valleys, and plateau-lands of the Great American Desert.

Not less strange are its lakes. Some lie in the deep recesses of hills that dip down so steeply you cannot reach their shores; while the mountains around them are so bleak and naked, that not even a bird ever wings its flight across their silent waters. Other lakes are seen in broad, barren plains; and yet, a few years after, the traveller finds them not—they have dried up and disappeared. Some are fresh, with waters like crystal—others brackish and muddy—while many of them are more salt than the ocean itself.

In this Desert there are springs—springs of soda and sulphur, and salt waters; and others so hot that they boil up as in a great caldron, and you could not dip your finger into them without scalding it.

There are vast caves piercing the sides of the mountains, and deep chasms opening into the plains—some of them so deep, that you might fancy mountains had been scooped out to form them. They are called “barrancas.” There are precipices rising straight up from the plains—thousands of feet in height—and steep as a wall; and through the mountains themselves you may see great clefts cut by the rivers, as though they had been tunnelled and their tops had fallen in. They are called “cañons.” All these singular formations mark the wild region of the Great American Desert.

It has its denizens. There are oases in it; some of them large, and settled by civilised men. One of these is the country of New Mexico, containing many towns, and 100,000 inhabitants. These are of the Spanish and mixed Indian races. Another oasis is the country around the Great Salt and Utah Lakes. Here is also a settlement, established in 1846. Its people are Americans and Englishmen. They are the Mormons; and, although they dwell hundreds of miles from any sea, they seem likely to become a large and powerful nation of themselves.

Besides these two great oases, there are thousands of others, of all sizes—from fifty miles in breadth, to the little spot of a few acres, formed by the fertilising waters of some gurgling spring. Many of these are without inhabitants. In others, again, dwell tribes of Indians—some of them numerous and powerful, possessing horses and cattle; while others are found in small groups of three or four families each, subsisting miserably upon roots, seeds, grass, reptiles, and insects. In addition to the two great settlements we have mentioned, and the Indians, there is another class of men scattered over this region. These are white men—hunters and trappers. They subsist by trapping the beaver, and hunting the buffalo and other animals. Their life is one continued scene of peril, both from the wild animals which they encounter in their lonely excursions, and the hostile Indians with whom they come in contact. These men procure the furs of the beaver, the otter, the musk-rat, the marten, the ermine, the lynx, the fox, and the skins of many other animals. This is their business, and by this they live. There are forts, or trading posts—established by adventurous merchants—at long distances from each other; and at these forts the trappers exchange their furs for food, clothing, and for the necessary implements of their perilous calling.

There is another class of men who traverse the Great Desert. For many years there has been a commerce carried on between the oasis of New Mexico and the United States. This commerce employs a considerable amount of capital, and a great number of men—principally Americans. The goods transported in large wagons drawn by mules or oxen; and a train of these wagons is called a “caravan.” Other caravans—Spanish ones—cross the western wing of the Desert, from Sonora to California, and thence to New Mexico. Thus, you see, the American Desert has its caravans as well as the Saära of Africa.

These caravans travel for hundreds of miles through countries in which there are no inhabitants, except the scattered and roving bands of Indians; and there are many parts on their routes so sterile, that not even Indians can exist there.

The caravans, however, usually follow a track which is known, and where grass and water may be found at certain seasons of the year. There are several of these tracks, or, as they are called, “trails,” that cross from the frontier settlements of the United States to those of New Mexico. Between one and another of these trails, however, stretch vast regions of desert country—entirely unexplored and unknown—and many fertile spots exist, that have never been trodden by the foot of man.

Such, then, my young friend, is a rough sketch of some of the more prominent features of the Great American Desert.

Let me conduct you into it, and show you—from a nearer view—some of its wild but interesting aspects. I shall not show you the wildest of them, lest they might terrify you. Fear not—I shall not lead you into danger. Follow me.