File:Picturesque America; or, The land we live in. A delineation by pen and pencil of the mountains, rivers, lakes, forests, water-falls, shores, cañons, valleys, cities, and other picturesque features of (14576872039).jpg

Identifier: picturesqueameri01brya (find matches)
Title: Picturesque America; or, The land we live in. A delineation by pen and pencil of the mountains, rivers, lakes, forests, water-falls, shores, cañons, valleys, cities, and other picturesque features of our country
Year: 1872 (1870s)
Authors: Bryant, William Cullen, 1794-1878, editor Bunce, Oliver Bell, 1828-1890
Subjects:
Publisher: New York, D. Appleton
Contributing Library: University Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Digitizing Sponsor: University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

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on the opposite page is of it. The cliflfs disappear above Dalles City, and lo, the sand-region ! The endless wonder of the Pacific-coast journeys is the suddenness of their changes, as if supernatural scene- . shifters were kept constantly busy in whipping off the old scenes, and setting new and 46 PICTURESQUE AMERICA. unexpected ones for the next act. From forests of tropic splendor to mountains ofnorthern bareness and grandeur, from still pond to roaring cataract, from verdure andcultivation into Sahara, you pass without the least hint from Nature of what she meansto do five minutes hence. Possibly Science gets the better of her, and finds out herwhimsical intentions; but to the unlearned she seems to have gotten a little tipsy onthat wonderful air—which would intoxicate the soberest—and not to be quite sure of herown mind. Her desert on the Columbia is a lively suggestion of her greater works ofthe same order in Egypt or elsewhere. It looks a limitless plain of hot white sand.
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Passacre of the Dalles. The wind is a hurricane, and seems to blow from every point at once, so that theheavens rain a sandy shower. The shifting, sifting sand covers the track. Men in sand-white garments, with sand-white beards and hair, blindly delve along the rails to clearthem, and limp aside with sand-stifif joints that seem to creak, as we go by. The sky isa pale-blue vault, faded out by this torrid plain. The sun is veiled, intense, and colorless.The earth is like a place of graves, as if millions of men, whole peoples, whole races,had been buried there and forgotten. But, if Nature had ever set any race there, it musthave been of the lowest—in mind vacant, in body vile, in worship regarding stones and UP AND DOWN THE COLUMBIA. 47 wild animals, its only symbols of steadfastness and power. And when on the flat-shore rocks we saw the bark lodges of the Trascopin Indians, vile children and vilermen and vilest women swarming within and without, we felt that they were accountedfor

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