From such a vantage it would instantly appear how distinct are the Nevadas (nieve, snowy) among the Sierras of California. A very Bonaparte of mountains, new-born and lording it over the ancient ranges, not content with its vast empery but swinging north into the unpre-empted icy regions. San Bernardino and San Jacinto are as far from it as the Faubourg St. Germain from an island in the sea. Sierra Madre is of the Coast [150] Range; Shasta a fire-hole, a revolutionist; the true Sierra is the midriff of a continent. From its northern extremity1 one sees the sun in a circle and the Northern Lights; that portion of it we know as Sierra Nevada swings into the state above Honey Lake, and ends southward in a tumble of blunt peaks below Kern River. This is quite enough, however, for Californians to make free with, and more than they can appreciate.
Geographically2 the range begins on the south at Tehachapi, but at Walker's Pass, a day's journey to the north, is the first appearance of its most salient characteristic, the great Sierra Fault. In its youth the range suffered incredible cataclysms3. For two hundred miles the great eastern plain dropped; weighted as it was with its withered4 aristocracy of hills—how weazened and old you can see to this day—it tore sharply downward, and the depth of that fall from the heaven-affronting peak of Whitney to the desert valley of Inyo is a matter of two miles of sheer descent.
The whole Sierra along the line of faultage has the contour of a wave about to break. It swings up in long water-shaped lines from the valley of the San Joaquin, and rears its jagged [151] crest6 above the abrupt7 desert shore. Seen from close under, some of these two- and three-thousand-foot precipices8 have the pitch of toppling waters. As they rose new-riven from the earth their proportions must have been more than terrifying.
Later the Ice Age bore downward from the north, and through immeasurable years carved the fractured granite9 into shapes of enduring beauty. It rounded the great jutting10 fronts, it insured them against the tooth of time with the keen icy polish with which they shine still against the morning. It gouged11 narrow wall-sided cañons, cut the course of rivers, and sinking like a graver's tool into the heart of the range, scooped12 out deep wells of pleasantness. Afterward13, when the ice was old, it must have moved more slowly, for the lines it left, retreating northward14, are more flowing, the hill-crowns rounder. And then the mountain was besieged15 with trees. They stormed it, scaled its free precipices; you can see by the thick mould of the valleys what ranks and ranks of them went down, and along the snow-line how by the persistence16 of assault they are bent17 and contorted.
This is the whole effect of the sombre swathes of pine that mask the Sierra slopes. They march [152] along the water-courses, they climb up sheer precipices in staggering files, trooping in the passes; across the smooth meadow spaces they lock arms, they await the word of command. By a very little observation they are seen to be ranged in orderly companies. Here a warm current of air travelling steadily18 from the superheated valleys carries the life zone higher, there a defiant19 bony ridge20 drops it a few thousand feet, but the relative arrangement of species does not greatly vary. The broad oaks, like reverend grandsires, from the foothills see the procession go by, they follow as far as the gates of the mountain, crutched21 and bowed. All the lower cañons are full of a rabble22 of deciduous23 trees, chinquapins, scrub oak, madroño, full of gay camp-followers, lilac, dogwood, azaleas, strumpet penstemons, flaunting24 lupins, monk's-hood, columbine.
The grey nut pine, wide-branched, unwarlike but serviceable, opens the ranks of conifers. Then the long-leaved pines begin, ponderoso, Coulteri, and the slender, arrowy, fire-resisting attenuata. On the western slope, increasing as they go northward, the redwood holds all the open country, but it is no climber like monticola, the largest of all true pines, the captain of the Sierra forests. The [153] firs usurp25 the water-borders and the low moraines; clannish26, incommunicable, they seem not to find it worth while to grow unless they grow stately. Above all these range the thin-barked pines, the lodgepole, Douglas spruce, librocedrus, and hardy27 junipers in windy passes. About the meadows and lake-borders the quaking asps push like children between the knees along the line; and highest, most persistent28, the creeping-limbed, wind-depressed white-barked pine, under whose matted boughs30 the wild sheep bed.
The trees have each their own voice—a degree of flexibility31 or length of needles upon which the wind harps32 to produce its characteristic note. The traveller in the dark of mountain nights knows his way among them as by the street cries of his own city. The creaking of the firs, the sough of the long-leaved pines, the whispering whistle of the lodgepole pine, the delicate frou-frou of the redwoods in a wind, these come out for him in the darkness with the night scent5 of moth-haunted flowers. But there is one tree that for the footer of the mountain trails is voiceless; it speaks no doubt, but it speaks only to the austere33 mountain-heads, to the mindful winds and the watching stars. It speaks as men speak to one another and are not [154] heard by the little ants crawling over their boots. This is the "big tree," the sequoia34. In something less than a score of forest patches about the rim35 of the Twin Valleys, the sequoia abides36, out of some possible preglacial period, out of some past of which nothing is left to us but the fading memory of the "giants in those days." The age of individual big trees can be computed37 in terms of human history. There are evidences written in the rings of these that they endured the drouth which made the famine in the days of Ahab the king, against which Elijah prayed. These are growing trees whose seeds are fertile.
One might make a very dramatic collocation of the rise and fall of empires against the life period of a single sequoia, and that would be easier than to transcribe38 by mere39 phrases the impression of one of these green towers of silence on the sense. Single and deeply corrugated40 as a Corinthian column, with only a lightly-branched crown for a capital, they spire41 for five thousand years or so, and then the leaf-crown becomes rounded to a dome42 in which the winds breed. Warm days of Spring, their young nestling zephyrs43 come fluttering down the deep wells of shade to shake the saplings of a hundred years. In Summer the fine-leafed [155] foliage44 catches the sun like spray, diffusing45 vaporous blueness; but the majesty46 of their gigantic trunks is incommunicable. After a while the stifling47 sense of awe48 breaks before it, and you go on with your small affairs as children will go on playing even in the royal presence.
The name Sequoia is one of the few cheering notes among our habitual49 botanical stupidities—an attempt to express quality as it is humanly measured in a name. There was once an American Cadmus, Sequoyah, a Cherokee who invented an Indian alphabet and taught his tribe to read. Seeing them outnumbered in their own territory, he started west with the idea of founding a great Indian empire. He was last seen trailing north across the desert and was heard of no more. Tradition has it that he reached the forest of the upper Kern River and gave the trees his name. At least no botanist50 with his nose in a book has usurped51 it.
Forests are for cover. They mask not only the naked rock, but the paths of deer and bear and bighorn. Under the spire-pointed ranks of conifers that look so black from above, verging52 to blueness, a world of furtive53 folk goes on. A world of birds is in its branches, squirrels nimble as [156] sparrows, but scarcely anything of this is visible to the watcher on the heights. Rabbits playing on your lawn would be more noticeable in proportion than the seldom-seen bighorn leading his light-footed young from ledge54 to rocky ledge. The jealous trees cover the trails and obscure the passes.
As you come up through them you observe the flat, soddy spaces of old lake basins, green as jewels, and the hanging meadows gay with cascades55 of flowers, the stream tangles56, the new-made moraines bright with bindweed and sulphur-flower. But from the heights all this lovely detail is hidden by the overlapping57 tents of boughs. Here and there a stream leaps forth58 at the falls like a sword from a green scabbard, or higher up, may be traced as the silver wire on which are strung unrippled lakes as blue as cobalt. Great chains of such lakes lead down from the snow-line to the foothill borders, encroached upon by the silent ranks of trees. As they go down they show soddy borders, they tend to fill and to grow meadows where presently deep-rooting trees assume their stations. This is the strategic rule for the taking of a granite mountain. First the grinding ice and the disintegrating60 water; what the [157] streams wash down collects in the glacier61-ploughed basins. It makes lake borders by which the grass comes in—the small grass that is mightier62 than mountains, that eats them for its food. Lakes at the lower levels become meadows, then trees arrive; they overrun the soddy ground, the snow-manured moraines. The trees themselves take centuries to fruition. At a later stage men dispossess the forest and build cities, but this has not yet come to the Sierras. There is something indomitable in the will of the trees to spread and climb. In the floor of Yosemite and Hetch Hetchy there are hundred-year-old oaks of full form and generous growth, and on the slopes above them the same oaks and of almost the same age are so dwarfed63 by drouth and altitude that they are not knee-high to a man, but they keep the due proportions of their type. A white bark pine will climb where the weight of the winter drifts is so heavy that it is never able to lift its decumbent trunk from the ground, clinging like ivy64 to the wall in which it roots.
In the Spring the rich florescence of the conifers sheds pollen65 in drifts that, carried down the melting water, warn the sheep-herder and the orchardist66 a hundred miles away of the advancing season. [158] A pine forest in flower is one of the things worth seeing which is most seldom seen, for at its best the high passes are still choked by snow, the lakes ice-locked, the trails dangerous. And then the blossoms, yellow and crimson67 tassels68 and rosy69 spathes, are carried on the leafy crowns high over the heads of the most adventurous70 foresters. What one finds, as late as the end of June when the trails are open, is a stain of pollen on the lingering snow, and great clouds of it flying wherever a bough29 is brushed by a light wing. In the autumn the whole wood is full of the click and glint of the winged seeds. Storms of them, like clouds of locusts71, are carried past on the wind, to be dropped in the nearest clearing or to find a chance lodging72 in a moss73-lined crevice74 of the weathered headlands.
But from the heights, all feeling for the process of the forest is lost in the sense of its irresistible75 march—it creeps and winds, it waits darkly for the word. Above the tree-line no sound ascends76 but a faint vibration77, the body of sound making itself felt in the silence. On windless days the forest lies black like weed at the bottom of a lake of air as clear as a vacuum. When the great wind rivers pour about the peaks, it can be seen lashing78 [159] like weed in the currents, but still almost soundlessly—the roar of it passes down the cañons, and is heard in the cities of the plain. But if the peaks cannot hear what the trees are plotting about, it is not so with the voices of the water. These are sharper, more definitive79; they rise re-echoing from the rocky walls and are recognisable each by its distinctive80 note at incredible heights of the sheer, glassy, granite frontlets.
In the glacial valleys, such as Yosemite, Tehipite, and Hetch Hetchy, where young rivers drop from the headlands in long streaming falls, the noise of them contending with the wind makes mimic81 thunder. Immense curtains of falling water are tossed this way and that, they are caught up and suspended in mid-air, and let fall crashing to the lower levels. When the wind blows straight up the cañon they will rear against it, and leap out a shining arc, shattering in mid-air like bursting bombs of spray. But later in the season, when the streams are heavy with the melting snows, the wind itself is shattered by the weight of falling water—it exhausts itself in obscuring clouds of silver dust. When from Whitney or Williamson or King's Mountain you can see half-a-hundred such young [160] rivers roaring to the morning, it is as beautiful and as terrifying as the sight of youth to timorous82 age. They go leaping with their shining shields, and their shouting shakes the rocks. Neither you nor they believe that the most and the best they will come to is an irrigating83 canal between sober rows of prunes84 and barley85.
Higher than the forests, or the waters rising out of them, is the Py-weack, the Land of Shining Rocks. They shine with glacier polish; horses on the high trails sniff86 suspiciously at their glittering surfaces. Time can lay slight hold on them by thunder, by frost, and the little grey moss; it has not yet subdued87 the front of Oppapago. Here between snowless ribs88 and buttresses89 are the shrunken glaciers91 that feed the streams, little toy models of the ancient rivers of ice. The snowfields of the Sierras are not so inconsiderable as they seem: they are dwarfed by the precipices among which they hide. Inaccessible92 to ordinary mountain travel, they make their best showing from the surrounding plains, where, lifted in the middle air, they glow with ethereal whiteness. Close by they display a bewildering waste of broken ice, boulders93, and crevasses94, made bleaker96 by the cobalt shadows.
North the line of peaks stretches, broken by the passes that give access to the west. Between them, above the source of streams, in the ice-gouged hollows, lie unfathomable waters that take all their life from the sky. Or perhaps they are reservoirs from which the sky is made, fluid jade97 and azulite and hyacinth and chrysoprase, as if the skies of many days had run their colours in those bleak95 bowls. For at this altitude the wave contour of the range comes out most sharply; the sky is strangely deep and darker, as if through its translucence98 one glimpsed the void of space. One sees the moon and the planets wandering there with pale lamps held aloft.
No life of any sort is visible from here. Farther down toward the coast, over the forested moraines, the condor99 may be seen leaning against the wind at sunrise. On the edge of the abysmal100 cañons eagles make their nests and go dropping down the shadowy depths to seek their food from God, but they do not rise to these stark101 heights. Sometimes a clanging horde102 of water-fowl, beating up from the Gulf103 of California overland to the Canadian marshes104, will grow bewildered in the face of the great wall-sided cliffs; circling they attempt the forward flight, only to circle and [162] rise anew, until, wing-weary in that thin air, they sink exhausted105 to the margin106 of a mountain lake, satisfied at last to thread their way humbly107 along the creek-beds to open country.
The live forces of the High Sierra are the forces of wind and light. One feels the push of tremendous currents flowing between the peaks as among rocky islands. Day by day they may be charted by the cloud fragments floating on them, by the banners of dry snow dust, streaming out like long grass from the island shores. Thundering fleets of cumuli drift up the wind rivers and assault the great domes108 of Whitney and Oppapago. The light breaks through all the varying cloud strata109, and colours them with splendour; the glow of the clouds reflected on the snow is caught by the watchful110 mountain-lover far down the valleys of Inyo and San Joaquin. This painted hour of sunset is the apotheosis111 of mountains, but for me it has less of majesty than the morning after deep snows. These come usually early in the season. The air for days will be full of the formless stir, then the range withdraws itself behind a veil which closes from tented peak to peak, and includes sometimes the parallel desert ranges which lie [163] along its eastern coast. Twenty feet will fall in a single session of the white gods behind the veil. Then comes a morning blue and sharp as a spear-thrust. Every tree is like an arrow feathered in green and white. Airy bridges built upon the bending stems shut in the water-courses; the moraines are smooth and soft as the backs of huddled113 sheep. By night the range shows from the valley as a procession of winged figures holding the snows upon their bosoms114. And that, after all, is the business of mountains. The western front of the Sierra Nevada, which receives the full force of the Pacific storms, is rewarded with the stateliest forests. Before those extended snowy mountain arms lie the great Twin Valleys; behind them stretches the illimitable sage115-brush country, the backyard of the Sierra.
"Sage-brush country" is one of those local terms that stand for a type of landscape as distinctive as the moors116 of England and the campagna of Italy. It means first of all, open country, great space of sky, what the inhabitants of it call "eye-reach," treeless except for a few cotton-woods and willows117 along the sink of intermittent118 streams, and stippled119 with low shrubs121 of artemesia. This is the true "sage-brush," though [164] it is no sage, the sacred bush of Diana, Artemisia tridentata. It may grow in favoured districts man-high, but ordinarily not more than two or three feet in the arid122 regions which it haunts. Other social shrubs will be found pre-empting miles of the territory to which the artemesia gives its name, coleogeny, pursia, dalia, "creosote," but none other gives it the distinctive feature, the web of pale, silky sage-green against the sun-burned sand.
Other items of the sage-brush landscape are so constant that they are immediately suggested by it: mountains hanging on the horizon in opalescent123 haze124, low flowing lines of hills overlaid by old lava-flows, the "black rock" simulating cloud shadows on the distant ranges, dry red cones125 of ancient volcanic126 ash, and great flat table-topped "buttes" of the painted desert.
White-crested ranges on the one hand and buttes on the other mark the limits of the sage; for where snow-caps are, there are trees, and where the buttes begin the cactus127 and the palo verde reign128.
A sage-brush country is a cattle country primarily; perhaps there may be mines; where there is water to be stored for irrigation there will [165] be towns, but the virtue129 of the sage is that it grows in lands that man, at least, has found no other use for.
It can thrive on an allowance of water that will support no larger thing than a chipmunk130 or a lizard131, and, growing, feeds the cattle on a thousand hills. Therefore it is indispensable to any picture of the sage-brush country that there should be herds132 at large in it and vaqueros riding, or far down the bleached133 valley the dust of a rodeo rising. It is impossible to think of such a land and not think of these things, free life, and air as clear and vibrant134 with vitality135 as a bell. I can never think of it myself without seeing, in addition, the vultures making a merry-go-round over Panamint, and up from Coso the creaking line of a twenty-mule team.
The sage-brush country of California begins properly at the foot of the Sierras where the state-line sheers east by south from Lake Tahoe. It covers the high valleys that divide the true Sierra from the older, lesser136 ranges that keep it company as far south as Olancha. Below Mono Lake, that part of the gold region made immortal137 by Mark Twain, it gives to the chrome- and ochre-tinted soil its distinguishing characteristic. From the long [166] arm of Death Valley it begins to be encroached upon by the mesquite, and at Indian Wells it is driven close under the lee of the last Sierra. The range of which San Bernardino and San Jacinto are outposts carries the artemisia farther desertward, almost to the Colorado River in fact, and south again about the Salton Sea it holds its own with sahuro and palo verde. Its eastern border, like that of the wild tribes along the Mojave line, is lost in pure desertness. Formerly138 much of that country from San Bernardino to the sea was native to the sage, and all the southern end of the San Joaquin. But now all this is replaced with orchards139, for the artemisia proves nothing so much of the soil on which it grows as that, given a due allowance of water, it is as desirable for other things.
All this country which I have described to you has so recently been sea that the mark of its old beach-line is plainly to be traced along the east Sierra wall. Still the evaporating water leaves vast deposits of salt and alkali, blinking white in the sink of Death Valley. There are lakes there still where the salt crusts over hard and clear like ice, and deep thick puddles140 of bitter minerals, the lees of that ancient inland ocean. From the top [167] of any of the denuded141 desert ranges it is possible to trace the winding142 bays and estuaries143, and, with an eye for location, to choose the points at which one may fairly expect to find potsherds, amulets144, fire-blackened hearthstones, and the middens of a nameless people who built their primitive145 towns along its beaches. It must have had much to recommend it in those days before the sage-brush took it, for this inland sea, rather than the more mountainous Pacific shore, was the route taken by the ancient migratory146 peoples who left their undecipherable signs scored into the rocks from the Aztec country to the Arctic. On isolated147 igneous148 rocks near their old encampments, and high on the walls of the box canons, such as might have been tide-rifts, high above any mechanical contrivance of the present-day Indians, the records resist equally the shifts of sea and sand and the efforts of modern science to read them.
Whether the ghosts of the departed peoples ever revisit the ancient beaches, the ghosts of waters haunt there daily. Morning and mid-afternoon the rivers of mirage149 arise; they well out of the past and are poured trembling on the plain; phantom150 fogs blow across them, wraiths151 of trees grow up and are reflected in false streams. Often in very [168] early light there are strange suggestions of——dunes152 and boulders perhaps? Only no boulders in that country are flat-topped like the houses built in lands of the sun, and no dunes are wall-sided. Mirage, we are told, is but a picture of distant things, mirrored on atmospheric153 planes, but then maybe a ghost is only a mirage deflected154 on our atmosphere from worlds outside our ken90, and it is always easy in the desert to see things that you cannot possibly believe. Whatever they are, mirages155 are real to the eye. I mean that they are not to be winked156 away nor dissipated by contact. I have watched a vaquero ride into one of them and drown to all appearances, or seem to be swimming his horse across its billows, all of him below its surface as completely hidden as by rivers of water. Moreover, mirages tend always to occur under given conditions and in the same places. I recall one of the stations on the old Mojave stage road, which, approached from the north about an hour after sunrise, would instantly duplicate: two houses, two lines of poplars, two high corrals.
Occasionally along the edge of the sage-brush country one may see that surpassing wonder, the moon mirage, poured like quicksilver along the [169] narrow valleys, as if the thirsty land had dreamed of water.
It is odd how this suggestion of sea and river clings to a country where there is nothing harder to come by than good water to drink. For any other purpose it is not to be thought of. After one of those terrible wind storms, the only really incommoding desert weather, it is possible to find great spaces all rippled59 and lined in water-markings like a sea that has suddenly undergone a magic transformation157 into sand. The contours of the desert ranges are billowy; they rise out of the plain like the grey-backed breakers of open sea. The valleys between are narrow and trough-like; the shores of them are lined with crawling dunes that, under the steady pressure of wind currents, are for ever sliding up their own peaks and down the other side, changing place without ever once losing the long slope to windward and the abrupt landward fall of waves.
Another item which adds to the suggestion of the illimitable spread of sage-brush country, like the sea, is the way the sparse158 forests of the mountain-tops appear to be islanded by it. For the sage-brush extends on across the Great Basin, it stretches into Montana and south to Arizona [170] and New Mexico, it works about the lower end of the Rocky Mountains and well into the great central plain. The ranges lie thick in it as ocean swells159, as I have said, and stepping from crest to crest has come the fox-tail pine, Pinus flexilis, all the way from Humboldt Mountain to San Jacinto. A sinewy160, thinly-branched species, as straight-backed as an Indian, it has little affinity161 for its noble congeners of the Sierra forests, but keeps to the dry and open ridges112, nourished by clouds and by infrequent shallow snows. With it, but at lower levels to which the flexilis will never come, is found frequently the one-leaved piñon pine, the food-crop of the wild tribes. But the piñon is a pushing sort, it establishes itself upon the slightest invitation.
There is a story told in the desert of how this grey, round-headed tree was once a very great capitan, who, in order that his death might be as beneficent to his people as his life had been, was changed into the foodful pine. Whether the legend is true or not, certain it is that if you sit down by a piñon, wherever found, and stay long enough, you will see Indians. They might come in the Spring looking for taboose, or later for willows and grasses for basketry, for seeds of sunflower and chia, [171] to shoot doves by the water-holes or to hunt chuckwallas. A chuckwalla is a lizard, a kind of dragon in miniature, barred black and white, and as offensive to look at as he is harmless, in fact very good eating and not too plentiful162. Mojaves, Shoshones, Paiutes, Pimas, all the tribes of the sage-brush country, have this in common, that they live very close to the earth; roots, seeds, reptiles163, thick pads of the cholla cactus, even the grass of the field, serve them. They look, indeed, as though they had been made of the earth on the very spot that produced them, of the black rock, the brown sand, and the dark water that collects in polished basins of the wind-denuded ranges.
Very little rain gets past the heaven-raking crest of the Sierra Nevada into the sage-brush country; the most that falls is blown up from the Gulf of California along the draw created by the close, parallel desert ranges. It is precipitated164 usually under atmospheric conditions that produce violent drops and changes. All that the traveller is likely to find of it is in these rock reservoirs under the run-off of some bare granite cliff, or in the rare, persistent "water-holes" hollowed out by beasts or men, marked in the landscape by one lone165 tree perhaps, or a clump166 of shrubby167 willows. [172] Often there will be no mark at all except the frequency along the trail of skeleton cattle or wild sheep, pointing all in one direction, as they died on their way to the far-between drinking-places. There are districts in this back-door country where evaporation168 from the body is so rapid that death overtakes the chance prospector169 even with water in sight or in his canteen across his back. For years a notorious outlaw170 protected himself in the Death Valley region, by filling in all the springs in a circle about the territory to which he had retreated. Beyond that waterless rim even the law could not penetrate171.
And yet how the land repays the slightest moisture! Years when the Kuro-Siwa swings closer to our coast and the winds are friendly, I have seen all that country, from Tehachapi, outside the wall, to San Gorgiono, one sheet of blue and gold. Seeds of a hundred tender annuals lie in the loose sands for years between the shrubby sage, their vitality unimpaired by the delayed resurrection of a chance wet spring. Often I have sifted172 the sand in my fingers looking for a sign of the life-giving principle which bursts so suddenly into beauty, without finding it. Yet after years in which there is no alteration173 in the aspect of the [173] country, except the insensible change of the sage tints174 from grey to green and grey again, the miracle takes place, the blossomy wonder is upon the world.
As a matter of fact, the sage-brush country is by no means the desert that it looks to the casual eye. Besides the social shrubs which have each their own blossom and seed time, even the driest years will afford a few blooms of crimson mallow, and in the shelter of every considerable shrub120 some dwarfed and delicate phacelia or nemophilia. Even out of dunes which bury its hundred old trunks to the new season's twigs175, the mesquite will bear its sweet foodful pods. If you know at what hours to look for it, wild life is never absent, but it is not ordinarily to be found by white men blundering about in broad noon.
It is only when you meet, in the midst of great open valleys wherein there is nothing growing higher than the knees of your horse, and nothing moving bigger than the little horned toad176 under the cactus bush, bands of Indians well fed, cushiony with fat of mesquite meal and chia, that you understand how little you know of the land in which you move.
There is a Paiute proverb to the effect that no [174] man should attempt the country east of the Sierras until he has learned to sleep in the shade of his arrows. This is a picturesque177 way of saying that he must be able to reduce his wants to the limit of necessity. Those who have been able to do so, and have trusted the land to repay them, have discovered that the measure is over-full.
A man may not find wealth there, nor too much of food even, but he often finds himself, which is much more important.
该作者的其它作品
《The Land of Little Rain少雨的土地》
《The Basket Woman筐妇》
该作者的其它作品
《The Land of Little Rain少雨的土地》
《The Basket Woman筐妇》
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extremity
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| n.末端，尽头；尽力；终极；极度 | |
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geographically
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| adv.地理学上，在地理上，地理方面 | |
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cataclysms
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| n.（突然降临的）大灾难( cataclysm的名词复数 ) | |
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withered
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| adj. 枯萎的，干瘪的，（人身体的部分器官）因病萎缩的或未发育良好的 动词wither的过去式和过去分词形式 | |
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scent
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| n.气味，香味，香水，线索，嗅觉；v.嗅，发觉 | |
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crest
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| n.顶点；饰章；羽冠；vt.达到顶点；vi.形成浪尖 | |
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abrupt
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| adj.突然的，意外的；唐突的，鲁莽的 | |
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precipices
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| n.悬崖，峭壁( precipice的名词复数 ) | |
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granite
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| adj.花岗岩，花岗石 | |
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jutting
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| v.（使）突出( jut的现在分词 )；伸出；（从…）突出；高出 | |
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gouged
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| v.凿( gouge的过去式和过去分词 )；乱要价；（在…中）抠出…；挖出… | |
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12
scooped
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| v.抢先报道( scoop的过去式和过去分词 )；（敏捷地）抱起；抢先获得；用铲[勺]等挖（洞等） | |
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13
afterward
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| adv.后来；以后 | |
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14
northward
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| adv.向北；n.北方的地区 | |
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15
besieged
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| 包围，围困，围攻( besiege的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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16
persistence
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| n.坚持，持续，存留 | |
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17
bent
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| n.爱好，癖好；adj.弯的；决心的，一心的 | |
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18
steadily
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| adv.稳定地；不变地；持续地 | |
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19
defiant
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| adj.无礼的，挑战的 | |
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20
ridge
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| n.山脊；鼻梁；分水岭 | |
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21
crutched
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| 用拐杖支持的，有丁字形柄的，有支柱的 | |
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22
rabble
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| n.乌合之众，暴民；下等人 | |
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23
deciduous
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| adj.非永久的；短暂的；脱落的；落叶的 | |
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24
flaunting
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| adj.招摇的，扬扬得意的，夸耀的v.炫耀，夸耀( flaunt的现在分词 )；有什么能耐就施展出来 | |
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25
usurp
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| vt.篡夺，霸占；vi.篡位 | |
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26
clannish
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| adj.排他的，门户之见的 | |
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27
hardy
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| adj.勇敢的，果断的，吃苦的；耐寒的 | |
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28
persistent
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| adj.坚持不懈的，执意的；持续的 | |
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29
bough
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| n.大树枝，主枝 | |
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30
boughs
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| 大树枝( bough的名词复数 ) | |
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31
flexibility
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| n.柔韧性，弹性，（光的）折射性，灵活性 | |
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32
harps
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| abbr.harpsichord 拨弦古钢琴n.竖琴( harp的名词复数 ) | |
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33
austere
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| adj.艰苦的；朴素的，朴实无华的；严峻的 | |
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34
sequoia
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| n.红杉 | |
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35
rim
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| n.(圆物的)边，轮缘；边界 | |
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36
abides
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| 容忍( abide的第三人称单数 )； 等候； 逗留； 停留 | |
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37
computed
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| adj.[医]计算的，使用计算机的v.计算，估算( compute的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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38
transcribe
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| v.抄写，誉写；改编(乐曲)；复制，转录 | |
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39
mere
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| adj.纯粹的；仅仅，只不过 | |
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40
corrugated
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| adj.波纹的；缩成皱纹的；波纹面的；波纹状的v.（使某物）起皱褶(corrugate的过去式和过去分词) | |
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41
spire
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| n.(教堂)尖顶，尖塔，高点 | |
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42
dome
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| n.圆屋顶，拱顶 | |
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43
zephyrs
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| n.和风，微风( zephyr的名词复数 ) | |
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44
foliage
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| n.叶子，树叶，簇叶 | |
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45
diffusing
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| （使光）模糊，漫射，漫散( diffuse的现在分词 )； （使）扩散； （使）弥漫； （使）传播 | |
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46
majesty
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| n.雄伟，壮丽，庄严，威严；最高权威，王权 | |
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47
stifling
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| a.令人窒息的 | |
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48
awe
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| n.敬畏，惊惧；vt.使敬畏，使惊惧 | |
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49
habitual
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| adj.习惯性的；通常的，惯常的 | |
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50
botanist
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| n.植物学家 | |
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51
usurped
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| 篡夺，霸占( usurp的过去式和过去分词 )； 盗用； 篡夺，篡权 | |
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52
verging
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| 接近，逼近（verge的现在分词形式） | |
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53
furtive
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| adj.鬼鬼崇崇的，偷偷摸摸的 | |
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54
ledge
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| n.壁架，架状突出物；岩架，岩礁 | |
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55
cascades
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| 倾泻( cascade的名词复数 )； 小瀑布（尤指一连串瀑布中的一支）； 瀑布状物； 倾泻（或涌出）的东西 | |
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56
tangles
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| （使）缠结， （使）乱作一团( tangle的第三人称单数 ) | |
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57
overlapping
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| adj./n.交迭（的） | |
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58
forth
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| adv.向前；向外，往外 | |
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59
rippled
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| 使泛起涟漪（ripple的过去式与过去分词形式） | |
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60
disintegrating
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| v.（使）破裂[分裂，粉碎]，（使）崩溃( disintegrate的现在分词 ) | |
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61
glacier
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| n.冰川，冰河 | |
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62
mightier
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| adj. 强有力的，强大的，巨大的 adv. 很，极其 | |
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63
dwarfed
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| vt.（使）显得矮小（dwarf的过去式与过去分词形式） | |
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64
ivy
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| n.常青藤，常春藤 | |
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65
pollen
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| n.[植]花粉 | |
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66
orchardist
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| 果树栽培者，果园主； 果农 | |
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67
crimson
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| n./adj.深(绯)红色(的)；vi.脸变绯红色 | |
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68
tassels
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| n.穗( tassel的名词复数 )；流苏状物；（植物的）穗；玉蜀黍的穗状雄花v.抽穗， （玉米）长穗须( tassel的第三人称单数 )；使抽穗， （为了使作物茁壮生长）摘去穗状雄花；用流苏装饰 | |
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69
rosy
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| adj.美好的，乐观的，玫瑰色的 | |
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70
adventurous
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| adj.爱冒险的；惊心动魄的，惊险的，刺激的 | |
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71
locusts
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| n.蝗虫( locust的名词复数 )；贪吃的人；破坏者；槐树 | |
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72
lodging
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| n.寄宿，住所；(大学生的)校外宿舍 | |
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73
moss
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| n.苔，藓，地衣 | |
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74
crevice
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| n.(岩石、墙等)裂缝；缺口 | |
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75
irresistible
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| adj.非常诱人的，无法拒绝的，无法抗拒的 | |
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76
ascends
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| v.上升，攀登( ascend的第三人称单数 ) | |
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77
vibration
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| n.颤动，振动；摆动 | |
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78
lashing
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| n.鞭打；痛斥；大量；许多v.鞭打( lash的现在分词 )；煽动；紧系；怒斥 | |
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79
definitive
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| adj.确切的，权威性的；最后的，决定性的 | |
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80
distinctive
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| adj.特别的，有特色的，与众不同的 | |
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81
mimic
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| v.模仿，戏弄；n.模仿他人言行的人 | |
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82
timorous
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| adj.胆怯的，胆小的 | |
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83
irrigating
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| 灌溉( irrigate的现在分词 )； 冲洗（伤口） | |
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84
prunes
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| n.西梅脯，西梅干( prune的名词复数 )v.修剪（树木等）( prune的第三人称单数 )；精简某事物，除去某事物多余的部分 | |
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85
barley
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| n.大麦，大麦粒 | |
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86
sniff
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| vi.嗅…味道；抽鼻涕；对嗤之以鼻，蔑视 | |
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87
subdued
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| adj. 屈服的，柔和的，减弱的 动词subdue的过去式和过去分词 | |
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88
ribs
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| n.肋骨( rib的名词复数 )；（船或屋顶等的）肋拱；肋骨状的东西；（织物的）凸条花纹 | |
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89
buttresses
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| n.扶壁，扶垛( buttress的名词复数 )v.用扶壁支撑，加固( buttress的第三人称单数 ) | |
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90
ken
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| n.视野，知识领域 | |
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91
glaciers
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| 冰河，冰川( glacier的名词复数 ) | |
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92
inaccessible
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| adj.达不到的，难接近的 | |
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93
boulders
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| n.卵石( boulder的名词复数 )；巨砾；（受水或天气侵蚀而成的）巨石；漂砾 | |
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94
crevasses
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| n.破口，崩溃处，裂缝( crevasse的名词复数 ) | |
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95
bleak
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| adj.(天气)阴冷的；凄凉的；暗淡的 | |
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96
bleaker
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| 阴冷的( bleak的比较级 )； （状况）无望的； 没有希望的； 光秃的 | |
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97
jade
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| n.玉石；碧玉；翡翠 | |
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98
translucence
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| n.半透明 | |
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99
condor
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| n.秃鹰；秃鹰金币 | |
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100
abysmal
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| adj.无底的，深不可测的，极深的；糟透的，极坏的；完全的 | |
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101
stark
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| adj.荒凉的；严酷的；完全的；adv.完全地 | |
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102
horde
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| n.群众，一大群 | |
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103
gulf
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| n.海湾；深渊，鸿沟；分歧，隔阂 | |
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104
marshes
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| n.沼泽，湿地( marsh的名词复数 ) | |
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105
exhausted
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| adj.极其疲惫的，精疲力尽的 | |
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106
margin
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| n.页边空白；差额；余地，余裕；边，边缘 | |
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107
humbly
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| adv. 恭顺地，谦卑地 | |
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108
domes
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| n.圆屋顶( dome的名词复数 )；像圆屋顶一样的东西；圆顶体育场 | |
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109
strata
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| n.地层（复数）；社会阶层 | |
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110
watchful
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| adj.注意的，警惕的 | |
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111
apotheosis
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| n.神圣之理想；美化；颂扬 | |
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112
ridges
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| n.脊( ridge的名词复数 )；山脊；脊状突起；大气层的)高压脊 | |
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113
huddled
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| 挤在一起（huddle的过去式与过去分词形式） | |
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114
bosoms
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| 胸部( bosom的名词复数 )； 胸怀； 女衣胸部（或胸襟）； 和爱护自己的人在一起的情形 | |
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115
sage
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| n.圣人，哲人；adj.贤明的，明智的 | |
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116
moors
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| v.停泊，系泊（船只）( moor的第三人称单数 ) | |
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117
willows
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| n.柳树( willow的名词复数 )；柳木 | |
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118
intermittent
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| adj.间歇的，断断续续的 | |
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119
stippled
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| v.加点、绘斑，加粒( stipple的过去式和过去分词 )；（把油漆、水泥等的表面）弄粗糙 | |
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120
shrub
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| n.灌木，灌木丛 | |
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121
shrubs
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| 灌木( shrub的名词复数 ) | |
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122
arid
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| adj.干旱的；(土地)贫瘠的 | |
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123
opalescent
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| adj.乳色的，乳白的 | |
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124
haze
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| n.霾，烟雾；懵懂，迷糊；vi.(over)变模糊 | |
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125
cones
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| n.（人眼）圆锥细胞；圆锥体( cone的名词复数 )；球果；圆锥形东西；（盛冰淇淋的）锥形蛋卷筒 | |
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126
volcanic
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| adj.火山的；象火山的；由火山引起的 | |
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127
cactus
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| n.仙人掌 | |
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128
reign
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| n.统治时期，统治，支配，盛行；v.占优势 | |
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129
virtue
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| n.德行，美德；贞操；优点；功效，效力 | |
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130
chipmunk
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| n.花栗鼠 | |
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131
lizard
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| n.蜥蜴，壁虎 | |
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132
herds
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| 兽群( herd的名词复数 )； 牧群； 人群； 群众 | |
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133
bleached
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| 漂白的，晒白的，颜色变浅的 | |
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134
vibrant
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| adj.震颤的，响亮的，充满活力的，精力充沛的，(色彩)鲜明的 | |
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135
vitality
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| n.活力，生命力，效力 | |
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136
lesser
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| adj.次要的，较小的；adv.较小地，较少地 | |
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137
immortal
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| adj.不朽的；永生的，不死的；神的 | |
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138
formerly
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| adv.从前，以前 | |
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139
orchards
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| （通常指围起来的）果园( orchard的名词复数 ) | |
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140
puddles
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| n.水坑， （尤指道路上的）雨水坑( puddle的名词复数 ) | |
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141
denuded
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| adj.[医]变光的，裸露的v.使赤裸( denude的过去式和过去分词 )；剥光覆盖物 | |
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142
winding
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| n.绕，缠，绕组，线圈 | |
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143
estuaries
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| （江河入海的）河口，河口湾( estuary的名词复数 ) | |
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144
amulets
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| n.护身符( amulet的名词复数 ) | |
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145
primitive
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| adj.原始的；简单的；n.原(始)人，原始事物 | |
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146
migratory
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| n.候鸟，迁移 | |
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147
isolated
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| adj.与世隔绝的 | |
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148
igneous
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| adj.火的，火绒的 | |
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149
mirage
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| n.海市蜃楼，幻景 | |
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150
phantom
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| n.幻影，虚位，幽灵；adj.错觉的，幻影的，幽灵的 | |
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151
wraiths
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| n.幽灵( wraith的名词复数 )；（传说中人在将死或死后不久的）显形阴魂 | |
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152
dunes
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| 沙丘( dune的名词复数 ) | |
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153
atmospheric
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| adj.大气的，空气的；大气层的；大气所引起的 | |
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deflected
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| 偏离的 | |
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155
mirages
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| n.海市蜃楼，幻景( mirage的名词复数 ) | |
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156
winked
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| v.使眼色( wink的过去式和过去分词 )；递眼色（表示友好或高兴等）；（指光）闪烁；闪亮 | |
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157
transformation
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| n.变化；改造；转变 | |
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158
sparse
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| adj.稀疏的，稀稀落落的，薄的 | |
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159
swells
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| 增强( swell的第三人称单数 )； 肿胀； （使）凸出； 充满（激情） | |
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160
sinewy
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| adj.多腱的，强壮有力的 | |
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161
affinity
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| n.亲和力，密切关系 | |
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162
plentiful
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| adj.富裕的，丰富的 | |
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163
reptiles
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| n.爬行动物，爬虫( reptile的名词复数 ) | |
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164
precipitated
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| v.（突如其来地）使发生( precipitate的过去式和过去分词 )；促成；猛然摔下；使沉淀 | |
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165
lone
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| adj.孤寂的，单独的；唯一的 | |
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166
clump
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| n.树丛，草丛；vi.用沉重的脚步行走 | |
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167
shrubby
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| adj.灌木的，灌木一般的，灌木繁茂著的 | |
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168
evaporation
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| n.蒸发，消失 | |
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169
prospector
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| n.探矿者 | |
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170
outlaw
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| n.歹徒，亡命之徒；vt.宣布…为不合法 | |
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171
penetrate
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| v.透(渗)入；刺入，刺穿；洞察，了解 | |
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172
sifted
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| v.筛( sift的过去式和过去分词 )；筛滤；细查；详审 | |
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173
alteration
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| n.变更，改变；蚀变 | |
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174
tints
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| 色彩( tint的名词复数 )； 带白的颜色； （淡色）染发剂； 痕迹 | |
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175
twigs
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| 细枝，嫩枝( twig的名词复数 ) | |
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176
toad
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| n.蟾蜍，癞蛤蟆 | |
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177
picturesque
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| adj.美丽如画的，（语言）生动的，绘声绘色的 | |
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