The
ruins of the ranches once standing in this valley are still to be
seen, and the graves of a lieutenant and twenty-four soldiers killed
by the Indians many years ago.
The afternoon sun blazed upon the low hills, mere heaps of rubble like
old moraines, where sometimes a little red sandstone cropped out and
gave the wearied eyes a change of color. Always the noble vault of
sky, the flying cloud-shadows, the Laramie range with its torn
outlines softened by distance, which looked so near, yet was so far.
Constantly we said, "How like to Arabia or Palestine!" We only asked
for camels to make the resemblance perfect. The gray sage-brush tinted
the long low solemn hills like the olives of Judaea; the distant
bluffs looked like ruined cities; the mirage was our Dead Sea. The
cattle-and sheep-farmers follow the same business as Abraham and
Isaac, and are as sharp in their dealings as Jacob of old. The Indians
are our Bedouins, and like them they "fold their tents and silently
steal." Once in looking back the illusion was perfect. The Sea of
Galilee was behind us, and upon its banks stood the old cities of
Capernaum and Nazareth towered and walled and gray.
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