NEVADA'S WALTZING GIANTS.

Waikato Times, Volume XXXI, Issue 2534, 6 October 1888, Page 1 (Supplement)

NEVADA'S WALTZING GIANTS.

''Out in Nevada," said a mining mail from White Pine, " we ha>e the sublimest dance that man ever saw. Wo call it " the dance of tliu giants." Great cylindors of sand, from eight to twenty feet ill diameter, and sometimes immensely tall, come careering across the desert with a whirling, waltzing motion that is very graceful. I have often seen tliein when they must have been two or three miles high, for their tops readied into elands. Hut oftner there will lie one bitj column, with a lot of little columns attending it, all waltzing together. The elFect is the strangest thing imaginable. It is both sublime and grotesque. It inspires you with awe, and at tne same time fills you with a lesire to lavigh at the odd perforin nice. And, if the mail is superstition*, the weird, fantastic siuht can malte him feel mighty uncomfortable. I'liev are never seen except in the summer time, and arc most frequent in July. They have their beginning in some incipient u'liii lwiud, which snatches up a handful of sand while the surrounding air is still, and then they keep on growing and moving onward. They are not like the cyjloues farther east, for they move with very little noise, and, instead of being funnel shaped, are of the same size from top to bottom. The motion is the same, being both circular and advancing. They draw up into the cylinder fabulous quantities of sand, tons of sago brush, and sometimes good-sized stones. How far they travel nobody can tell. The very big ones must have waltzed along in their silent majesty over the lonely deserts for a long distance, Tliey must travel the whole distance of the White Pine Valley, 3.">0 miles, aud sometimes tliey ome down through Spring Valley from Idaho to tin L'craiiegate Valley. —Knowledge,