, this sketching of scenes, all of which were found within the circle of horizon visible from his own doorstep. Contents* Introduction. Gbe ITnlanD Sea. I. (Bunnison ITslanfc in Winter. II. TUfltlD anD TlGlinDi5 /Iftarcb. HI. "UlnDer tbe Dog Star. IV. IDofce of tbe Swan. v. (Sunnteon ITslanD jfarewell. Supplement plates. I. Sunrise at (Bunnison HslanD. II. Gbe mortb Cliff. in. Desolate bores. IV. 3Blacfc *Rocfc from tbe Dunes. V. awlliQbt at tbe /Rarsbes. VI. Htterglow on tbe *QClasatcb. VII. Ht IRest promontory point. "That is lest which lieth nearest." flntrotwctfon, The Inland Sea is unique. In the Quarter- nary period, so our geologists tell us, a vast body of glacier-fed waters covered the valleys of north-western Utah. Of the ancient Bon- neville, as that vanished sea is designated, our subject is the bitter fragment. Much has been written of late concerning this reminder of other days, but only, aside from scientific statements, in glittering generalities, and by men whose knowledge of the facts was but superficial indeed. The truth is that the Inland Sea, or the Great Salt Lake as it is more often called, is neither the sullen, listless, deadly sheet of water it was once described as being, nor is it, on the contrary, that realm of endless charm which late travelers and writers have endeavored to make it appear. It is compos ite. Alternately, we are captivated by the 15 INTEODUCTION. strange beauty it presents, and repelled by the ugliness that is seen along its shores. By the low grounds marking the margins of the valleys, or where the tall, dark hills slope down to the water's edge in commonplace, rounded forms, or with broad, flat, sage- covered spaces between their feet and the shore, the ugliness is most apparent. Larva- covered, or white with encrusted salt and alkali, the beaches at those places are truly forbidding. The eye is offended, the mind is distressed. Melancholy has taken up its permanent abode along those repellant and desolate shores. Elsewhere, despite this fact, attractions, and even remarkable beauties are seldom wanting. Where the mountains stoop precipi tously to the sea, or where the islands lift abruptly from its shining surface, are scenes both grand and imposing. The pale green water breaks in turquoise waves upon beaches of glistening pebbles, or lies stilly transparent upon stretches of soft, white sand. Where the streams enter the sea on its eastern side, 16 INTEODUCTION are extensive marshes, haunted by the birds usually found under such conditions, and other wild birds dwell on the islands. The western shores are strewn with monstrous boulders, or littered with great heaps of fallen stone; high cliffs look down upon the passer-by; along the far horizon are chains of lofty and noble mountains, and always is the Inland Sea strangely respondent to the changing skies and the light of a brilliant and prismatic luminary. In altitude, the Inland Sea is 4,210 feet above ocean level; its length is somewhat between seventy and eighty miles, its width between thirty and forty, and in outline is somewhat peculiar. Roughly speaking, it may be said to resemble a human hand. The fingers are pressed together and point toward the north, north-west. The stretch of water forming the thumb is known as Bear River Bay, and the dividing mountains between thumb and fingers, as Promontory Range, In the palm of the hand are four large islands Stansbury's, Antelope or Church, Carrington 3 17 INTRODUCTION and Fremont, and besides these, three that are smaller lie away to the north Strong's Knob, Dolphin Island and Gunnison. Along the eastern shore lie the Wasatch Mountains, a bold and picturesque chain, to the south are the less known and lower Oquirrhs, the Tuilla or Grantsville Mountains, and to the west, the Terrace and other spurs of the Desert Range. Black Rock, Garfield Beach, and Saltair Pavilion are all on the southern shore. From either of these three named points, looking northward, sky and water are seen to meet, save on very clear days, when the Malad, and the white, snow-covered peaks of the Raft River Mountains, greet the sight, defining in that direction the barrier line to the ancient Bonneville. 18 (Bunnteon Itelaufc in TKHinter pictures of an Unlanb Sea i. <5unnt0on 1F$lan& fn WUnter Ghostly, wrapped in its shroud of snow, my island stands white above the blackness of unfreezing waters. What have I done? Although I had lived by anticipation these days, no sooner did the sails of the departing yacht vanish below the watery horizon, and leave me with my thoughts alone, than I realized at once, and with a strange sinking of the heart, too, how more intense indeed, how deeper than all imagining, is the wildness and desolation of the savage poem around me. THE INLAND SEA Clearly an error one should not be rash! In winter this comfortless place might be some lonely spot of the Arctic. Often on still nights the snow around my dwelling is illumined by the boreal light, and at times of tempest is heard through the hours the grind ing of boulders as they are lifted by the heavy waters and then let fall again to pound great holes in the outlying strata, or the roar of the breakers as they hurl briny foam far up the face of the northern cliff. "A man," says Alger, "may keep by himself because he is either a knave or a fool," and the wise Lord Bacon, in writing "Of Friend ship," has quoted in italics this sentence from Aristotle, "Whosoever is delighted in solitude is either a wild beast or a god." Now I am not a knave, and there are good reasons I hope, why I should not consider myself a fool. Neither am I a wild beast, nor do I arrogate unto myself the being a god. And yet, for the time being, I have chosen to be alone. What writes Schopenhauer? "What a man 22 THE INLAND SEA has in himself," argues the sage, "is the chief element in his happiness. But this," he makes haste to define as "apart from health and beauty the power to observe and commune." "The proper study of mankind is man," we allow that dictum. Nature is secondary. The alleys in the wood or forest of Windsor or Arden were but backgrounds in the mind of Shakespeare stage settings for the actors in the human drama. But here is the digest of the thought we follow: If the seeking of isolation "proceed not out of the mere love of solitude, but out of a love and desire to sequester a man's self for a higher conversa tion, then indeed, one may feel the god-like within us," and in this benefit I hope to share. Saying unto my soul, from out the wildness of this desert solitude, I desire to extract the beautiful and the good, I plead NOT GUILTY to the charge of moroseness, and also to those equal follies against which the master we have already quoted has warned us "a too great admiration of antiquity and a love of novelty." THE INLAND SEA More dreary are the silent, implacable days than are the times of uproar. For Christmas Carol, for New Year's Greeting, I heard but the shrill, sudden call of the startled gull, or the dry, harsh croak of the passing raven. "No track of men, no footsteps to and fro" The bitter cold frets in the stillness, the surface of wind-drift and level, or slowly the big snow flakes fall out of the sky. I have thoughts of Teufelsdrockh. Is this the North Cape? My hut massive though small, its low, thick walls built of rough, untrimmed slabs of stone, taken from the cliff by which they stand, its roof, earth-covered, its chim ney, starting from the ground, and almost half as big as the hut itself might be that of some hardy Lofoten fisherman. My boat, too, the Hope, under its canvas cover, the distant islands like mighty bergs, and the tongues of land like snow-covered floes, carry out my present thought. By the red light, also, that so often flares in the sky, and the midnight moon with a lonely storm circle 24 THE INLAND SEA around it, like an arctic parhelion, the north ern feeling, the semblance to the frozen circle is further supplied. I rise late. Oil and driftwood are not so plentiful that I should use unseemly hours for their burning. For exercise, when the weather is favorable, I hack at the tough old trunks of the sarco- batus bushes, or grub among the gnarled and twisted roots of the antique sage. At other times, I take a romp with "Twa Dogs" along the beach, or across to the opposite bay, and so cheat the hours that creep on with leaden feet. What my poor, dumb brutes may think of this place, I cannot say, but I read ennui in their gaze. Why I remain here is a mystery to them, and they have not the recourse of labor or book. As in the Norse mythology, the sun often comes up all faint and wan, sick nigh unto death, and looks languid o'er the world of white. My island is but a vast, natural sun-dial, a horologe set in this sea to measure the flight of time. Its mighty gnomon is the northern cliff, and its circling shadow has crept thus far how many years? 4 25 1HE INLAND SEA The sky sometimes appears black, that is, at noonday when it is clear and the near snow fields rise against it. Black with a thin scumbling of atmospheric cobalt. The snow, perchance, takes on the spectrum hues; the angles, flutings, waves and mounds of wind- carved drifts, catching the white rays of light and resolving them back into their component parts, or, on cloudy days, it shrinks together and grows leaden hued in the breath of chinook. In the dim, uncertain and mysterious close of day, when all objects appear to ex pand in size and grow monstrous to the sight, I half expect to see, springing from that Niflheim in the north, the gaunt, grey form of the Fenris wolf, and to behold his fiery eyes as he passes onward to his terrible feast, when Odin and Thor, and the lesser ones too, shall become his prey in Ragnarok, the last, weird twilight of the northern gods. What complaint shall I make? No time this to give way to the dumps. My gage was thrown down, and I must e'en abide the result. 26 1HE INLAND SEA No recourse now other than to meet without flinching this sullen, this stealthy or boister ous foe. Were he never so silent, this grim tyrant would, did he but once find me in his power, turn my blood into ice, and harden my flesh as iron. Two months now and a day. Time should not be measured by the tick o' the clock, but by gain of experience. Accord ing to that mode of reckoning, I have consider ably aged. "Blessed are the lymphatic," they are the masters of the earth. Strong is the negative force. Blessed is the bear who during the period of hibernation can suck his own paw and let the dark hours go by. The first part of a violent loneliness so like that of a deep pain or grief; and who would have thought that the desert could thus quickly have taught me so much? The red sparks from the chimney which, pressing my nose against the panes, I see how quick they career, like mad snakes across the snow, and are quenched! It is one thing to look on this Inland Sea, from where its waves are seen to rise and fall, keeping time, in rhythmic motion, as it were, 27 THE INLAND SEA to the sound of music and the dancers' feet, and it is quite another thing to brave it in this solitude and alone. This is the unfriend liness rather than the sweet3 of seclusion. Two of the chairs which the recluse Thoreau mentions as among his rustic furniture first, for solitude, second, for friendship, third, for society would be useless here. The Inland Sea, and the bleak, inhospitable time, keep my island and myself in unbroken ostracism. Philip Gilbert Hamerton once built a hut. Over forty years ago, on the Boulsworth Moors in Yorkshire he painted on the spot, when, as he tells us, "shepherds refused to wander on the hills and sheep were lost in the snow." Thoreau, at Walden Pond, wrote a book, and, besides with transcripts of nature, filled half its pages with a sort of grumbling philosophy. "Society" came to Hamerton; and at "The Pond," even on the coldest nights of a New England winter, the creak of timber-laden wagons could be heard on the near Lexington Road. Twice a day the Fitchburg train went snorting by. Here it is different. That star 28 THE INLAND SEA which is sometimes seen quivering across the hills of Promontory, is my only visitant, if visitant it can be called. I know it to be the headlight of a locomotive dragging its train load of human beings across the land, and fancy makes me think that the lone light of my window Flashes an answer back confederate. Only I fear it is not seen. In that same fancy I meet my friends. I am not molested by drunken gypsies; no angry poacher comes here, nor by any possibility will some scullery maid pass this way, whom I might espouse. Neither does anyone come to offer the per formance of a household drudgery, no loved one of loved ones appears, to pass with me an evening, the memory of which shall be glad ness. I am not as fortunate as he of Walden, or Diogenes in his tub. My repented temerity has brought me for the nonce where I am more isolated than Stylites on his pillar, less visited than was Timon of Athens. What is solitude? a condition of mind. 29 1HE INLAND SEA After all, there are days when I but little feel the loss of the world. To lack in friendship for one's friends; to be at discord with to be out of fitness with one's surroundings, is more to be in solitude than merely to be alone. Selfishness is solitude. Its bitterness increases as does the salt in this Inland Sea. Just now it appears to be shunned by all that has life. But it is self-contained, it gives back scorn for scorn. It returns with interest the day's sullen or wrathful mood. Snow to-day slid down the northern cliff. Mixed with stones, it made considerable noise. The snow-falls here are thought to be light; but surely there is enough. On the mountains, too, a fierce wind storm is raging. Up there one could scarcely keep his footing. The great snow-banners are whirled from the crests, and grand I know is the sound, and solemn, too, when the strong northern winds smite upon those wind-harps, the pines, and along the mountain sides, the snow is caught from the forest branches and sent madly up 30 THE INLAND SEA by crag and ravine. But see ! Behold, how the winds can revel on these waters, too! Behold how they sweep over the long reaches of un broken water, how they pick up the foam- dust from the waves of the Inland Sea, and, mixed with snow-dust, from the island cliff, whirl it around and around! Solemn, too, heard in the night, is that other sound, the lashing of distant storms. The level of this sea is to my island, what the floor of the clouds is to the mountain peaks. Then no wonder the strong winds rage! What a sud den obstacle these stubborn rocks must be! We sometimes speak of a blinding snow-storm. I doubt me if Dante, as he walked by the side of Virgil, witnessed more fierce commotions when, in the second circle of the Inferno, he beheld the shades of the carnal malefactors "When they arrive before the precipice, The infernal hurricane that never rests Hurtles the spirits onward in its rapine, Whirling them round, and smiting, it molests them,' and 31 THE INLAND SEA "Hither, thither, upward, downward, drives them" than I sometimes see on my desert island. Like the blast of a trumpet, the wind rushes through the narrow space between the cliff and my hut. As fiercely, these winter nights, the storms of snow and sleet are whirled around, "upward, downward," and hurled back, and back again, from the face of the northern wall. "And thou in peaceful calm art sitting, While I rejoice in restless heels" Chiron's words are in my ears. Perhaps it was past wanderings that incline me now to this rest. Is there not somewhat, too, of the Chiron in every man? "It is but the modern fool that goes abroad to stare at landscapes." Then the tramp and the Darby must quarrel it out. "Now we have drunk the wine let us eat the glass" the sneer extends to the de- scriber, too, "In peaceful calm art sitting" then in mine hut, 0, hater of shams, the sneer is put aside. The landscape descriptions of Walter Scott? THE INLAND SEA Did they not come from the inmost man? Their healthiness shall not be denied. And Goethe, too, the great admired, was he not of the band? Certainly he loved nature just as sin cerely as any poet of the farther day, nor did he disdain to recall her. Shall we apply the taunt to these? Or to Miller, or Burns? And Kingsley the minute philosopher how true his words have rung! Clio, Thalia or Melpomene. The landscape story, is it not, also, an epic? If the elder poets enjoyed nature like the drinking of old wine, and yet remained silent why did they sing of other human emotions? Or is it only praiseworthy, think ye, to sing of meaner things? Of wine, then, and sensual lust, whereof they sang too much? To night the wind roars. What care I? The louder the rumble in the spacious chim ney, the brighter will burn my drift-wood fire. There is nothing to fear. One must oppose his resources to the blind anger of nature, 33 THE INLAND SEA and trust, in the end, to prevail. What to me if the wind grows furious in its strength, and beats and clamors at window and door? What if the waves boom by the northern cliff? What if they roar again and drive the foam far up the sands of the little bay? What though the sleet and hail lash against the window panes? These are but to-be- expected phases of my hermit life, and ones to have been foreseen. Stir anew the embers of the smol dering fire, let the red sparks fly; remember that thy food is safe cached, and that the hut is firm-planted and strong as the gale! For a homesteader, these are peculiar if not incongruous surroundings. Small cause does there seem for lament. If the hut is rough on the exterior, it is bright and cosy within. I look around the room and there is that in sight to both feed the mind and to please the eye. This is not a penitent's cell. When one goes into self -banishment, why not have his household gods around him? The German was right. One needs a focal point of con- 34 THE INLAND SEA trast. Amid the tides of busy life, the bare apartment, the white-washed walls, were all sufficient. Here is a difference. The soul amid this barrenness yearns for the ideal, for the creations of art and imagination to fill the empty hours. Here one needs the complex; the outpourings of the human mind, food for the desires put into the blood and brain by thousands of years of luxury and civilization. Old days or new, hermits, the world over, are much the same. "Exalt, rapt, ecstatic" criminal and miser, each one must have his motive for body or for soul. "Most smiling, smooth, detested parasites!" No exalt I no gold lies buried in these sands nor with the misanthrope need I exclaim. To be of use, to reclaim the barren waste, to make sure in the future my daily bread. These, too, are among my thoughts. Posses sion always gives a certain amount of pride 35 THE INLAND SEA and love, and over my island and desert acre age, whereon the vine may yet grow, and where may yet resound the glad voices and laughter of woman and children, I look as fondly as ever does the family inheritor of broad estate. In the meantime, till such consummation come, why not enliven my vigil with pleasant labor? Why not fill it with enjoyment gleaned from the past? Why not enrich it with the wisdom of others? A bed a bunk, I should say shelving; a table six feet of wide pine board, one edge fastened to the wall; a bench; a rack, formed from the skull of a mountain sheep, with curved and massive horns; my unused gun thereon, and a bin, and the means of cooking these are part of my goods. On the other hand realm of the mind stands my easel. There is a statuette by Danneker Ariadne and a plate from Titian's Sacred and Profane Love. Close by the window, there hangs a portrait, with autograph attached, of a famous modern beauty, and over my bunk a large framed card: 36 THE INLAND SEA 11 Avenue Villa, 50 Holland St., Kensington. Mr. and Mrs. S. C. Hall Greet their Friends On the 20th September, 1884, The Anniversary Of their 5Qth Wedding day Their Golden Wedding." And a curtain of much- faded damask keeps from grime and from dust my allotment of books. Over all, articles of use and neces sity, objects of taste and indulgence, a "chain- dropped lamp" sheds a mellow ray. I turn to my books. What a comfort it is, in a place like this, to have one's friends around him! In that construement I am not alone. There they stand, the glorious com pany; silent, it is true, but ever ready to speak. It may be that one cannot hope to be their equals; yet they are ever ready to be the teachers. "Do you ask to be the compan ions of nobles?" To this question, we may give an affirmative answer. In life, some of those who stand there so calmly, were un known to each other, or perhaps they lived to 37 THE INLAND SEA be as enemies. Now they are friendly enough, side by side in their work of ministry. Some there were, who were "both actors and spec tators too." Some wrought in solitude, and some amid the plaudits of the admiring world. And others, though they may have known it not, nor guessed what lay in the course of time centuries, customs, evolutions, holding them apart yet seem destined now to be linked as twin stars, or to shine in clusters, as Dante has grouped them in the world of Who can tell where the written word shall be read? A singular place this this lonely and desolate rock, engirdled by a wintry sea in which to pursue the thoughts of those who once trod the classic vales of Hellas, or follow the lines of those who graced the court of Queen Bess. Within reach of my hand are the best results of the human mind, the work of the individual condensing the thoughts of the race. I have but to stretch forth my arm to annihilate ages. Homer, Virgil and Dante these immortals are mine. I am 58 THE INLAND SEA taken to revel in Greece, and Rome and mediaeval Italy. A voice sonorous, deep-toned as the sea, and those others, too, I hear. From the Iliad of the blind old man, from Ulysses* wanderings, I turn to him who sang of ^Eneas, Prince of Troy, and to him, the world-worn, and his mystic song. To Italy, too, I am carried by the great Boccaccio, with his stories of un dying fame. To Spain, Cervantes, with his Don Quixote, leads the way. Goethe, to Ger many, through his perfected drama of Faust. For England there are Chaucer, Milton and Shakespeare; and for France, Moliere, Beranger and Chateaubriand. For men of action, there are Caesar and Humboldt, and as intermedi ates, Gladstone and Heine lead the way to Thomas Carlyle, and he to Emerson. There is science, faith, history, fiction. From the noise of waves, my thoughts are carried to the din of arms. Through "battles, sieges, for tunes," from countries of sunshine and pas sion; from the land of old Omar's Rubaiyat, to 39 THE INLAND SEA those of the pallid north, I am transported in an instant, and this is accomplished by the Kalevala and Tegner's Siegfried's Saga. On the table lie a few de lux. The Deca meron has the etchings first impressions of Leopold Flameng. The Lyrics have steel plates from the designs of Panquet, Jacque and Grenier. There are Suckling's Poems, with the portrait by Vandyke; Santine's Picciola, Herrick's Hesperides and Noble Numbers; old Pepy's Diary, and Walt Whit man's Leaves of Grass. And among them, at the moment, like pil grims who have lost their way, Architecture of the Heavens, by Nichol, and Lives of the most eminent Painters and , Sculptors of the Order of S. Dominic. I turn to my 'books. When too much moved by the fire, the passion of Poe, I can change to the laughing moralities of Ingoldsby Legends. When wearied with the courtly, the sentitious sentences of the great Veralum, I can pass to the less golden wisdom of the grave Mon- 40 THE INLAND SEA taigne. From the study of "Ambition," and "Love" and "Fortune," short is the road to the caustic satire of "Miss Kilmanseg." But as with Barham I am best pleased in the end with the -solemn tones of the "As I Laye A-thinkynge," so, at last, with Hood, I follow with beating heart the bitter pathos of "The Bridge of Sighs," and the self-probing stanzas of "The Haunted House." Of spectres, however, the Inland Sea is supposed to have one of its own. Not one self-conjured, but one ab extra. It is the grave-digger Jean Baptiste. Branded and shackled, the man himself was kept, it is said, a solitary prisoner on one of these islands. He attempted escape. By one of the river mouths, a skeleton was lately found, a fetter and link of chain were still on the ankle- bone. It was the remains of Jean Baptiste. He had met his death by drowning. an& Winty flDarcb II. Wilb an& THIlin& flDarcb Presto transformation! What has done this? Is this the work of enchanter's wand? Can this be my island? The scene is changed, the place seems to have shifted its latitude, and to float in a southern clime. For many days, mankind and I have been strangers, but, lo! sociality has come to my door. But lately, too, I became hypochondriacal from enforced self-musings; now I loose myself in news of the world. The gloomy season is ended; there is spread the festal board; and welcome the turn of the year, but more welcome these sounds of glad human voices. A thrilling spectacle! Just now at twi light the Inland Sea rages beneath a storm of the Vernal equinox. March brings in the 45 THE INLAND SEA spring and it comes in a fierce disorder. Grouped by the hut door we watch the storm. Hurrying from windward (N. W.) the waves in thick-set ranks, sweep past the cliff-head, and wildly burst on the island sands. Huge foam- globes, formed by the beating of the briny waves among the rocks, are cast adrift, and sent seawards by the changing wind. In this swift transition and extreme of effect, who would think that this island, knew such winter storms? In some respects it might be likened to an out-lying fragment of "sea-beat Hebri des," but now with the distant shining of snow-covered peaks and the gleaming waters, it more closely resembles some lonely rock of Azores. There is plenitude of shipping. Beside the yacht, which arrived this noon with a wet deck and a tired crew, a fifty-foot schooner rides at anchor near by, my own small boat is dragged up the shore, and a little sloop which parted her cable at the beginning of the storm lies half wrecked on the island 46 THE INLAND SEA sands. Each wave that comes breaks anew the stranded boat, and from mast and rigging of schooner and yacht comes an answering whistle to the stormy blast. To the west ward an angry blare of lurid color streams upward to the wind- torn clouds, and it finds an echo on the far-off Weber cliffs. In the north a strange crystalline light amber through cobalt illumines the air. To the eastward, the sky is all but cloudless. Across the water of a cold and sheeny green lies a length ened trail of pallid gray. Dim and pale, the ghost of a dead world, the moon, lifts its round above the distant Wasatch, and stares at the wild unrest of this fierce and acrid sea. From this time on my hermitage will be of a mild and temperate kind. The guano- sifters and I will be on the friendliest terms. Not a hundred yards away from my own, they are building for themselves a home. It is quite in contrast to this one of mine. It is long and narrow and is made of rounded slabs. Within the dwelling, the piled-up sacks of 47 THE INLAND SEA flour, the bags of beans, the boxes of candles, the flitches of bacon that hang from the rafters, and the pots, pans and kettles, and other necessaries of life, indicate a protracted stay. In more ways than one, I am pleased with my new companions. Beside the natural de sire for fellowship, there is not to be forgotten the artistic selfishness. Men are often but figures to the landscape painter, and as it is impossible that I put myself into my own sketches, even were that feat desirable, I have sadly felt the want of flesh and blood. Man was needed to give interest to these waves and stones. Now he is here. These figures are perfect accompaniments to these island scenes. They are as much in harmony with these bird-haunted rocks as are the samphire- gatherers to the old-world cliffs. They are as valuable to me as the beach-comber is to the painter of marines, or as the charcoal burner to him who makes pictures of the oaks and firs of some forest dell. As Dickens uses the 48 THE INLAND SEA bit of dreary twilight landscape on the river Soane, to show the forlorn and desperate con dition of the execrable Regaud, or as the desolate valley is made by Hugo to indicate the arid and lonely soul of Jean Valjean, when, after he has committed the robbery at the house of his benefactor, the good bishop, Monsieur Welcome, he sits down to rest, so I can use, in inverse ratio, these men. Emphasis they give, such as the landscape painter loves. Take the present moment. Three of the sifters are engaged in the task of passing through sieves and putting into sacks the ancient bird deposits. Leaning against the wild March wind, their rustic clothing flapping in as wild disorder, and a cloud of the brown, snuff-like mineral hovering around them, or being carried by the fitful gusts far beyond the sieves, the men make extremely pictur esque figures. One of the sifters will dwell here permanently. I expect to place him into many a future sketch. He is a Hercules in strength and of brawny stature. He moves from place to place all unconscious, and of 7 49 THE INLAND SEA course, uncaring, of his pictorial value to me. Despite the season, his head and shoulders are bare to the sun and wind, his feet are encased in coarse brown sacking; and, as I write, he is, with that exception, naked. He is carry ing a plank to a couple of his fellow laborers, and these are busy at work on the recently stranded boat. His yellow hair, his ruddy flesh tints focus a picture in which the broken sloop, the big black schooner, the white hull of the yacht, the turquoise blue waters of the Inland Sea, the warm gray of the island cliffs, with the reeling clouds above them, are the splendid components. Only to realize to the full the effect of this momentary scene upon the mind, the describer must not omit the sounds. Two of my friends, with shouts and halloos, explore a corner of the transformed bay. There is a clattering of hammers made by the workmen overhauling the wreck; the dogs bark loud, and these united noises bring shrill, harsh cries from the island sea-birds, and these are answered in turn by a loud and indignant cackle from the sifter's score and 50 THE INLAND SEA two of newly-brought and astonished barn yard fowls. After many days, we have just seen the island. Like life itself, an island to be known needs sometimes to be seen from without. Hitherto, I have seen my island too near. Gunnison, like many another, can only be known rightly by an encirclement on the water, when it falls somewhat into the retro spect, and its parts, like events in our lives, are not out of proportion through the law of perspective. To appreciate this place as a piece of rude and sterile, but attractive scen ery, one should see it from a boat's deck, and at a considerable distance away from the shore. Gunnison exhibits great diversity of forms, it contains heterogeneous material. On a limited scale its shore line does not exceed three miles it has miniature crags, bristling cliffs, sandy beaches, walls, pyramids, stacks, mounds, old molars of rock, fantastic forms innumerable. Of my neighboring islands, Strong's Knob is in form, perhaps, the boldest. Fremont 51 THE INLAND SEA Disappointment is dominated in appearance by its castle-shaped top. The name of Hat Island suggests its form, as well as does that of Dolphin. Carrington lies low on the water and appears much the same from each point of the compass. The sky line of Stansbury's and also of Church are quite of the grandest. Gunnison is merely a rising, a peak of the partially submerged Desert Range. It is a mass of black limestone, with longitudinal traversements of lava, with outer croppings of coarse conglomerate. It has no such tower, such domes as Stanbury's, no rocks like Church, no pebbles like Fremont, but in com bination it outvies them all. One might im agine that the Gunnison was designed to exemplify the sterner principles of the pic turesque. To liken the profile of a cliff or mountain to that of a couchant lion is worse than trite. One discards the commonplace thought, yet such is the northern cliff. As one approaches the upper end of Gunnison Island from the 52 THE INLAND SEA west, the leonine image is strikingly perfect. No stretch of imagination is needed to piece out the fact. There lies the beast, his head to the north, his monstrous paws lying on the lower shelves, and below him the water is deep and richly blue. "Detached from the island, about a dozen rods or so away, are two large masses of rock and these are known as The Cubs; a most romantic little bay separates the pair, and their presence adds very mate rially to the wildness of the scene around." As the Inland Sea contains not another island that is half as picturesque as this one, so there is not another within its bounds whose sombre features are enlivened by such a mul titude of noisy life. In the season, this is the most frequented mating ground, and the bays are then inhabited by crowds of screaming sea-fowl. Erstwhile, too, the island was the home of pelican and heron, but the presence of man will keep those shy birds away. On the tops of the Sarcobatus bushes are still the deserted last year's nests of the herons, and where the waters of East Bay suddenly shallow 53 THE INLAND SEA upon a half-circle beach of sand, the homes of the pelicans were made. Here the gulls have nested for ages, nor do they appear dis posed, now that man has appeared on the scene, to give up their ancient and natural rights. The wary pelicans, whose advance guards have been flying above the island for several days past, may abandon the field, but not so the gulls. On Hat Island the satellite of Carrington which the yacht so recently passed, the pelicans are now congregated by scores and hundreds. They have found a new place of abode; but already the gulls are taking their old positions to nest, and they fill each nook and corner of this disputed island with a constant and increasing din. No doubt but that the fantastic rocks jutting from the edge of Gunnison; its cliffs; its boulders, round as cannon balls; its shining sands, may be duplicated on many a seashore; but not so its wild background of desert and mountain. The wind that sent us along was a sparkler, and the changeful pan orama of shifting distances, seen thus quickly, 54 IHE INLAND SEA showed all the varieties of the island itself. One thing was lacking, and that was the flash of a rival sail. Far as the eye could reach, not a sign of human life met our sight. The island huts, and the busy sifters came as a welcome change to the otherwise deserted shores. Hidden Valley, in yonder Wasatch, is the antipodes of my present home. Two deep canons of that lofty range begin on the side of a central peak, the which peak, we are told by those learned in the history of this old world of ours, was once a veritable island, first to rise above the waves of the primeval ocean, of all these western heights. Almost parallel in their courses, there stands between these neighboring passes a stupendous bar rier of craggy mountain wall. Leading up to peaks still higher, and set like watch-towers along its way, are winding ridges, with knife- like edges, and overlooking wan ravines, all ragged and grizzly with thick- set spears of fractured stone. On the north side especially, 55 2HE INLAND SEA the wall is exceedingly grand. From time to time its already stupendous strength is aug mented by mighty bastions, the tops of which, seen from below, appear to be the crests of the peaks themselves. To be exact, however, there are two rows of these bastions, one above and set back of the other, so that be tween the tops of the lower row and the base of the higher, there lies a long narrow space at an elevation of ten thousand feet. This is the Hidden Valley. As now, I turn my glass toward the heights to seek the outline of familiar walls, so when there, with this same glass, I made out amid the distant waters this desert home. Perhaps a sojourn, a summer passed in that other place that rocky basin held so near the sky was a fitting prelude to these island days. Hidden Valley has a secret entrance. Its narrow doorway is between two boulders- huge quartzite monoliths, that like worn-out sphinxes, keep watch and guard. The ap proach to Gunnison is across the broad waters, open on every side. The island rocks are 56 THE INLAND SEA marked horizontally by the waves of Bonne- ville, those of the valley are scratched diagon ally by the ancient glaciers. Here I have built for myself a hut, and there I have lived in a cabin taken at second hand. This home is of stone, that one of unadzed logs with the moss and ferns between them. Here I wear a track for my feet, there the fallen pine-cone already sprouted on the unused pathway Here my bed is of blankets, there it was com posed of pine-tips, luxurious and sweetly- perfumed as that of an Eastern King. There I thought of my predecessors, as here I often wonder who my successors will be. The brine which surrounds my island lies, as it were, in a grave, while the crystal waters of the Hidden Valley are held by the lofty mountains as in a font. Amid a grove of primeval trees, surrounded by the Wasatch summits, a sanct uary seemed the one; a threshold seems this other. In point of difference, then, there was a moral as well as a physical one. 57 THE INLAND SEA "Behold a sower went forth to sow;" "The axe shall be laid at the root of the tree;" "Those who go down to the sea in ships." Unexpectedly, and by the sloop's mishap, I look upon one of the subjects the wreck ashore listed for the English sketcher by the Rev. J. G. Wood, M. A. Two of the distinc tive happenings of March, however, I shall not see the felling of timber, and the sow ing of the soil. These sights may be indica tive of the season's inspirations elsewhere, but are in nowise suggestive of those on this island. Here no tree makes ready to burst into leaf; in this rocky soil reposes no seed of food- bearing grasses. No matter how fiercely the winds of these Vernal storms may drive the waves, they but leave bare the rocks and sands, without casting up those heaps of kelp and tangle, so dear to the sketched eye. But lately I stood "Upon the beached verge of the salt flood." Even to the bleak, gray rocks at Isle of Shoals, the weeds of Atlantic give a rich-toned color. 58 THE INLAND SEA And by the western main how gorgeous the reefs and ledges! Skirt my island as oft as I will, my eyes shall see no such beauties as those. What to nature are our canons of art! Her contrasts are often most violently given. Such, by that cast, was the sunlit grass, the deep blue sky, the flaming lines of the golden poppies, and the massed verbenas on the shin ing dunes. " 'Tis the hard gray English weather Breeds the hard gray Englishmen." If I am to be contented here, I must forget those things. I must forget how the scarlet star-fish clung to the granite, the wine-purple sea-urchin lay on the sands; and how in each rock-girt pool, the sea-anemone unfolded its living flowers. It will not do to remember, how, when the tide was out, I teased the big, petulant crabs, gathered the tent -shaped limpet, and picked up the geranium-leaf shell and the Venus Cradle; did a hundred child ish things, in short, until I was sent back to land, chased by wind, and rain and tide. But 59 THE INLAND SEA everywhere is material for pleasure, if only we see aright. Carrion of some kind has drifted ashore. On the lesser Cub, the ravens are busy about it. This reminds me that their cousins, the crows, and the blackbirds, too, are even now disputing with the island gulls for spoil in the wake of the plow. Being wingless, I cannot pass as do these. The winged marauders are ever passing from island to shore, and return ing again in swift unwearied flight. How bounteous in yonder eastern valleys will be the season's prime! In the village orchards, the trees, the peach, the plum, the apple and the pear will cover their branches with clouds of predictive bloom. The village chil dren will roam the uplands, and return with garlands of woven flowers. On the Wasatch, too, and the other ranges, what wonders there will be. What great star-dashes, what rhom boids, what circles, what wavering belts of brilliant flowers! There will be Ranunculus, Saxifraga and Primula; the Rosacese, Felices, 60 THE INLAND SEA Lycopadicse; all the bewildering variety of the alpine flora. The yet unmelted snows in their downward course will lave what unseen gardens! Not a glade or glen but shall know its tens of thousands. Simply a matter of a few thousand feet, and what a change is there ! Where one flower is starved to death another grows in opulence. The common dog-rose, though on the heights the bush itself is dwarfed and flattened to the ground, bears a bloom much larger than on the lower levels, and richer too, is its sweet perfume. Upon the heights within my daily sight, will come forth the flowers of myth and legend, there will grow strange western bloom, and there the wild flowers that for endless generations have been dear to the old world heart and brain. Cooled by the crystal rills, warmed by the generous sun, the mountains will break into floral joy. In the Hidden Valley will grow those flowers, the descendants of others that bloomed upon the self same spot, century beyond century of the past, and unseen by human eyes. By lake, in grove and glen, will 61 THE INLAND SEA grow the columbines, the asters, the wan, pale orchids, the golden bunches of bright ivesia. There will be the phlox, the troops of solemn Monk's Hood, the waving fields of blue mer- tensias. As time goes on, the pale, blanched hue of the velvet clematis will show against the deep-gold shining of the glacial rocks, and Parry's Primula; a ne plus ultra to the climber for western flowers will open its corolla of crimson-purple with yellow eye. I shall have visions, too, of those grassy meadows, where comes forth that erratic flower Dodecatheon Meadia; variety Alpinus the American cow slip or shooting star. There at morn from grass-hidden larks will come bubbles of melo dious sound. The hermit thrush and the purple-finch will utter their soft love warblings and tender calls. Throughout the day the hummer, the bee and the butterfly, will make their quest together, and in the gloaming, as Hesperus hangs above the craggy walls, the vesper sparrow will sing its tuneful song. "Aloft the mountain lawn is dewy-dark, And dewy-dark aloft the mountain pine." 62 THE INLAND SEA On my island, the vines will sprout, I hope; a cactus or two will unfold their fleshy blossoms, there may be the serrated disc of a desert primrose, and on the upper rocks, the moss and lichen may take on, perhaps, a brighter hue. Here I shall watch, but little will I see. The aged artemesia will throw out new shoots: there may be a thistle here and there among the ledges, and I may find some hitherto unknown, some pungent and nameless desert flower. Here, too, the grease-wood will send out its spiky leaves, the salt- weed come up by the shore, and the brush-grass green awhile the slant of the cliffs. Hardly enough, this, to satisfy the soul, when one thinks of the exuberance of the fields and woods elsewhere, and longs to see the full miracle of the spring's return. Yet I have compensations. Would I have come hither, and would I remain as I do, did I not know that such would be given? Stans- bury records his first impressions of the Inland Sea. Not so showy a picture as some others, but still enough. He was surprised to find, 63 THE INLAND SEA although so near a body of the saltest water, none of that invigorating freshness which is always experienced in the vicinity of the ocean. "The bleak and naked shores," he goes on to say, "without a single tree to relieve the eye, presented a scene so different from that I had pictured in my imagination, that my disappointment was extreme." So it has been with me, but since my first view of the place, I have been taught. Spring finds out this desolate spot as surely as those more favored. I shall see the great phenomena of nature, although its manifestations may be affected by local conditions. Here March as well de serves the name which the old Saxons gave it i. e., noisy month as along the English coast. It is just as violent, just as brusque, and the winds bluster, and the waves dash, and the wild clouds send their shadows career ing across sea and land. The interior basin has a character of its own, and nowhere does it show more strongly than here where I stand. It has not, it may be, such scenes to show as where the gray, Atlantic frets on its 64 THE INLAND SEA shores, or where, by the side of the vast Pacific, the cypress trees " spread their umbrage broad And brown as evening" I shall see no such copious falls of rain, nor such effects as when those western mists are being dispelled by a rising sun, and floating away in diaphanous veils they let the sun pour down his rays, hot through the humid atmos phere. In the clear, dry air above the Inland Sea, the vast, white cone of the zodiacal light streams up over my island cliffs, far more brilliantly in the twilight than it does through the skies of Britain. A mighty sign, The Scales, hangs radiant above the Wasatch range. Like a wondrous torch, Venus, beneficent star, burns amid the failing glow, and unobscured by fog or mist, Orion, in golden splendor, leads his dogs, Sirius and Proycon, beyond the edge of the solitary desert. We all know of the false dawn. It is seen more fully in the lands of the East. Here at 9 65 THE INLAND SEA the beginning of March was that effect which might fitly be termed a false spring. Up in the Hidden Valley, I knew of approaching storm by the moving, the soft clashing of those green and silver shields, the leaves of the aspen, or by the dog-fish that congregated in groups along the lake shores, their black, ugly muzzles resting on some sunken log, or crumbling bit of shale, staring stupidly up at the sky. Here a wind, treacherous and soft as the subtle Vivian, caressed the land; and as though made of pearl and burnished silver shone the passing clouds. Lovely tints of azure and green lay pale on the placid water, and the mountains, like vast crumpled fold ings of cream-colored silk, stood shimmering along the horizon. One would have thought that the time was truth itself. Look where one would, was a seeming presence of spring. All of this; yet once again the wild March blizzards come sweeping out of the north. To make good the old adage, the salt spray was whirled across the island from side to side; the wet sleet clung to the face of the rocks, 66 THE INLAND SEA the waves broke seething over the backs of The Cubs, and the foam leaped half way up the breast of The Lion, the great northern cliff. 67 TEin&er tbe 2>og Star HI. tbe 2>o0 Star* My days of trial are here. The King of Suns, the mighty Sirius, the fiery Dog- Star of the ancients, rules the sky. the insufferable brightness! the glare of light upon the waters of the Inland Sea! My eyes ache. Like a vast mirror of polished steel gleams the briny surface; and across it, the sun's path is like that same steel at a molten heat. Asia, Africa where could this not be? A wind hot as the sirocco withers the scanty herbage. My brain seethes. Through the smallest aperture, sun-arrows pierce into the darkened room. In the tanks the water yet keeps pure, but I grow fearful lest too quickly it should shrink away. These are the days when the temper becomes uncertain, when 71 THE INLAND SEA indolence and passion hold equal sway. Now the heat of that distant sun gathers in the veins, and the blood boils. We are made the playthings of combustion taking place innu merable miles away. Now the poet's eye is in a fine frenzy rolling; the musician hears the music of the spheres. Now men of nobleness, en rapport with stellar fires, are roused to great achievements, or those of lower instincts are moved to deeds of crime. Now, when too bitter the wormwood in the cup of sorrow, one must cry out like John in the wilderness, or the delicate brain gives way to madness in the fierce disquiet of the time. "The heart- sick," says Poe, "avoid distant prospects. In looking from the summit of a mountain one cannot help feeling abroad in the world. Grandeur in any of its moods, but especially in that of extent, startles, excites and then fatigues. For the occasional scene, nothing can be better for the constant view, nothing can be worse. And in the con stant view, the most objectional phase of 72 THE INLAND SEA grandeur is that of extent, the worst phase of extent that of distance." And the words of Poe are true. Unless I fear not to invite the pain of dejection, I keep away from the peak. I have discovered that on the summit of the cliff, I cannot escape from that feeling "abroad" of which the poet speaks. Not only is dejection there invited, but also is added thereunto the irony, as it were, of publicity. There my feelings are "at war with the sentiment and sense of seclusion" Strange to relate, the further I see from my place of exile, the more unhappy I grow. Melancholy, impossible to turn aside, steals over me>t sight of those vast stretches of sullen water and those miles of arid land. Nor is it the character merely of the sea and landscape that works the depression; its cause takes deeper root in the soul. Standing in the crow's-nest erected by Stansbury, my island lies around me like a colossal map in relief. Beyond the waters are the endless mountains; beyond the mountains, the open skies. There are mountains near, and moun- 10 73 THE INLAND SEA tains distant. There is limitless recurrence of slope and peak and gorge. Range behind range the heights culminate in level, in curve, and dome, or in jagged saw-tooth edge along the horizon. A hundred miles of the Wasatch mountains occupy but a fragment of the vast circumference. Westward is the white, trem ulous line of the awful desert. Vastness and strangeness are the view's leading features, and worse than these are the powers of memory and assimilation. To the inner eye, this enlarges the horizon a hundred fold. Rather than be a slave too long to the infinite in the finite, one tries to concentrate his attention upon some petty object, to shrink into one's self and find rest for a moment in anchoring the mind to some near rock or shrub. But all in vain. Instinctively, as through a resistless fascination, the gaze wanders once more. No rest, no ceasing. Again one looks around and around, across and across the unfriendly waters. At last, against all efforts of will, a plunge into the deep, unfathomable, the alluring and dreadful blue. 74 THE INLAND SEA "Is it the climate? Is it the marvelous sky?" Hugo exclaimed so, when he learned of the death of Count Bresson. "A brilliant and a joyous sky mocks us! Nature in her sad aspect resembles us and consoles us. Nature when radiant, impassive, serene, mag nificent, transplendent, young while we grow old, smiling while we are sighing, superb, inaccessible, eternal, contented in its joyous- ness, has in it something oppressive." "Hateful is the dark-blue sky, Vaulted o'er the dark-blue sea." In the laureate's verse we catch an echo of a similar strain. "People," says Amiel, "talk of the temptation to crime connected with darkness, but the dumb sense of desolation which is often the product of the most brilli ant moment of daylight, must not be forgotten either. Man feels lost and bewildered, a creature forsaken by all the world." In the heart of these crystal days there lurks an awful thought. Today the same as yesterday; that like the day before; tomorrow 75 THE INLAND SEA but to carry forward the monotony of pain. In this guise, life and infinity, you are scarcely to be borne. Bird-voices grow monotonous. I am berated from morning till night. The gulls never tire of screaming defiance. Go where I will, they greet me with cries of resentment. Not con tent with this, they wait not my advent, but come uttering querulous calls or insulting notes to my very door. It is painful to be so very unpopular. Plainly, the sifters and I act the part of usurpers. The island belongs to the gulls by the right of inheritance. They are the original settlers, the ancient possessors, and fain would they give me the word of ejectment. What shall I do? The birds are not unheedful of the morsels that come from my table. They dart for whatever I throw in the air. But they love me, alas! none the more. With that enchantingly graceful wing- motion of theirs, they wheel in air, keeping a watchful eye upon my every action. Are their throats never weary? My dogs may 76 THE INLAND SEA bay the moon, the owl on the cliff may scatter demoniac laughter, but they cannot out-noise these obstreperous gulls. For the third part of a year now, I have listened to their cease less clamor. Do they never sleep? Their cries greet the dawn, and fail not at eve. Neither are they absent at noon of the day, nor at mid of night. Among the male birds themselves there is often a battle royal, and then what frenzied accompaniment of wing- flashings and inarticulate sounds of sexual ire. There are duels to the death. Perhaps it is some detail of natural selection. Perhaps it is some young lover overcoming the old. It may be two young lovers contending for the fairest of gulls. "The charms for which (gulls) strive or hopeless die." Or it may be a struggle that may yet involve all the young warriors of the rival colonies. The birds are clanish. The males of Bird-Rock keep a jealous eye upon those of the East, and those again, upon those of the 77 THE INLAND SEA South, and South-East Bays. My island has its Iliads, too. Perhaps this is a war over some winged Helen, or it may be that some Guin evere of the gulls has been false to her lord. Often the males may be seen in groups, and then I try to pick out the Agamemnon, the Ajax, the injured Menaulus, or mayhap, the sage Ulysses, or the aged Nestor of the convocation. This colony, no doubt, is as ancient as Tyre, its laws unalterable as those of the Medes and Persians. The voices can grow plaintive, too. With almost human distinctness, comes at times the sudden and piercing call, H-e-l-p! h-e-l-p! h-e-l-p! What a wild appeal! In the dead of the night, now from one distant corner of the island, now from another, and each and every time with an intensity of sound as from a soul in pain; one might fancy that the spooks were abroad, or, as a nearer cry is followed by a whispering sound, like voices suppressed in expectation, that some evil creatures were trying to lure one toward and then over the edge of the cliff. But it is only the birds. 78 THE INLAND SEA Am I becoming a metaphysician? Shall I degenerate to a belief in transmigration? Or shall I preach to the birds as did St. Francis of Assizi? There is delirium, too, in these lustrous nights as well as in these torrid days. Too closely those golden meshes of shining orbs seem to wrap around one; too multi tudinous, they reflect in the shining wave. Those creatures, whose forms are ever in my sight, whose voices are ever in my ears, are they other than kindred transformed? How like the ways of the world are the ways of these feathered citizens! How like the ways of the world is their senseless jeering. What possible use is there in such a blind deridence? Yet to be thus hated and feared must work its effect. In this colony of birds as in a village of men, one feels the weight of continual disdain. After all comes the ques tion Is it a difference, or is it a degree? Poor birds! shall I mock at their ways, at their loves, or their wrangles? at such pleas ures and fears as they foolishly know? But a month since, and the downy young 79 THE INLAND SEA gulls were my best of friends. As I lay on the sands, they would come chirping toward me. Often has the lapel of my open coat sheltered the little chicks, and in the tunnel of my sleeve they would creep and hide. On a time, they have nestled in perfect confidence against my hand, my cheek, or my hair. Unlike the queer little herons, ridiculous younglings of poetic parents, the infant gulls have shown neither spite nor fear. I have known and loved these birds from the egg. Are there not among them those whose lives I have saved? Have I not rescued them from the waters of the briny sea? When faint and weary they could no longer struggle against the wave that engulfed them, I have lifted them forth and returned them to the shelter of the mother's wing. But now they are fearful; they are filled with a dark mistrust. Already, they watch and cower in my presence, or, with soft plaintive cry and faint flutter of half-fledged wings, run in crowds on the sands before me. When guided into some cul du sac of the cliffs, there is something uncanny THE INLAND SEA and disturbing in the stare of their yellow "Thanka. What's the matter you dissentious rogues?" Why, you distracted parents, put you to my nocturnal wanderings, this frightful din? Think you that I am a keeper in the limbo for birds? Scream your loudest; as regards to me, your progeny is safe. How like a white, fallen cloud appear your hosts on the starlit water! Or, indeed, as I retrace my steps to the hut, I could think you, as slowly again you approach the shore, a fleet of fairy gondolas, messengers from an unknown land. "Latet anguis in herba" Yes, that is true. In the grass is the snake, but here my foes come out of the dust. Of what avail then, this girdle of waters, this remoteness from men? Nowhere shall one escape his portion of dole. The fanged and deadly rattlesnake, I have seen it on yonder land, and its young, too. Like the infant viper, described by 11 81 THE INLAND SEA White, the offspring of evil raised its tiny head, and although, perhaps, as yet unarmed with poison, gave me proof, not unheeded, that it sensed its natural weapon. And these foes on my island, too, they are quick to strike. A coup de soleil why not? The thunder mutters; the giant cumeli dazzle the eyes with the light upon them. They come, they grow, they melt in the sultry air. Afar in the land is the quiver of diffused lightnings, or the jagged bolt strikes to the earth without rain. Dark from excess of bright ness, the denuded mountains take on that solemn hue which tells of middle summer. What Libyan days are these? Why falls not the moisture from yonder heaven? 0, the too-conscious me the troublesome I! Can one meet this and be sane? Blaze forth, sun! Scorch with thy beams this shadeless isle, make flash again this shining sea! The seismic forces are troubled in their sleep. Blaze forth, sun in a million wombs, life 82 THE INLAND SEA quickens to action, in countless graves, the dead decay! In this silence is every sound the dirge, the rhapsody, the fantasia, the song of hope. In the heart-furnace sun, the fever is high as thine! This morning the first thing which I saw, as I awoke in my hammock, was a half-grown scorpion. As the villainous creature passed across a corner of my bamboo pillow, and but a few inches away from my face, the sight was unexpected and a somewhat startling one. Yesterday, one of the same objectionable neighbors climbed to a place at the board. A wicked-appearing scamp he was, as he after wards lay, a prisoner and with sting erected, at the bottom of a china bowl. I have de cided on a scorpion hunt. The guano-sifters will join in the sport. They have received similar visits to mine, and our brotherhood sympathies with the natural owners of this island do not lead so far as to make us risk a poisonous stab in the dark. It is remarkable, the number of lizards that have so quickly 83 IRE INLAND SEA appeared. Among the volcanic rocks, so hot these days that they blister the hand if touched, they absorb comfort and happiness, and everywhere their erratic tracks make hieroglyphics upon the burning sands. The air, too, and the water are filled with the ministers of torment. An incredible number of gnats infest the shore, and where a few stunted bushes stand near the water's edge, they are covered thick with a veil of cobwebs; the big, fat spiders making the beach there a place to be avoided. These meridian days make hard indeed my island hermitage. Thirst! This sea would let one die of thirst. But little succor would be found in e small condensing apparatus which fore- .ought made me bring. "Ropy," this is the description my companions give of the water supply in their barrels. What of my tanks? 'Tis a timely reminder. A little charcoal will do them no harm, I will try my skill as a burner. I've a stranded cedar, and some Gunnison clay will do the rest. 84 THE INLAND SEA Just after my first cruise on the Inland Sea, a boat containing one person was wrecked on the lower west shore of Antelope Island. I recall his experience as a what-might-be. The man who was thrown on Antelope Island was an expert sailor, so it was said, and one who should not have met with mischance. Starting alone, from the resort at Garfield Beach, to cross the southern end of the sea to a landing place on the eastern shore, adverse winds carried him too far to the north. In the darkness, for the trip was a night one, the winds having increased until the boat was beyond his control, it was driven upon the rocks, where the waves soon tore it apart. Not knowing the island to be inhabited on its eastern side the unfortunate voyager was in a sorry plight. He passed the follow ing day after the wreck in searching for water along the western shore; a shore where not a drop of fresh water is to be found. By the merest chance, he was rescued from a painful death, not on the first day, however, but on the second, when he was in an 85 THE INLAND SEA exhausted and delirious condition. Had it not been for the depredations of a wild beast, the man would probably not have escaped at all. A wild cat had committed repeated trespass upon the poultry of the Island Farm, and a couple of young men were in quest of the thief. Their astonishment at finding an unknown man a cast-away lying alone on the hills, apparently in a dying condition, was as great as their appearance upon the scene was fortunate. Once a flock of sheep perished of thirst on the Fremont Island. That place, at certain times of the year, bears an abundance of rich, sweet bunch-grass, and the sheep had been left there for their winter pasturage. The poor sheep, victims of the short-sightedness of their careless shepherd, died the death which the man escaped. There is a spring on the island, or at times there is, that flows forth from the rocks beneath a steep bank on the northern shore. The change in the sea's surface varies at times, and the spring is sometimes buried beneath the waves. On 86 THE INLAND SEA this occasion, such a rise had mingled the fresh waters with those of the brine. "In the agony of thirst," said the one who told me the tale, "the poor creatures pawed furi ously at the barren shingle, fresh victims continually being added to the number of dead already lying around the spot." With throat parched and burning, my companion and I could well sympathize with the tortured animals. Seeing that our own quest for water was fruitless here, we hurried again to our boat, and rowed to the nearest water that we knew of, that of a spring near Promontory. Generous boon! My place of refuge is in my tub. I enjoy to the full the delights of the bath. When on land it seems that one must suffocate, that in the intolerable noon the rocks must melt, there is comfort in the cooling wave. Even the iron strength of the brawny sifter does not prevent his desire to become amphibious. Like myself, he lives as much in the water as he does on the land. What a great sanitarium this sea must become! 87 THE INLAND SEA Let the sun scorch never so; let the acrid waters shrink up the grass and the herbage; let it breed the gnat or strew the beach with larvae; yet in it there is renewed strength, a tonic for mind and body. To the tired limbs, it brings a rest, and to the wearied brain, repose. And here is my tub: distant from the hut some five hundred yards or so, at the base of a square piece of masonry, an abutment of the northern cliff, where, when the sea is rough, and the wind from the north, the eddies swirl, there is worn in the rock a smooth, round basin. Other basins of a similar kind are to be found along the shore, but this one remains my favorite still. It is some twenty-five feet across, and about five feet deep, and the bottom is covered with a layer of white and shining sand. A delicious place, one that annuls the physical sufferings of these trying days. There I go, and there I sport at my ease. The strong brine of the sea has a tendency to float one's limbs to the surface, so that the 88 THE INLAND SEA sensation produced when one is in the water is always as novel as pleasant. When the sea is in anywise calm, it is an easy matter to recline thus for an indefinite length of time; but when the sea is rough, it is very difficult to make headway against the smallest of waves. Boyton, the swimmer, learned this. His exhibition of skill at Garfield Beach, on June 12, 1886, was a most signal failure. The waves knocked him about at their will. Of all his aquatic adventures, the one most thrilling, so he afterwards declared, was that on the Inland Sea. I am in my tub. Somnolence broods wide over land and sea. The hot air swoons. The motionless water lies pale and unsullied. Not a troublesome gnat is abroad from the shore. The gulls, whom I disturbed as I walked through their colony, have sunk back to their nests. Some ten score or more of the startled birds who took flight to the bay, now float with head below wing. A pair of lizards come THE INLAND SEA out from under a stone, and, sleeping, bask on the sands. Across the distance, there comes a change. The horizon is melted away; the mountains are blurred. The farther chains appear to part, to become peaked islands. The sky seems water, the water, sky. Substance and shadow are indistinguishable. Do I wake or dream? it is the beginning of a noon-day mirage. 90 IDofce of tbe Swan IV. Doice of tbe Swan The late October! The Moon of Harvest has supplanted the Moon of Fire. For more than a month huge smoke- columns stood along the horizon, and by night across the waters was reflected a dull, red glow. It was the evidence of conflagration among the moun tain oaks and pines. Now on my island the tall, coarse grasses, scorched stiff by the past heat, are whitened each morning with a heavy rime. Long since, the old and the gray- winged gulls have flown. There is silence around, but from the sky there falls, softened by distance, the dissonant clang of migrating geese, and once I heard, a sound to stir the blood as one listened, the long, rich call of the southward-flying swan. 93 THE INLAND SEA With shortened days and a lowered temper ature, there has been ushered in a subdued and gloomy splendor. Its full emblazon of effect is not made by local color, but comes as much and more from a low and autumnal sun. From the affluence of the heavens there comes a transfiguration. Always, there are the same great stretches of water, always the same monotonous and dreary hills, ever the same strange walls of the far-off desert, and ever the same clustered multitude of mountain peaks. But how the seasons and the great sun play with them! They are ever the same, yet never the same, eternal yet evan escent, playmates with time and with the elements. There are days and there are days. Either it is magnificent cloud-scapes over hurried waters and driven foam, or else it is, as now, the deep painting of tranquil skies and their reflection in the Inland Sea. With September's coming, a mighty drowsiness fell over the land. Again my island appeared to have shifted its latitude and floated to another clime. Through 94 THE INLAND SEA my glass, I brought near such especial spots of brightness as attracted the eye, and found them to be some lonely oak- clump or some spring- fed maple. Ruddy indeed, like a weary and belated sun, rose the autumn moon, and like a vast Koh-i-noor, the sun itself, big and yellow, marked the course of the year. Haze- enwrapped were the Wasatch and the fair Onaqui. Through deepening shades of a sad dened violet, the Oquirrhs had lapsed into melancholia. The jutting headlands, the nearer islands, appeared as if cut from dim, orange crepe, or maroon-colored velvet, and greenish-gray shadows lay wan in cleft and ravine. Even on my island, the frost found some leaves to transform, and made fiery spots along its deserted shores. One more turn and the present richness of the time will be gone. This second effect of autumn, with all its wonderful depth and sumptuousness of blended color, is of short duration. It marks the time between the heavy sensuousness, the lassitude of the 95 THE INLAND SEA so-called Indian Summer, and those days of November when, " the far mountains wax a little hoary y And clap a white cap on their mantles blue" It is to the season, as is the mildness of the twilight hour. Had J. B. Pyne, the old English landscape painter and theorist, been here in September, he could have seen around him, on gigantic scale, his five triangled star. Here was an exemplification of his scheme of rela tionship, opposition, and subordination of color. The full chromatic scale was given. There were the grouped triads of primaries, secondaries, tertiaries and quadrates. The whole scene glowed, though subdued with distance. Among the foliage, all the hues had come, excepting, of course, the blue, and that was supplied by the deeps of the sky. There were the red, the yellow, the blue; there, also, the orange, the green and the purple, and these were shot through, in nature's warp, with the citrines, the russets and olives. From this spot, I watched the spring climbing 96 THE INLAND SEA the heights, and now I have seen the autumn come, as it were, from above. The season is much more advanced, of course, upon the mountain tops, than it is upon this, or the other low-lying islands. One peculiarity of my position here, was to find myself within a circle of changing colors, to see the whole distant landscape smolder with undertones, and here and there the ruddy flames burst forth. To see the foliage turn its hue in an hour, and to watch the circle of frost-made colors ever expanding downward and around, kindling now the chaparral on some highest hill top, and then another; crowding through the canons, those ways of the hills, until it invaded the lower valleys and paused at the water's edge. Contrasted with the foothills of the Alle- ghany, or even with the seaward slopes of the Sierra Nevada, how barren are these interior bench-lands! I miss the huge old beech trees of the east; the hemlocks and the tamarack, or, in lieu of these, the live 13 97 THE INLAND SEA oaks that fret with their roundness the western slopes. Yet noble is the scene these mountains show; The groves of spruce and fir hang high in air, Deep and firm-rooted on the great cliffs where Steeply they lean remote. For it is in the canons, or in the steep ravines, or hidden among the canon heads, that the natural foliage of these mountains is found. Up in the hollows a wonderful sight may be seen, it is the frost-stricken leaves of the aspens. Nothing of autumn could be more lovely than these. Seen in the groves, each tree is perfect a picture in itself. The eye there takes cognizance of each silver-green shaft, each erratic branch, and each separate, amber-gold leaf, as it quivers against the dark background of sub- alpine fir. But now I view from the synthetic standpoint. Soon all that brilliance will be stripped from the trees and made sodden upon the ground. The rocks at the caSon THE INLAND SEA mouths will be covered a foot thick with the fallen leaves. "Girds with one flame the countless host" Emerson's line might apply to autumn. The Father of American verse was an autumn lover, as indeed were all of the New England poets. Eliminate from the pages of the most noted authors in prose and verse, those passages referring to the season of haze and color, and what a loss were there! It would take away much that is most pleasing and original in the national literature. It was the pictures of autumn, too, that first made American landscape art noticed across the seas. "It would be easy by a process of word-daubing/' says Hawthorne, "to set down a confused group of gorgeous colors, but there is nothing of the reality in the glare which would be thus produced. They seem the trees to be some kindred to the crimson and gold clad islands. In its absence one doubts whether there be any truth in what poets have told about the splendors of the American autumn, 99 THE INLAND SEA but when the charm is added, one feels that the effect is beyond description." And o'er the purplish, brownish, sensuous tone Qf distant woods, is dashed a dusky gold. All the glories of the sunset skies seem fallen upon the trees. There are the purple, the crimson, the scarlet and the gold, all the colors that burn upon the far-away clouds. Indeed, we touch them with our hands; but, ah! it must be confessed, no longer making us think of the raiment of the cherubim, but rather of the earthly robes of queens and kings. I love to see the sun send its rays parallel down some tree- crowded ravine and fill the leaves with a splendid light. But quite as well I love to see the far spirituality of color, and the autumnal procession of radiant clouds. The sea is much shrunken. Not even the last long fall of rain has lifted its surface to the normal level. Sand-bars, long and narrow, lace the shallow brine. Strong's Knob is now 100 THE INLAND SEA not an island, but a sand-girdled cape. Church Island and Stansbury, and Black Rock, too, are all joined by natural causeways to the land on the south. Gunnison stands in the deepest water, still its reefs stretch out farther than usual, and its outline of shore is affected as is an ocean island by a fall of the tide t Along the desert shore, the quiet fluid, green and transparent today, appears more like a plain of ice, than it does like a surface of water. Once it was thought that the Inland Sea was drained of its surplus waters that furnished by rains and the in coming streams through a subterranean outlet, and many were the stories told among them the fabulous ones of the Baron La Hontan time of the frightful whirlpool the escaping waters made. The outlet of Bonneville was at Red Rock Pass. But it is evaporation, and the lessened streams, irriga tion, and the months of drought, that sink the surface of the Inland Sea. Usually, its rise and fall is twenty inches or less, but some times the change is of several feet. 101 THE INLAND StiA Many days must the clouds discharge, the torrents roar, ere the time of the rising come. The Wasatch, the Oquirrh, the Onaqui, and the still more distant and unseen Uintas, must send down their tributes of augmented streams. Attracted toward one after another of the great ranges as towards a magnet the clouds must drift, the rain must feed the lakes, the lakes must supply the torrents, and these again the waters of the rivers. Through canon and valley, the streams must come until they find in this sea a bitter grave. Not one of these rivers whose moun tain cradles I have not seen. Under ridges of iron-gray stone; by banks and slopes of crumbling shale; through narrow gates, giv ing scarce room for the infant stream and the mountain trail; by isolated peaks, girt with rocky belts, or misty with groves of pine; beneath strangely twisted mountains, broken with craggy glens, and by rough saw mills, noisy with hum of whirling saw, and exhaling the smell of new-cut logs through such scenes I picture the waters come. I see 109 THE INLAND SEA them in sad, bleak, hollows storm-broken fragments huddled along their sides and dizzily poised as ready for instant fall; I see them plunge down the mighty slopes, Where the bald-eagle, dweller mid the scene, With ruffled breast and wings aslant, serene, Rises to meet the storm, and where, in dizzy swiftness, they tear across smooth slabs of granite, or are themselves in turn overhung by time-worn boulders of colossal size. I see them where they wind peaceful and quiet by the side of field and meadow, or once again, where the silence is broken only by voice of the village urchin, calling to his companion, as he fishes in the darksome pools, or where the stillness is broken only by the tinkle of cow-bells, or sounds of rural labor the Weber, the Bear, Timpanogas, (Provo) and all the rest of them. The Month of Vintage the Month of Wine? how flows the juice of the grape, now is gathered the fruit of the vine. After 103 THE INLAND SEA sheaves of wheat comes the Harvest Home, and after toil comes the purple clusters and the Vintage Song. Sursum corda keep up your courage, say I. A homesteader's vines, like a homesteader's heart, should be filled with hope. From my father, I have inherited these a love for an island, and a love for the vine. Two good reasons, it appears to me, why in my present venture I may hope to succeed. Who knows! Let me endure; let me hold on to my thought to a consummation! Per haps the grapes in purple clusters, shall yet hang thickly on these trelliced squares, per haps the leaves will fret with their green ness these slopes and walls. "From the sand lands," says Ruskin, "come a high intellect and a religious art, from the vine- lands come the highest intellect and a perfect art." What a promise is there! Sands on the beach, and vines on the slope; these days with their sheen give brave thoughts of the future. May these rocks themselves yet be christened with their own yielding of wine! If the will can accomplish then it shall be so. 104 THE INLAND SEA A goodly harvest the sifters have gathered. The coarse brown sacks are piled on the shore. The workmen await the schooner's coming; but in my vineyard no gathering is seen. The work of redemption is a work that proves slow. It is easier to gather than it is to create. The trenches and pits, the embank ments, that the labor of my neighbors has made, causes that part of the island to appear like a fortified camp. The workmen through these latter weeks have encroached their lines upon the gull metropolis. A destiny is manifest. Struggle as valiantly as they may, the poor birds must yield to their fate. Be fore the energy of the human being, they must, as all things else, give way, and in the future the place that has known them so long shall know them no more. My vineyard follows the island's natural lines. Above the present beach, a series of irregular terraces, one above the other on the nearest slope, the rude posts and trellices on the old beach flats, show well enough that my man has not been idle. My chief and longest 105 THE INLAND SEA trellice follows a curve on the hillside made by a pause in the shrinkage of ancient Bonne- ville. Somewhat lost the transplanted vines must feel, none of their kindred for so many miles around, and exiled, too, without the power of return. For them it is victory or else it is death. "Nothing's so hard but search will find it out" Water must be made to bubble from amid these stones. Labor must overcome the resistance of nature, for without water my labor is likely to be my pay for my pains. I may long to be Prospero, but alas! I have been compelled to be my own Caliban, too. 0, for the smallest, the most unnoticed stream that goes to waste on the distant Wasatch! With the means of irrigation, my task now so difficult would be made quite easy. The struggling plants have shown green and fresh enough, and quite healthy, too, but to reach success, I must probe in the earth. Currents of fresh water continue to flow, some say, beneath the hard-pan which under- 106 THE INLAND SEA lies this brine. Can I reach to one of those? Cultivated plots of ground may at this time be seen on one of the eastern islands, but this is an island Church which is nearer the mainland, and is much larger and higher than this one, and so possesses a natural spring. In my eastern view, Fremont, about twenty miles distant, is faintly discernible. The autumn sun now rises just behind its castle- shaped rock. On this island Judge Wenner set plants, and on Antelope Island an orchard grows. The trees of this orchard are thirty years old. On Fremont there is an English elm, not a tree, however, but a tiny young shoot struggling with British persistence. Will it manage to live? However, there winds the path that was made by my feet. To keep alive these few past months the vines that my hand has planted, how many gallons of water have been carried from the rain-filled tanks! Have I persisted so long to give up now? Those leaves that have sprouted so greenly; that grew so bravely, that have lived their allotted days, and now hang pale and crisp on 107 THE INLAND SEA the parent vine, or lie brown upon the beach- line of old vanished waves shall they be the last of a race? I cling to the faith that they foretell a host. What have I been taught, if not taught this to patiently watch and to wait! Once more a troglodyte. Drip, drip! In cessantly the water runs off from the roof. Now one could half know the gloom of mind in which the ancient cave-dweller passed the long winter months, and with what reluctance he relinquished the companionship and wild sports of his fellows, and retreated, like the lower animals, to his rocky den. How shall we cheat the time? Like a wetted pebble is the rocky island. The bushes drip, the porous ground is dark and softened, the sands of the beach are white and shining. I feel myself relapsing into old desires; but the sifters, wise men, pass a joyous time. The day of their departure is close at hand. Their work for the year is done, at any moment the schooner may appear in sight, and then an end to all 108 IHE INLAND SEA diversion. Their uproarious mirth makes the rafters of their dwelling ring. Despite my many crotchets and they are not few, I depend upon the sifters to enliven the tedium of these final hours. Man is naturally a gregarious animal. Such intractable weather as this, if nothing else, would drive him to social intercourse. I join in the sifters' games. When my sifter, the drudge, and I part company, there will be regret on one side, at least. The man has often been my willing companion, nor do I need a better guest. Talkative or taciturn, one or the other, so I find those who have lived much alone. The drudge is the happy medium. I have barkened his words and I know his troubles. No man or life without its ambi tions, and the drudge has his. Added to his giant-like strength are unexpected qualities of heart and head. Some of these I have learned to admire. Who is not pleased to see a reserve of strength? Sorrow and disappointment have found out the drudge, and in his slow mind he has been compelled to work out the 109 THE INLAND SEA problems of life. It is not without a bit of quiet vanity that the man sees himself so often a pictorial occupant of my island sketches, nor need I better critic than the drudge has sometimes been. Extremes meet: it is the truly cultivated and the rough, unlettered, who give a valuable judgment. The lesson oft comes when we least expect it, and not without a gratification, not unmixed with irony, it may be, did the maker of the sketches themselves see in his animate sub ject the same thoughts at work that passed through his own brain as he pursued his different task. Grand are the statements of science; take the weather forecast: "A storm is brewing in the regions far to the south." How simple those words, and yet how much they tell! Or again, "A soliterraneous storm date is the ;" or, "owing to the connect ional action from the hot air being cooled and rolled back to the earth." Soon I may see, as well as those, another "Arctic wave, accompanied by very no THE INLAND SEA high winds." A season of changes and a station of vantage this? There is not a mood in these transitional times that escapes my sight. The position of my island in the midst of this far-reaching sea, and its sur rounding landscape, gives me, in sort, the power of a seer. To one at a distance much that is otherwise unknowable is made to be plain. Shut in amid the walls of yonder high mountains, how different it would be to under stand the movements of these recurring storms! From this island it is easy, and hence my endowment. From my hut window one can mark the coming of the clouds and note their progress along the parallel ranges. It is in the remoteness of the south-west where there is a suspicion of the fore-shortened Tintic Range, and even of others beyond it, that the generic storms are seen to come. The Alpha and Omega of many a local storm I see. The Wasatch Peace where the adverse winds meet and where lie In wait the thunder clouds in THE INLAND SEA being of all the ranges within my sight, the loftiest, has bred, of course, or attracted towards itself, the greater number of local or isolated, wandering storms. Some times, however, there is a separate gathering in the Oquirrh and Onaqui, or on the domes of Malad. Sometimes I see the tops of storm- clouds whose bases rest on the Uinta Range. Certain low mountains there are that serve as highways for the wandering kind, but it is the Wasatch alone that forms legions of clouds to pass on to the Uintas who in turn, send them eastward to drench with their storms the far gradients and plains. A storm which is to be general, and one that is to be merely a local disturbance, is easily foreseen. There are storms that pass not, that live and die, as it were, on their place of birth. There is the advance, the parting, the re-uniting of similarly disposed forces, the struggle of opposing storms and the great seasonic changes. Sometimes I have seen the storms on the mountains as one might see, the armies on a battle field. 112 THE INLAND SEA There were the hosts of cloud, rushing upon the mountain bulwarks, as the hosts of men rush upon some huge redoubt. There was the attack, the defense, the recoil. I saw some peak taken by the cloud forces, lost, retaken, and lost again. I learned to know the objec tive points, I saw the contention around the great cores the central clusters of highest peaks aud foresaw the meeting of the cloud tides upon some mighty ridge, as once met the tides of men upon the plateau of Mont St. Jean. From the island, whole armies of cloud might be seen, sweeping across the crests; rushing along the mountain roads the canons and whole battalions sinking into cross ravines. In the lower valleys, the grass, the weeds, the foliage, bent down in terror at the fury of their passing, and dark ness came across the expectant land. Now comes the end of autumn. The storms are cleared, but the last cold rain has frozen as it fell. In sheets and ice-embossings it gleams on the island rocks. There is no 16 113 THE INLAND SEA mistaking these days. As spring breathed in the wind from the south, so now winter breathes again in the wind from the north. October passes, and passes in spacious mien. "The suns grow meek, and the meek suns grow brief" Still there lingers at eve a crimson glow on the eastern heights, and deeply yellow aureolin-tinted, dashed with cadmium are the western skies. Along the horizons, the mountain chains their slopes still showing some former color, and on their summits the white of the newly-fallen snow show lumin ous through the ambient air. To-night the moonlight is rare. If ever in manhood's strength, one could bring back his childhood belief in magic islands and enchanted valleys, it would be in such a place, and on such a night as this. All is crystalline pure. The island peak, and even the near rocks appear cerulean. The slopes, the ridges, the tur quoise-green water, and the far-off mountains themselves, are wrapped in a tender and silvery blue. 114 THE INLAND SEA There is silence around. Long since, the old and the gray-winged gulls have flown. But once more there falls from out the sky, and softened by distance, the dissonant clang of migrating geese; and once again I hear, a sound to stir the blood as one listens, the trumpet-call of the southward-flying swan. 115