REl'LUCTlONft----TALL   GRASS.
183
Can he conveyed by language. The fires in the Canada of the mountain were still smoking, but no blaze was discernible. Last nio'ht they appeared as if not more than half a mile or a mile distant; but considerably to our surprise this morning, by a daylight observation, we saw that the cariada, from whence the smoke was curling upwards in graceful wreaths, was some four or five miles from us.
Our first care was to look after and collect together the animals, which, upon our arrival last night, we had let loose to refresh themselves in the manner most agreeable to them. We found them busily employed in cropping the tall seeded grass of the oasis. The anxieties respecting the health, strength, and safety of our . animals, constitute one of the most considerable drawbacks upon the pleasures of our trip,—pleasures, as the reader may suppose, derived almost exclusively from the sublime and singular novelties presented to the vision. The significance of the word is in no other respect applicable to this stage of our journey. To fathom the motives of an all-wise Providence, in creating so vast a field of desolation ; to determine in our minds whether the little oases we meet with are the beginnings of a system or process of fertilization which is to ramify and extend, and to render this hitherto abandoned and uninhabitable waste a garden of flowers, teeming with its millions of life ; or whether they are evidences of the last expiring struggles of nature to sustain animal and vegetable existence, which will leave this expansive region impenetrable to the curiosity of man, furnish a study for the thoughts, fruitful of interest and provocative of investigation.
For the purpose of resting and recruiting our over-labored mules, we had predetermined to remain encamped to-day. We cleared away with our hands and willow sticks the thickly-matted grass and weeds around " Buchanan's well," making a handsome basin, some five or six feet in diameter. The water is very cold and pure, and tasted to us more delicious than any of the invented beverages of the epicure to Mm. While engaged m this work, Brown brought forward a remarkable blade of grass which he had pulled up a short distance from us, to which