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292 DAYS IN THE SUN
went steadily downhill. The trickling streams flowed
with our course, while the mountainous masses grad-
ually piled up above and behind us. Before us a luxuri-
ous valley gradually unfolded, with villages and blos-
soming fruit trees. Through the valley there ran a
broad stony river. On the other side the land rose
again, with an impress of infinity and harmony, through
blue and purple, out into the wide world, where it was
lost in the endless snowfields of the Nevada. Finally
we were down in the great valley, at its end. Great
hills lay behind us, and the valley itself was only an
incision in the rocks. In front of us our glance fell far
below to flat country, a marshy basin many miles wide,
which, shut in on both sides by highlands, moved along
in unrelieved flatness, until it finally merged with some-
thing in the distance—perhaps the sea. At least so it
seemed to us from so high up; but when we reached the
bottom, this apparent marsh-land was also a mountain-
ous landscape, on a smaller scale and built up of loam.
A mighty layer of loam must at some previous time
have risen from the sea, but so cautiously as to have
preserved its horizontal surface. Then the waters
descended from the Sierra Nevada and cut up the sur-
face, transforming it into a confused labyrinth, but
leaving thousands of spheres and knolls and combs of
loam standing. All their tips are at the same level,
and it was this that afforded from a distance the spec-
tacle and the impression of an arm of the sea that
had been shut in.
We rumbled down into this droll landscape, the as-
sembled units of which seem to have been executed on
a crude lathe. For about a mile a water-course took
possession of the road, and we drove through the
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