title: Desert Passages: Encounters with the American Deserts
author:  Patricia Nelson Limerick 
description: "A small, bright gem of a book." -- <i>Donald Worster, Arizona and the West</i><br /><br />"Patricia Limerick is simply one of the best writers alive...she thinks as clearly and logically as she writes." -- <i>Garry Wills</i><br /><br />"Patricia Nelson Limerick is an original, learned, passionate writer. Everything she writes about the history of the American West deserves attention." -- <i>Larry McMurtry</i><br /><br />"This is an important book...beautifully written..." -- <i>Kevin Starr, Western Historical Quarterly</i>
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  # Deserted
  
  
  ### Edward Bellamy
  
  
  This page formatted 2007 Blackmask Online.
  
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  Produced by David Widger
  
  
  
  
  
  DESERTED
  
  By Edward Bellamy
  
  1898
  
  “What a glorious, all-satisfying country this Nevada desert would be, if one
  were only all eyes, and had no need of food, drink, and shelter! Would n't it,
  Miss Dwyer? Do you know, I 've no doubt that this is the true location of
  heaven. You see, the lack of water and vegetation would be no inconvenience to
  spirits, while the magnificent scenery and the cloudless sky would be just the
  thing to make them thrive.”
  
  “But what I can't get over,” responded the young lady addressed, “is that
  these alkali plains, which have been described as so dreary and uninteresting,
  should prove to be in reality one of the most wonderfully impressive and
  beautiful regions in the world. What awful fibbers, or what awfully dull
  people, they must have been whose descriptions have s