Before him and on each side the earth was as bare as the bareness of rock--a mystic region of steps and slopes and slants, of channels and dunes and mounds, of cone-shaped and fan-shaped ridges, all of denuded crinkly clay with tiny tracery of erosion as graceful as the veins of a leaf, all merging their marvelous hues in a mosaic of golden amber, of cream yellow, of mauve, of bronze cinnamon. How bleak and ghastly, yet how beautiful in their stark purity of denudation! Endless was the number of smooth, scalloped, and ribbed surfaces, all curving with exquisite line and grace down into the dry channels under the dunes. At the base of the lower circle of the amphitheater the golds and yellows and russets were strongest, but along the wide wings moving away toward the abyss below were more vividly wonderful hues--a dark, beautiful mouse color on the left contrasting with a strange pearly cream on the other. These were striking bands of color sweeping the eye away as far as they extended, and jealously drawing it back again. Between these great corners of the curve climbed ridges of gray and heliotrope to meet streaks of green--the mineral green of copper, like the color of the sea in sunlight--and snowy traceries of white that were narrow veins of outcropping borax. High up above the rim of the amphitheater, along the battlements of the mountain, stood out a zigzag belt of rusty red, from which the iron stain had run downward to tinge the lower hues. Above all this wondrous coloration upheaved the bare breast of the mountain, growing darker with earthy browns until the bold ramparts of the peak, gray like rock, gleamed pale against the leaden-blue sky. Low down through the opening of the amphitheater gleamed a void, a distant bottom of the bowl, dim and purple and ghastly, with shining white streaks like silver streams--and this was Death Valley. And then Adam, with breast oppressed by feelings too deep for utterance, retracted his far-seeing gaze, once more to look over the whole amazing spectacle, from the crinkly buff clay under his feet to the dim white bottom of the valley. And at this keen instant he again heard a cry. Human it was, or else he had lost his mind, and all which he saw here was disordered imagination. Turning back, he ran in the direction whence he believed the sound had come, passing by some rods the point where he had climbed out of the wash. And at the apex of the great curve, toward which tended all the multitude of wrinkles of the denuded slopes, he found a trail coming up out of the amphitheater and leading down into the wash. The dust bore unmistakable signs of fresh moccasin tracks, of hobnailed boots, and of traces where water had been spilled. The boot impressions led down and the moccasin tracks up; and, as these latter were the fresher, Adam, after a pause of astonishment and a keen glance all around, began to follow them.