In driving away, we waved our caps long in farewell to the honest Canadians. As to me, that day of parting is graven in my heart for the ages, since in the forenoon that beloved star of my life, putting both arms around my neck, began, all red with embarrassment and emotion, to whisper something in my ear. When I heard it I bent to her feet, and, weeping with great excitement, kissed her knees. [Illustration] [Illustration: CHAPTER VIII] TWO weeks after leaving the summer camp, we came out on the boundary of Utah, and the journey, as of old, though not without labors, advanced more briskly than at the beginning. We had yet to pass the western part of the Rocky Mountains; forming a whole network of branches called the Wasatch Range. Two considerable streams, Green and Grand Rivers, whose union forms the immense Colorado, and numerous tributaries of those two rivers, cut the mountains in every direction, opening in them passages which are easy enough. By these passages we reached after a certain time Utah Lake, where the salt lands begin. A wonderful country surrounded us, monotonous, gloomy; great level valleys encircled by cliffs with blunt outlines,—these, always alike, succeed one another, with oppressive monotony. There is in those deserts and cliffs a certain sternness, nakedness, and torpor, so that at sight of them the Biblical deserts recur to one’s mind. The lakes here are brackish, their shores fruitless and barren. There are no trees; the ground over an enormous expanse exudes salt and potash, or is covered by a gray vegetation with large felt-like leaves, which, when broken, give forth a salt, clammy sap. That journey is wearisome and oppressive, for whole weeks pass, and the desert stretches on without end, and opens into plains of eternal sameness, though they are rocky. Our strength began to give way again. On the prairies we were surrounded by the monotony of life, here by the monotony of death. A certain oppression and indifference to everything took gradual possession of the people. We passed Utah,—always the same lifeless lands! We entered Nevada,—no change! The sun burnt so fiercely that our heads were bursting from pain; the light, reflecting from a surface covered with salt, dazzled the eye; in the air was floating a kind of dust, coming it was unknown whence, which inflamed our eyelids. The draught-beasts, time after time, seized the earth with their teeth, and dropped from sunstroke, as if felled by lightning. The majority of the people kept themselves up only with the thought that in a week or two weeks the Sierra Nevada would appear on the horizon, and behind that the desired California. Meanwhile days passed and weeks in ever increasing labors. In the course of a certain week we were forced to leave three wagons behind, for there were no animals to draw them. Oh, that was a land of misfortune and misery! In Nevada the desert became deeper, and our condition still worse, for disease fell upon us.