Samual A. Clarke 1873

Serial: Overland monthly and Out West magazine.
Title: Klamath Land [Volume 11, Issue 6, Dec 1873; pp. 548-554]
Author: Clarke, Samuel A.
Collection: Making of America Journal Articles
Article URL: http://quod.lib.umich.edu/m/moajrnl/ahj1472.1-11.006/544

KLAMATH LAND.
We enjoy the reading of the travels of Gulliver and the adventures so vividly portrayed in the Arabian Nights, because, while so decidedly out of the common way and seasoned so highly with hyperbole, they remove us from the world of fact and transport us to the region of romance. Even a newspaper correspondent finds time to enjoy recitals that leave his own attempts at a discount, and freshen his fancy by the very vividness of the kaleidoscope whose every turn is a new extravagance. And sometimes the freshness of romance touches our lives without the accompaniment of such exuberance; Nature becomes revealed in newness that refreshes and inspires.
The Modoc war had become a monotony, not even relieved when Captain Jack was led into captivity and his band became docile feeders at the public crib. It was a relief when the army took up the line of march, left the poisoned waters of Tule Lake behind, and dragged its slow length along the line of dust that meandered sagebrush hills and alkali plains and shores, and having skirted the unwholesomeness of Lower Klamath Lake, climbed the dividing ridge, and let itself down into the happier atmosphere and lovelier region of larger Klamath. It was a delightful exchange, for the land of the Klamaths is a smiling paradise in midsummer, and its streams roll along their crystal tides, translucent as the ether, pure as Abana and Pharpar, rivers of Damascus, cold as the snows from whose frozen hand they drop.