"What's that?" he asked.
"That, my lad, is what I always love to hear. It means I'm home. It's
the roar of the Colorado as she takes her first plunge into the Canyon."
IV
THE OASIS
AUGUST NAAB'S oasis was an oval valley, level as a floor, green with leaf
and white with blossom, enclosed by a circle of colossal cliffs of vivid
vermilion hue. At its western curve the Colorado River split the red
walls from north to south. When the wind was west a sullen roar, remote
as of some far-off driving mill, filled the valley; when it was east a
dreamy hollow hum, a somnolent song, murmured through the cottonwoods;
when no wind stirred, silence reigned, a silence not of serene plain or
mountain fastness, but shut in, compressed, strange, and breathless.
Safe from the storms of the elements as well as of the world was this
Garden of Eschtah.
Naab had put Hare to bed on the unroofed porch of a log house, but routed
him out early, and when Hare lifted the blankets a shower of
cotton-blossoms drifted away like snow. A grove of gray-barked trees
spread green canopy overhead, and through the intricate web shone crimson
walls, soaring with resistless onsweep up and up to shut out all but a
blue lake of sky.
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