Erema | Page 3

to save my own little
worthless life I must have drained every drop of water from his flat
half-gallon jar. The water was hot and the cork-hole sandy, and I
grumbled even while drinking it; and what must my father (who was
dying all the while for a drop, but never took one)--what must he have
thought of me?
But he never said a word, so far as I remember; and that makes it all the
worse for me. We had strayed away into a dry, volcanic district of the
mountains, where all the snow-rivers run out quite early; and of natural
springs there was none forth-coming. All we had to guide us was a little
traveler's compass (whose needle stuck fast on the pivot with sand) and
the glaring sun, when he came to sight behind the hot, dry, driving
clouds. The clouds were very low, and flying almost in our faces, like
vultures sweeping down on us. To me they seemed to shriek over our
heads at the others rushing after them. But my father said that they
could make no sound, and I never contradicted him.

CHAPTER II
A PACIFIC SUNSET
At last we came to a place from which the great spread of the earth was
visible. For a time--I can not tell how long--we had wholly lost
ourselves, going up and down, and turning corners, without getting
further. But my father said that we must come right, if we made up our
minds to go long enough. We had been in among all shapes, and want
of shapes, of dreariness, through and in and out of every thrup and
thrum of weariness, scarcely hoping ever more to find our way out and
discover memory of men for us, when all of a sudden we saw a grand
sight. The day had been dreadfully hot and baffling, with sudden swirls
of red dust arising, and driving the great drought into us. To walk had
been worse than to drag one's way through a stubbly bed of

sting-nettles. But now the quick sting of the sun was gone, and his
power descending in the balance toward the flat places of the land and
sea. And suddenly we looked forth upon an immeasurable spread of
these.
We stood at the gate of the sandy range, which here, like a vast brown
patch, disfigures the beauty of the sierra. On either side, in purple
distance, sprang sky-piercing obelisks and vapor-mantled glaciers,
spangled with bright snow, and shodden with eternal forest. Before us
lay the broad, luxuriant plains of California, checkered with more tints
than any other piece of earth can show, sleeping in alluvial ease, and
veined with soft blue waters. And through a gap in the brown coast
range, at twenty leagues of distance, a light (so faint as to seem a
shadow) hovered above the Pacific.
But none of all this grandeur touched our hearts except the water gleam.
Parched with thirst, I caught my father's arm and tried to urge him on
toward the blue enchantment of ecstatic living water. But, to my
surprise, he staggered back, and his face grew as white as the distant
snow. I managed to get him to a sandy ledge, with the help of his own
endeavors, and there let him rest and try to speak, while my frightened
heart throbbed over his.
"My little child," he said at last, as if we were fallen back ten years,
"put your hand where I can feel it."
My hand all the while had been in his, and to let him know where it
was, it moved. But cold fear stopped my talking.
"My child, I have not been kind to you," my father slowly spoke again,
"but it has not been from want of love. Some day you will see all this,
and some day you will pardon me."
He laid one heavy arm around me, and forgetting thirst and pain, with
the last intensity of eyesight watched the sun departing. To me, I know
not how, great awe was every where, and sadness. The conical point of
the furious sun, which like a barb had pierced us, was broadening into a
hazy disk, inefficient, but benevolent. Underneath him depth of night

was waiting to come upward (after letting him fall through) and stain
his track with redness. Already the arms of darkness grew in readiness
to receive him: his upper arc was pure and keen, but the lower was
flaked with atmosphere; a glow of hazy light soon would follow, and
one bright glimmer (addressed more to the sky than to the earth), and
after that a broad, soft gleam; and after that how many a man should
never see the sun again, and among them would be my father.
He,