Transcriber's note:
Minor spelling and punctuation inconsistencies have been harmonized.Missing page numbers are page numbers that were not shown in theoriginal text.
THE SHIP IN THE DESERT.
THE
Ship in the Desert.
BY
JOAQUIN MILLER,
AUTHOR OF "SONGS OF THE SIERRAS" AND "SONGS OF
THE SUN-LANDS."
BOSTON:
ROBERTS BROTHERS.
1875.
Copyright, 1875,
By C. H. Miller.
Cambridge:
Press of John Wilson & Son.
DEDICATED
TO
MY DEAR PARENTS,
ON THE FOOTHILLS OF
THE OREGON SIERRAS.
PREFACE.
WITH deep reverence I inscribethese lines, my dear parents, toyou. I see you now, away beyondthe seas, beyond the landswhere the sun goes down in the Pacific likesome great ship of fire, resting still on thegreen hills, watching your herds, waiting
"Where rolls the Oregon,
And hears no sound save its own dashing."
Nearly a quarter of a century ago you tookme the long and lonesome half-year's journeyacross the mighty continent, wild, and rent,and broken up, and sown with sand and ashes,viiiand crossed by tumbling, wooded rivers thatran as if glad to get away, fresh and strangeand new as if but half-fashioned from the handof God.
All the time as I tread this strange land Ire-live those scenes, and you are with me.How dark and deep, how sullen, strong, andlion-like the mighty Missouri rolled betweenhis walls of untracked wood and cleft theunknown domain of the middle world beforeus!
Then the frail and buffeted rafts on theriver, the women and children huddled together,the shouts of the brawny men as theyswam with the bellowing cattle; the cows inthe stormy stream, eddying, whirling, spinningabout, calling to their young, their brighthorns shining in the sun.... The wild menwaiting on the other side, painted savagesleaning silent on their bows, despising ourweakness, opening a way, letting us pass onixto the unknown distances, where they said thesun and moon lay down together and broughtforth the stars.... The long and windinglines of wagons, the graves by the wayside,the women weeping together as they passedon. Then hills, then plains, parched landslike Syria, dust, and ashes, and alkali, coolstreams with woods, camps by night, greatwood fires in circles, tents in the centre likeCæsar's battle-camps, painted men that passedlike shadows, showers of arrows, the wildbeasts howling from the hill....
You, my dear parents, will pardon the threadof fiction on which