A desert land it is true, but needing only the
magic touch of water to transform much of it into a garden spot. Even
as it was, a few months later it would be covered with the flaming
blossoms of the desert growth, which seem to try to make amends in one
or two short months for nearly a year of desolation.
A wash ran along the base of the plateau from which we had emerged. An
abandoned road and ferry showed that this had once been a
well-travelled route. The stream had a good current and we pulled
away, only stopping once to see the last of our plateau before a turn
and deepening banks hid it from view. We wondered if the water ever
dropped in a precipitous fall over the face of the wall and worked
back, a little every year, as it does at Niagara. We could hardly
doubt that there were some such falls back in the dim past when these
canyons were being carved.
In the middle of the afternoon we passed a ranch or a house with a
little garden, occupied by two miners, who hailed us from the shore. A
half-mile below was the Scanlon Ferry, a binding tie between Arizona,
on the south and what was now Nevada, on the north, for we had reached
the boundary line shortly after emerging from the canyon. We still
travelled nearly directly west. The ferry was in charge of a
Cornishman who also had as pretty a little ranch as one could expect
to find in such an unlikely place. A purling stream of water, piped
from somewhere up in the hills, had caused the transformation.
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