ary log, again plunged him into cogitation.
Here and there little areas of the rudest cultivation broke into a
luxuriousness of orange, lime, and fig trees. The joyous earth at the
slightest provocation seemed to smile and dimple with fruit and flowers.
Everywhere the rare beatitudes of Todos Santos revealed and repeated
its simple story. The fructifying influence of earth and sky; the
intervention of a vaporous veil between a fiery sun and fiery soil; the
combination of heat and moisture, purified of feverish exhalations, and
made sweet and wholesome by the saline breath of the mighty sea,
had been the beneficent legacy of their isolation, the munificent
compensation of their oblivion.

A gradual and gentle ascent at the end of two hours brought the
cavalcade to a halt upon a rugged upland with semi-tropical shrubbery,
and here and there larger trees from the tierra templada in the
evergreens or madrono. A few low huts and corrals, and a rambling
hacienda, were scattered along the crest, and in the midst arose a
little votive chapel, flanked by pear-trees. Near the roadside were the
crumbling edges of some long-forgotten excavation. Crosby gazed at it
curiously. Touching the arm of the officer, he pointed to it.

"Una mina de plata," said the officer sententiously.

"A mine of some kind--silver, I bet!" said Crosby, turning to the
others. "Is it good--bueno--you know?" he continued to the officer, with
vague gesticulations.

"En tiempos pasados," returned the officer gravely.

"I wonder what that means?" said Winslow.

But before Crosby could question further, the subaltern signaled to them
to dismount. They did so, and their horses were led away to a little
declivity, whence came the sound of running water. Left to themselves,
the Americans looked around them. The cavalcade seemed to have halted
near the edge of a precipitous ridge, the evident termination of
the road. But the view that here met their eyes was unexpected and
startling.

The plateau on which they stood seemed to drop suddenly away, leaving
them on the rocky shore of a monotonous and far-stretching sea of waste
and glittering sand. Not a vestige nor trace of vegetation could be
seen, except an occasional ridge of straggling pallid bushes, raised
in hideous simulation of the broken crest of a ghostly wave. On
either side, as far as the eye could reach, the hollow empty vision
extended--the interminable desert stretched and panted before them.