Page:Bierce - Collected Works - Volume 01.djvu/389

Rh with those to which we are accustomed in the realm of reality; imagination had simply nothing to do with the matter. True, I had not recently had the advantage of seeing any such objects, except trees, and these had been mighty poor specimens, but, like Macduff, I "could not but remember such things were," nor had I forgotten how they looked.

Of course I was not for an instant deceived by all this: I knew that under it all lay a particularly forbidding and inhospitable expanse of sagebrush and cactus, peopled with nothing more nearly akin to me than prairie dogs, ground owls and jackass rabbits—that with these exceptions the desert was as desolate as the environment of Ozymandias' "vast and trunkless legs of stone." But as a show it was surely the most enchanting that human eyes had ever looked on, and after more years than I care to count it remains one of memory's most precious possessions. The one thing which always somewhat impairs the illusion in such instances—the absence of the horizon water-line—did not greatly abate the vraisemblance in this, for the large island in the distance nearly closed the view seaward, and the ships occupied most of the remaining space. I had but to fancy a slight haze on the farther