“Corus, though happy to have his beloved bride again, felt that the awful crime Fronto had committed should not be treated lightly. His punishment must serve as a warning to the world. Still, at the request of his gentle-hearted bride, he forgave his false friend, and sent him back safe with his companions to the Ocean King. However, he forced Fronto to remain in his father’s dominions for ever, saying that he had proven, by his treachery, he was unfit to govern a kingdom of his own. Moreover, that kingdom should exist no longer. He would dry it up and make it a huge desert, to mark the spot of a false friend’s perfidy.
“So the Sun never relaxed his fierce gaze, nor the wind its hot breath. Together they scorched the seabed until the water disappeared, and the bottom looked like a huge white bowl. Then slowly the desert formed. The fierce heat became so intense that even the rains refused to fall there, and the earth was too salty to allow anything to grow. Every living creature shunned it. Neither bird nor beast would visit it, and thus it remained for thousands of years.
“When you are in the bottom of this bowl, you are nearly three hundred feet below the ocean. Upon all sides are great mountains, some over ten thousand feet high; and this spot is the hottest place in the world. The desert looks like a great plain leading out to the horizon. The soil is almost as fine as white flour.
“But, silent and deserted as it is, the Sun Prince declared that, because his beloved bride had been kept there, it should still be sacred in his eyes—still retain a certain fascination. So, in all its desolation, it does possess a weird beauty of its own. The sand dunes reflect the light of the sky. They are sometimes deep blue, sometimes topaz yellow, and again, at sunset, a brilliant rose.
“The quiet of the desert is profound, save when some whirling sand-storm blows. Then all living creatures caught there are lost unless they lie flat and cover heads and mouths. Except for this, the air is always magnificent. At times, it is all covered with a pink mist; at other times, it is a pure golden haze. The mountains, too, are in changing shades of purple and lilac and blue, with golden and blood-red colors mingled.
“All these years the place has remained a desert,—a monument to the treachery of Prince Fronto. Yet the bitterness of the Sun Prince seems to be lessening. Perhaps the sweet pleading of the beautiful Selene has won forgiveness, for of late that awful waste shows signs of life. True, its great mesas, in gray and gold, bordering its lonely hundreds of miles, are rocky and barren still; but now and then a green bush of elder arises on the sands, and the cacti and greasewood are beginning to flourish well. This is the first sign of life, but it means surely that Prince Corus has relented, and will remove the curse that ‘nothing shall ever live there.’
“Occasionally, too, an animal has been seen running across the dry, parched sands, and birds that once flew hundreds of miles to avoid the hot plains now skim lightly across them. Then, at times, trees and green grass and cool fresh lakes of water are visible. These last disappear quickly when one approaches and tries to drink from their curling waves. Wise people call these sights mirages, but perhaps, after all, they are real, and foreshadow what the desert will become.
“The Sun Prince is wise and merciful, and though justice must be done, when justice is appeased he can restore the cooling streams and vegetation to the parched sands. Some day, perhaps, the magic spell will be withdrawn from the mysterious desert, and its shining seas again smile beneath sunny skies. Even now, Prince Corus occasionally sends a great cloudburst to drench the scorching plains. At first, we know, he did not love the barren waste. It brought back too keenly the sorrow of his stolen bride; but time has softened that feeling, and with his beloved Princess by his side, he looks down and smiles upon its glare and glitter. He shows this in the wonderful sky effects above it. They are things of beauty. If clouds gather, he tips them with rainbow colors,—brilliant reds and oranges, purples and greens, melting into delicious pinks, soft lilacs, and grays. The sunset there is a glorious sight never to be forgotten.
“Its mountains, too, are beautiful. Often the ridges are clear-cut and sharp. Again, when the Sun pours his heat upon them, they seem as flat as the palm of your hand. They change color frequently, for at times startling reds and yellows and pinks are painted in stripes all over them. Later the canyons are flashing in brilliant needle-like points of superb color, but again they are a dull blue or gray, and lose their splendor.
“But most sublime of all the sights is still the mirage. Trembling and glowing in the sea, lie trees and mountain peaks, reflected clear and beautiful. Maybe it is only the reflection of the golden haze that lies in the canyons at sunset; but whatever it is, it is one of the desert’s splendors. And though the lilac mist and the purple shadows that creep between the valleys and climb the mountains seem more natural to its desolation and its silence, yet the glory of that mirage—glittering with its dazzling hue, and flashing its strange lights like the rays from a fire-opal—will cling the longest in one’s memory.”