Tufts Of Grass Grow Far Apart Here And
There And Small Bushes Of Hardy Sage, But They Have A Singed
Appearance And Can Do Little To Hide The Blackness.
Deserts are
charming to those who know how to see them - all kinds of bogs,
barrens, and heathy moors; but the Modoc Lava Beds have for me an
uncanny look.
As I gazed the purple deepened over all the landscape.
Then fell the gloaming, making everything still more forbidding and
mysterious. Then, darkness like death.
Next morning the crisp, sunshiny air made even the Modoc landscape
less hopeless, and we ventured down the bluff to the edge of the Lava
Beds. Just at the foot of the bluff we came to a square enclosed by a
stone wall. This is a graveyard where lie buried thirty soldiers,
most of whom met their fate out in the Lava Beds, as we learn by the
boards marking the graves - a gloomy place to die in, and deadly-looking even without Modocs. The poor fellows that lie here deserve
far more pity than they have ever received. Picking our way over the
strange ridges and hollows of the beds, we soon came to a circular
flat about twenty yards in diameter, on the shore of the lake, where
the comparative smoothness of the lava and a few handfuls of soil have
caused the grass tufts to grow taller. This is where General Canby
was slain while seeking to make peace with the treacherous Modocs.
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