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I am informed there are many miles of smooth, hard, salt-flats, over which a 'cycler could skim like a bird; but I scarcely think enough of bird-like skimming to go searching for it on the American Desert.
Here in bloated bubbles of salt and poisonous niter the ground had boiled up and formed a brittle crust, like dough made of self-rising flour. It was a dangerous place to go, for at uncertain intervals his mules caved through to their hocks, but Wunpost did not stop till he had crossed to the other side and put ten miles of salt-flats behind him.
Beyond this cheerless oasis stretches again the still more cheerless desert, the rivulets of undrinkable salt water, the glaring white salt-flats to the south, and the salt-encrusted mountains to the north.
A little good wheeling is encountered toward the bottom of the pass, and then comes an area of wet salt-flats, interspersed with saline rivulets those innocent-looking little streamlets the deceptive clearness of which tempts the thirsty and uninitiated wayfarer to drink.
Beyond the dike there spread a stretch of reddish brown salt-flats, covered with water only at the highest spring-tides, and now meagrely sprinkled with sharp-edged blades and tufts of the gray salt-grasses. The flats were soft between the bunches of the grass, and a broad track was trampled into mire by the passing down of many feet from the dike's edge to the boats.
Of the value of the amethyst the most fabulous stories went abroad, and for a season the good wives of the settlers had but a sorry time of it, cleansing their husbands' garments from a daily defilement of mud. While the vain search was going on, an old Scotchman, shrewder than his fellows, was taking out his title-deeds to the whole expanse of salt-flats, which covered perhaps a score of acres.
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