They all preserve, however, the common characteristics of barrenness, inhospitality, and misery.
There are no inhabitants of this land of despair.

A band of Pawnees or of Blackfeet may occasionally traverse it in order to reach other hunting-grounds, but the hardiest of the braves are glad to lose sight of those awesome plains, and to find themselves once more upon their prairies.

The coyote skulks among the scrub, the buzzard flaps heavily through the air, and the clumsy grizzly bear lumbers through the dark ravines, and picks up such sustenance as it can amongst the rocks.

These are the sole dwellers in the wilderness.
In the whole world there can be no more dreary view than that from the northern slope of the Sierra Blanco.

As far as the eye can reach stretches the great flat plain-land, all dusted over with patches of alkali, and intersected by clumps of the dwarfish chaparral bushes.