Much of the Old Overland Trail lay across the "Great American Desert,"
as it was named in the earlier geographies. Irrigation and progressive
energy have made these wastes in many instances literally to "blossom
as the rose"; but until that was done these stretches were weary
enough.
He who knows only the desert of the geography naturally conceives it
an absolutely forsaken and empty region where nothing but dust-storms
are born unattended and die "without benefit of the clergy." But the
desert has character and is as variable as many another creature.