Wallowa chieftain. [volume] (Joseph, Union County, Or.) 1884-1909, 1902-10-16
PART II.
The Country OF the Saint.
CHAPTER /.

CHAPTER |.
In the central portion Of the great
North American Continent there lies
an arid and repulsive desert, which for
many long year served as a barrier
against the advance of civilization.
From the Sierra Nevada 10 Ne
braska. and from the Yellowstone riv-
er in the north TO the Colorado upon
the south is region of desolation and
silence.
Nor is nature always in one mood
throughout this grim district. 1t COM
prises snow-capped and lofty noun
tains and dark gloomy valleys.
There are swiftly-fowing rivers
which dash through jagged canyons;
and there are enormous plains, which
in winter are white with snow, and in
summer are gray with the saline alkali
dust. They all preserve. however. the
common characteristic of barrenness.
irhospitality and misery.
! There are no inhabitants of this land
OF despair.
A band of Pawnees or of Blackfeet
may occasionally traverse it in order
to reach other hunting-g grounds. but the
hardest of the braves are glad to lose
sight of those awesome plains and TO
find themselves once more upon their
prairies
The coyote skulks among the scrub.
the buzzard flaps heavily through the
air, and the clumsy grizzly bear lum-
bers through the dark ravines, and
picks up such sustenance as it can
among the rocks. These are the sole
dwellers in the wilderness.
In the whole world there can be no
more dreary view than that from the
northern slope of the Sierra Blanco.
AS far as the eye can reach stretch
eS the great fiat plainland, all busted
over with patches of alkali, and inter
sected by clumps of the dwarfish chap
arral bushes.
On the extreme verge of the horizon
lie a long chain of mountain peaks,
with their rugged SUBMITS fiecked with
snow. In this great stretch OF coun-
try there is no sign of life, nor of any
thing appertaining to life.
There Is no bird in the steel-blue
heaven, no movement upon the dull,
gray earth-aboye all there is abso-
Lutte silence. Listen as one may, there
IS no shadow of q sound in all that
mighty wilderness; nothing but silence
complete and heart-subduing silence.
1t has been said there is nothing ap-
pertaining 10 lie upon the UIOad plain.
That is hardly true.
Looking down from the Sierra Blan-
co, one sees q pathway traced out
across the desert, which winds away
and Is lost in the extreme distance
IL is rutted with wheels and tIodden
down by the feet of many adyentuIera.
Here and there are scattered white
objects which glsten III the sun and
stand out against the duh deposit III
alkali
Approach and examine them. They
are bones; some large and coarse,
others smaller and more delicate. The
former have belonged to oxen. the
latter to men.
For fifteen hundred miles one may
trace this ghastly caravan route by
these scattered remains of those who
had fallen by the wayside.
Looking down on this veNy scene
there stood upon the 4th of May, lS47,
solitary traveller.
His appearance was such that he
might have been the very genius or
demon of the region. An observer
would have found it difficult to say
whether he was nearer to forty or to
sixty.
His face was lean and haggard, and
the brown, parchment-like skin was
drawn tightly over the projecting
bones; his long, brown hair and beard
were all fiecked and dashed with
white; his eyes We're sunken in his
head, and burned with an unnatural
luster. while the hand which grasped
his rifle was hardly more fieshy than
that of skeleton.
/ AS he stood, he leaned upon his
weapon for support and yet his tall
figure and the massive framework of
his bones suggested a wiry and vigor-
GUS constitution.
| His gaunt face, however, and his
clothes, which hung so baggily over
| his shriveled limbs. proclaimed what
/ 1t was that gave him that senile and
decrepit appearance
/ The man was dying-dying from
1 hunger and from thirst.
/ He had toiled painfully down the ra-
vine, and on TO this little elevation,
IN the vain hope of seeing some signs
of water.
Now the great salt plain stretched
before his eyes, and the distant belt
Of savage mountains, without a sign
anywhere of plant or tree which might
indicate the presence of moisture.
In all that broad landscape there
was no CLEAN of hope North, and
cast, and west he looked with wild.
questioning eyes. and then he realized
that his wanderings had come to an
end, and that there, on that barren
crag he was about to die.
why not here, as well as in feath-
er bed, twenty years hence" he NUT
tered, as he seated himself in the shell
ter Of bowlder.
Before sitting down, he had depos-
tied upon the ground mis- useless rife,
and also a large bundle tied up in
gray shawl which he had carried slung
over his right shoulder.
It appeared to be somewhat too
heavy for his strength. for, in lowering
it, It came down on the ground with
some little violence.