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CALIFORNIA DESERT TRAILS. lUustrated.
CALIFORNIA COAST TRAILS. A Horseback Ride
from Mexico to Oregon. Illustrated.

YOSEMITE TRAILS. Illustrated.

CONE-BEARING TREES OF THE CALIFORNIA
MOUNTAINS. Illustrated.

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Cbatlcs jFrancis ^aunUcrs

THE CALIFORNIA PADRES ANDTH El R MISSIONS.
Illustrated.

CALIFORNIA DESERT TRAILS

A'J' TWO-BUNCH PALMS; SAN GURGONIO MOUNTAIN IN
THE DISTANCE

CALIFORNIA DESERT
TRAILS

BY
J. SMEATON CHASE

WITH ILLUSTRATIONS FROM PHOTOGRAPHS
BY THE AUTHOR

AND AN APPENDIX OF PLANTS
ALSO HINTS ON DESERT TRAVELLING

BOSTON AND NEW YORK

HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY

I919

THci NEW VUmi;
PUBLIC LlBRAii-Y

iTIlTDEN FOUNDATIONS
R 1919 L.

COPYRIGHT, 1919, BY J. SMEATON CHASE
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

TO MY AUNT

IN THE LITTLE RED TOWN

AMONG THE RAINY CUMBERLAND MOUNTAINS

THIS UNCOMMONLY DRY VOLUME IS

AFFECTIONATELY INSCRIBED

I ACKNOWLEDGE a sense of mystical rev-
erence when first I approach some illus-
trious feature of the globe, some coast
line of ocean, some mighty river or dreary
mountain-range, the ancient barrier of
kingdoms. KiiSiGLAKE : Eoihen.

PREFACE

THAT appetite comes by eating I have found to
be as true in the matter of geography as in the
affairs of the table. After long wanderings among the
incomparable forests and mountains and by the ro-
mantic shores of the most scenic and diversified of
our States, I fell an easy prey to the beckonings of
the other principal feature of California's topog-
raphy, the dreamy, dreary desert. Long ago, on
short expeditions into and across it at various points,
I had fallen under its inexplicable charm; now I
determined to know it more closely, by daily and
nightly intercourse through months of travel in its
sun-blasted solitudes: gaining the experience I de-
sired at the price, certainly, of some discomfort,
and, possibly, of a trifling degree of danger — merely
enough for spice.

This volume, then, is the fruit of over two years'
continuous camping and travelling on the desert.
It might more exactly be named "Colorado Desert
Trails" than "California Desert Trails," since there
are within this State other expanses of desert (such
as the Mojave, contiguous on the north to the region
I describe) which are not touched upon in the book.
But there seemed a danger of confusion in the other
name, since, on a casual sight, the word "Colorado"
in the title might give the impression that the sub-
ject-matter was some region in the State of that

X PREFACE

name. The tract I deal with is, in truth, unfortu-
nately named — though the misfortune is acci-
dental, since, when it was labelled, in 1853, there was
no State of Colorado — and out-and-out Coloradans
might justly petition our common Uncle that the
mere suspicion of harboring a desert should be lifted
from them and the odium plainly fixed upon the
rival tourist-claiming nephew, California.

The book might have been made of more instruc-
tive value, no doubt, had the writer been a man of
science — naturalist, botanist, or geologist; for in
all those fields, and others that are outside my range,
the desert is full of matter. Yet it may not be unfair
to say that the observer whose interest is trained
upon a certain aspect of Nature may be to that ex-
tent incapacitated as regards the more general or
purely scenic bearings of his surroundings. And so
these discursive notes may possibly bring to the
reader a truer, though in some ways less explicit,
impression of the country described than would be
the case if they came from the pen of one who was
even a fractional savant.

For somewhat the same reason, little is here said
of the really remarkable agricultural developments
which in the past few years have come over consid-
erable portions of this intractable-seeming region.
I am no farmer, know little of potatoes or alfalfa,
poultry, pigs, or cattle, until the stage when they
issue in finished product from the kitchen. Thus I
may seem to ignore what to the practical mind must
appear the chief, or even the only, items of value.
I do not forget those Imperialites and Coachellans

PREFACE xi

who made hopeful suggestions — "I guess you'll
boom up this section now, won't you, say? Finest
land in the State" — and so on; nor their puzzled
or pitying glances when I made the only possible
reply, that I did not, could not, and would not
boom ; was, in fact, even averse to booms and boom-
ers; and was more enthralled by desert sunsets than
by desert dairies, astounding as these might be. In a
word, it is the desert as desert — God's desert, not
man's — that engaged my interest, and that, as I
this moment call it up before my inward eye, seems
to me the most memorable, in its totality of impres-
siveness, of all natural objects that I have met.

But I confess that the fascination of the untamed
desert has proved to be of too subtle a quality for
words of mine to render. That would necessarily be
true, of course, of anybody's attempt in any field of
Nature: but it would be tenfold true with respect
to the desert, and I will be bold to say that it would
be true without regard to the person in the case.
Whether it be that the desert is too intrinsically
alien to our psychology, or for some other reason, too
baffling to trace, I believe it to be the fact that its
genius is the rarest and the most elusive of all the
elements that make up the wonder of this transcend-
ent world. No "last word" on the desert will ever
be written; no statement, I mean, that, to those who
know the subject in any real degree, will not seem
to fail of getting at the essence.

It is a pleasure to record botanical obligations to
my friend Mr. S. B. Parish, of San Bernardino, Cali-
fornia, whose thorough knowledge of the flora of

xu

PREFACE

the desert, freely put at my disposal, was invaluable
in revising the Appendix of Plants. I am indebted
also to the United States Geological Survey for per-
mission to reprint from one of their publications the
"Hints on Desert Travelling " that appear in Appen-
dix A.

In conclusion, it is most satisfactory to note that,
since the following chapters were prepared, the
United States Government has, by a small appro-
priation of funds, made at least a beginning towards
bettering the conditions of desert travel by the

marking of roads and water-holes.

J. S. C.
Palm Springs, California
November, 191 8

CONTENTS

I. Introductory i

II. The Palm Oases and Canons 15

III. Trees and Tree-like Growths 38

IV. The Smaller Cacti, Shrubs, and Flowers . . 53
V. Some Desert Indian Lore . . . . . .69

VI. A Desert Ride: Palm Springs to Seven Palms . 84

VII. Seven Palms to Thousand Palm Canon . . 96

VIII. Thousand Palm Canon to Coachella Valley .110

IX. Coachella Valley to Pinon Well . . .126

X. Pinon Well to Mecca 144

XI. Mecca to Figtree John .169

XII. Figtree John to BoREGO Springs . . . .186

XIII. BoREGO Springs to Los Coyotes .... 205

XIV. Los Coyotes to Warner's Springs .... 223
XV. Warner's Springs to Agua Caliente . . . 237

XVI. Agu a Caliente TO "San Felipe City" . . .254
XVII. "San Felipe City" to Imperial Valley . . 272

XVIII. Imperial Valley to Yuma 294

XIX. Yuma to Blythe 315

XX. Blythe to Coachella Valley 339

Appendix A. Hints on Desert Travelling . 359

B. Noticeable Plants of the Desert 366

Index 381

ILLUSTRATIONS

At Two-Bunch Palms; San Gorgonio Mountain in the

Distance Frontispiece

A Characteristic Canon-Mouth with its Apron of

Debris 6

The Realm of Geology Alone lo

In Chino Canon . . i8

La Reina del Canon 22

An Indian Olla cached in a Canon-Wall .... 30
Seven Palms and San Jacinto Mountain .... 34
Desert-Brush: Ocotillos the Main Feature ... 50

An Oasis Water-Hole 58

An Indian cutting out the Heart of an Agave for

Baking 62

An Emergency Water-Supply 62

Floral Spring: Abronias amid Mesquits .... 66
Seven Palms and San Jacinto Mountain: A Night

Effect 94

The Pathway of the Torrent 102

In Thousand-Palm Canon 110

Smoke-Trees IN A Canon Wash 116

Sand, Mountain, Sky, and Silence 120

The Water-Line of the Vanished Sea 126

Among the Mud-Hills 130

xvi ILLUSTRATIONS

The Side-winder, the Little Horned Rattlesnake that y

GOES Sideways 134

Cholla Cactus, the Vilest OF THE Vile 134

Joshua-Trees on a High Mesa 140

At Twenty-Nine Palms 150

In Painted Canon 170

At Agua Dulce: Home OF FiGTREE John . . . .182

Sunrise over the Salton Sea 188

On a Desert Mountain Trail 230

The Old Stage-Station at Vallecitos 248

In the Superstitions 266

A Desert Settler's Home 288

An Old Saguaro, with Holes of the Elf-Owl . . . 312

The City of La Paz 334

Cahuilla Indian Adobe House and Storage-Basket . 348

PiCTOGRAPHS of THE CaHUILLA INDIANS 348

God's Acre: Chollas and Mortality 356

CALIFORNIA DESERT TRAILS

CALIFORNIA DESERT TRAILS

CHAPTER I

INTRODUCTORY

The Desert a riddle — Its charm a contradiction — Attraction of
the unattractive — The desert fringe a contrast — Supremacy in
color — "Opal " the word — Sand as a reflector — Sunset —
Rock-color — Mountain contours — Bleached ranges — Color
on levels — Rock-mosaic — Austerity of the open desert — Color-
flood of spring — Sky-color — Morning and evening hues —
Battles in the skies — The "wistful" quality — London versus
the Colorado — Solitude our native air — The awe of silence —
The desert as antidote.

THAT stony mystery the Sphinx, fixed in eter-
nal reverie amid the immemorial sands of
Egypt, might well stand as a symbol of the desert
itself; not that desert only, but deserts everywhere.
One point out of many that make up the analogy is
the baffling nature of the spell that people find in
the famous monument. One will say it is due to a
sense of its immense age ; another, that the features
bear a supernatural expression, or hold some secret
meaning ; another feels its awe to lie in the riddle of
its purpose; and another, in some supposed signifi-
cance of its proportions. Similarly, the magic of the
desert is a riddle. Not only does it defy putting into
words, but I have never found the person who felt
that he could even shape it vaguely to himself in
thought.

For one thing, it is in its essence a contradiction.

2 CALIFORNIA DESERT TRAILS

The desert is the opposite of all that we naturally
find pleasing. Yet I believe that its hold upon those
who have once fallen under its spell is deeper and
more enduring than is the charm of forest or sea or
mountain. This must seem a strange statement to
make, but I make it with consideration and in the
light of others' experience besides my own. The
beauty of great woodlands, the mystical solemnity
of the sea, the power and glory of mountains —
right well we love all these: yet somehow, that pale,
grave face of the desert, if once you look long upon
it, takes you more subtly captive and keeps you
enchained by a stronger bond. It is as if you were
bemused by the gaze of a sorceress: or had listened
over long to some witching, monotonous strain: or
had pondered too deeply on old legends of weirdry
or parchments from tombs of strange, forgotten
lands. Certainly it is not love, in any degree, that
one feels for the desert, nor could any other single
term convey the sentiment. But whatever it is,
there is something of haunting in it, and it is a
haunting that lasts for life.

The explanation of this puzzling allurement may
lie partly in the fact that the mind of man is not
steadfast in its attitude toward Nature : it seems to
change in reverse, as it were, to the spirit of the time.
As usual, it is the opposite that attracts. The gentler
features of the earth, its flowers, meadows, quiet
hills, have always met response, and most so when
the times were most troublous. But the vast and the
wild raised no thrills but those of dislike and fear so
long as life was, in a manner, similar; that is, while

INTRODUCTORY 3

civilization was unborn or young. True, mountain-
eers have of old loved their mountains, but that was
due, we may guess, more to appreciation of the pro-
tection they gave from foes, in times of chronic war
and foray, than to any sense of their beauty and
sublimity.

But now the pendulum tends to the other extreme.
After centuries of home, security, satisfaction of
want, we come to a revulsion. Ease and tame ways
of living having reached, for most of us, the present
far stage, there has arisen a zest for things rugged
and wild. Hardship looks attractive, scarcity be-
comes desirable, starkness turns an unexpected side
of beauty. If the sun that has pleased me with
warmth has power to blast as well, Homo sum, let
him try it on. If Mother Earth has rooms from which
she would bar me with threats, let her make the
threats good if she can. If the eye loves verdure and
low, cool tones of color, let it take a Spartan course
of whitest light and fiercest color-wave. These things
also are part of our estate, and we cannot afford to
leave them out of the accounts. Thus, the desolate,
gaunt, and dreadful in Nature at last have their
day: the risk is, indeed, that they may run to over-
valuation. (Perhaps even the pranks of those funny
fellows the "futurists," "cubists," and "vorticists,"
in poetry, music, and art, might be explained by
this clue: civilization has got on their nerv^es, and
they simply have to scream.)

As scenery merely, the desert is the last field that
could take the fancy. The forest, even if gloomy,
gives a sense of companionship, and is filled with

4 CALIFORNIA DESERT TRAILS

life and the means of life — food, fire, and shelter.
The ocean, impersonal and insincere as it is, has
motion and color, play of ripple and breathing
grandeur of tide. The mountains give pleasant
boundary to our little lives, shutting in friends and
kin, shutting out strange humanity and alien climes,
and vaguely gratifying the sentiment for home. But
the desert yields no point of sympathy, and meets
every need of man with a cold, repelling No.

There are, it is true, about the fringes of the
desert, spots of sylvan beauty. Caiions break down
from these sterile walls, where, following a cascading
brook, cottonwoods and sycamores come trooping
in verdant file, and palms hold broad fans aloft
against opaque screen of rock and deep transparency
of sky. In spring, mating birds find these places out,
and live in transient busy colonies while they raise
their broods. Flowers, under unbroken days of sun,
crowd into sudden bloom, the frail annuals growing
quickly and hurrying to mature blossom and seed
before the last moisture is drained from air and soil.
The hardier plants here keep up a lively show, notice-
ably strong in the primary colors, well into summer,
though short will have been their shrift on the open
desert. Even ferns contrive to live within perhaps a
quarter-mile of the boundary of strict aridity.

But these are only local conditions, quite the re-
verse of typical. One feature of loveliness the desert
has, however, that is essential : in one field of beauty
it is supreme. That is the field of color. Professor
John C. Van Dyke, who has made that fine study of
the desert which takes the rank of a classic, gives to

INTRODUCTORY 5

a companion volume on the ocean the title of "The
Opal Sea." A better term than "opal " could scarcely
be found for describing in a word the color of the
desert itself. The marvellous air, wholly free from
the vapors and impurities of coast and valley places,
while it sharpens detail and reduces difference of
plane, at the same time throws over every object
in far or middle distance a veil of lilac atmosphere
wonderfully thin and transparent. Owing, perhaps,
to the high power of these color-waves, the eye is
hardly interfered with in penetrating shadows. As a
result, one receives the full effect of every tone of
color, whether in light or shade: while all come to
the eye softened but enriched, and with that inde-
finable opaline quality that gives magic and fascina-
tion to the most poetic of gems.

The geological simplicity of sand and rock does
not result, as might be expected, in poverty of color.
Sand, particularly, might seem to be capable of
little change of hue. But, on the contrary, its re-
flecting power gives it special value as a color agent,
a means of taking on varying effects from the ever-
changing sky. In the northwestern arm of the Colo-
rado Desert are two great masses of sand. Flattened
domes in shape, the higher one rises, I should guess,
to five hundred feet above the surrounding levels.
The sand probably overlies a rocky abutment of the
adjacent foothills, and has been heaped there by
that scarifying wind, the terror of railway employes
whose lines are cast in the division which includes
the San Gorgonio Pass. For months these sand-hills
were in my daily view, and to describe the shades of

6 CALIFORNIA DESERT TRAILS

color I have noted on them would make tedious par-
agraphs. From almost snow-white they have taken,
often in rapid turn, all the hues of gray, of blue,
of rose, of chrome, of brown, and purple, reaching
even, under gloom of storm, an approach to absolute
black. Sand is actually as responsive as a chameleon,
and I could never tire of the vagaries of those dunes.

But most they charmed me at sunset — that hour
when the soul itself is suffused with changing hues,
and comes to its best perception. Then none but
warm and gentle shades are seen, and the mind, like
a tranquil lake, receives them and renders them into
something clearer and deeper than thought. (Is it
not at evening that we most naturally and truly
reflect?) Words quite fail to disclose the felicity of
those spiritual moments of color. Like music, they
speak the unearthly tongue, and it is only into music
that they could be translated. I mean, of course, the
real accents of the Heavenly Maid, not the new,
loud, German noise which goes with the rattling of
the sabre and aptly illustrates Kultur. Far from that,
my sand-hills at evening are an Abendlied, a child's
ethereal dream, a reverie, a sigh. "^^"^

Rock, contrary to sand, gives back its own color;
but here it is pure and vivid color, untinged with
overlying hues of vegetation that elsewhere come
in to perplex the eye. The prevailing surface hue of
desert rock is a dark rust-red. I should name it
Egyptian red, for in my mental picturings of the
land of the Nile this same dull but powerful note
rules like absolute Pharaoh. The color, however, is
not inherent in the stone, which is mainly granite

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INTRODUCTORY 7

of the common gray. But in course of ages this ma-
terial, lying usually in huge slabs, has taken on a
surface sheen and coloring due to weathering and
baking by the sun. It is spoken of as "desert glaze,"
and is really something like the artificial glaze of
pottery. Even when the rocks take boulder form
they are generally great, house-like cubes or rhom-
boids, offering flat surfaces which sun and weather
have painted in the same broad, strong hue. Only
where canons choked with more freshly shattered
rock score the mountain walls does one catch the
native tint of the granite, making a startling con-
trast. From these canon mouths wide, fan-like sheets
of similar debris sweep down to the level. Up these
the eye ranges, higher and higher, into gloomy gal-
leries and chasms until the thread is lost in a maze
of braided folds of mountain, these overlooked often
by some far, high crest, in winter white with snow,
in summer gray with iron crag and precipice of gran-
ite, but always softly clouded with humanizing pines.
The characteristic contour form of the desert
mountain ranges is another element in the beauty
of desert color. Like geological models set on a table,
they stand up sharply defined from the general
level, arresting the glance with new, conspicuous
effects. No gently modelled approaches prepare the
eye for the change of plane. From gray or drab ex-
panse of sand they rear up wall-like profiles of red
or ochre. Perspective is dwarfed by the clearness of
air, increasing the sense of verticality. Instead of
rising from the desert, these mountains stand upon
it, explicit, bald, almost artificial.

8 CALIFORNIA DESERT TRAILS

Whatever form of geological action may explain
the peculiarities of these mountain shapes, it has
resulted in a great irregularity of surface : but this
irregularity is worked in small scale. The long, al-
most isolated spur of the San Jacinto that lies be-
fore me can only be likened to one of those vast
surges one sees in mid-ocean, driven into infinite
complexity by hurricane or tornado. In a mile or
less of mountain-side I count ten or a dozen well-
defined main caiions. They have one general trend,
and score the barren, red-brown flank sharply from
almost the crest down to the sudden dead level.
Interwoven with these principal cleavages, meeting
and crossing them at every angle, are hundreds of
lesser depressions, miniature passes and divides.
The result is a positive cross-hatching of intricate
contours, resembling in midday light a choppy sea,
giving at evening and morning a chequer of delicious
color, molten gold in light, amethyst in shade; or,
under sunset or sunrise warmth, like the glow of
red-hot iron flecked with touches of purple more
than Tyrian. I think the coldest-blooded of men
would stand and gaze while that pageant was pass-
ing. For others, the experience, which can never be
made stale by custom, is more than aesthetic or emo-
tional: it is moral, I would almost say religious.

But the remark that rock gives back its own color
must be qualified, for rock also responds to circum-
stances. The eastward extension of San Bernardino
Mountain, lying beyond the sand-hills to which I
referred above, gives a good example of the possi-
bilities of this stubborn material. In actual hue the

INTRODUCTORY 9

range is the usual deep reddish-brown; but under
diffused sunlight I have seen it pale down to milky
white, a tone that one would never suppose could
come within its scope. Breaking of light-rays by
vegetation is not the cause, as it might be elsewhere;
for plant-life is here at its lowest volume, a joke,
almost a myth, like a Chinaman's beard. It im-
presses one oddly, this wholesale bleaching away
of essential color. Withered, ghastly, monstrously
old, the mountains seem like geologic wraiths, such
mountains as the ghosts of moon-men may wander
among in the ashy lunar world.

The great stretches of level desert also show some
diversity of color, arising partly from absence or
presence (and kind) of vegetation, and partly from
diiiference of surface material. But it is only when
seen in great extent, from a good elevation, that
atmosphere and grouping of shades lend enchant-
ment. In near view, seen from slightly above the
level, a vast drab, tinged usually with olive, is the
general hue. The olive comes from an infinite stipple
of low shrubs, so uniform in spacing — for each plant
jealously guards its little territory — as to show no
cloudings of heavier and sparser growth. The effect
is about as lively and original as fifty square miles
of tweed in "pepper-and-salt mixture." But though
not themselves in the least degree stimulating to
fancy, these dull plains have value as foil and fore-
ground to the color display of ever-present hills and
mountains. And when, as often may be the case,
the close foreground is laid in blocks of that deep,
powerful red, the landscape, though bare of any

10 CALIFORNIA DESERT TRAILS

recognized elements of beauty, yet is perfect, in its
way incomparable.

In places the drab gives way to other tones.
There are large extents of unmixed sand, boulders,
gravel, or of pavement-like rock-mosaic in yellow,
red, lava-black. On these the vegetation is so sparse
as to yield no element of color. This is the desert
entire and austere, the realm of geology alone among
the sciences. Here Time and all things of Time seem
to have ended or not to have begun. The sun rises,
flames through the sky, and sets ; the moon and stars
look coldly down; the traveller seems to himself the
last life on the planet. Awe that is close on terror
grasps him : he feels himself alone in the universe — •
he, and God. His footsteps cease: why should he go
on? and whither? for there is no whither. Nothing
moves, nor can move, but the elemental wind,
vacantly roaming the empty earth (and those great
airs, what a sense they bring of age, of eternal soli-
tude, of cold, sidereal space!). The life of towns, of
farms, all that signifies humanity, seems totally un-
real: the Great Question confronts, closes one in,
and must, but cannot, be answered. At such mo-
ments, reader, you may find foothold in thoughts
perhaps long unthought or cast aside — "I believe
in God the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and
earth " : and so on to the end. They will not now seem
contemptible, I assure you.

There comes in spring, on all but these barrenest
spaces, a startling interlude, a sudden wave of color.
Even in the desert. Nature, though here least hu-
mane, most indifferent, longs for change, and softens

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INTRODUCTORY ii

for a time at the entreaty of her most winsome child,
virginal, petal-eyed Flora. It is only a transient
flush, rising, culminating, and fading quickly, al-
most as fleeting as sunset on cloud or mountain;
but it is enough: Draco does relent, Colonel Abso-
lute has been seen playing horsey on the hearthrug.
It proves the desert livable and possibly lovable:
and for all the rest of the year one bears in mind that
brief touch of graciousness.

In speaking of the color of the desert there re-
mains the great field of the sky. Let not the reader
stay, as I did too long, under the conventional no-
tion of an ever-cloudless blue. Clear skies, of course,
predominate, but even in summer no long time
passes without grateful show of vapor — glorious
white or yet more glorious gray. Nearness to the
Pacific and the Gulf of California gives the sky of
the Colorado Desert a degree of cloudiness far greater
than that, for instance, of the Sahara, though the
rainfall on our desert is as scanty as there. In both
summer and winter the sun may rise, make his
march, and set, day after day for weeks, in un-
dimmed power; but at any season there will not be
many mornings or evenings together without some
skeiny film of rose, some shimmering bar of mad-
der, purple, or coppery gold, though for months the
sky through all the middle hours of the day may be
a hard and uniform cobalt.

There is in fact a constant battle in these skies,
often to be seen by interested mortals below, like
the scrimmages of pro and anti deities that went on
above the plains of Troy. From the spot where I

12 CALIFORNIA DESERT TRAILS

make these notes I have often looked for hours while
the struggle remained in deadlock. Over the pass
between San Jacinto and Santa Rosa battalions of
cloud come rolling, stream out far to the east, and
threaten the kingdom of the sun. But that old
tyrant seldom sleeps, or, after the manner of tyrants,
sleeps with an eye open, and it is hard to catch him
unaware. His intrenchments are all but impregnable.
Leagues of radiant air form invisible ramparts from
which the invaders are continually thrown back, and
ever from the heated desert new ranks of warriors
come rushing up to maintain the fight. Now one
side gains, now the other. Some hero of the gray
leads a charge, and a tongue of vapor leaps out far
in the advance, may even fling down a slant of rain
or snow on the anxious pines of Santa Rosa. But
before the Grays can establish themselves the Blues
are at them and press them back. "A Pluvius! A
Pluvius!" "Phoebus! Phoebus to the rescue!" And
so it wages, to and fro, strangely and ominously like
the battles of men; ominously, lest it prove that
these are no farther from coming to a final end.

With all the glory of desert evening skies, I miss
one accustomed element of sunset: I mean that
spiritual touch, impossible to put into words, but
which we know so well. Perhaps the word "wistful-
ness" states it best, and the desert (so you might
think until you know it) is not wistful. But yet it is:
to be old, weary, and wise is wistful, as much as are
the young, asking eyes of a child. But wistfulness is
hard to define. Why in music, for instance, should
a chord, a turn of rhythm, even an interval, start

INTRODUCTORY 13

sometimes a wave that reaches boundless shores, or,
sinking Hke a burning ruby into depths we never
guessed were there, show us ourselves "as gods,
knowing good and evil"? How does it come that
the leaf of an autumn bramble expresses a hero's
soul better than epic verses ever can? And what
magic is there about sunset and the West that has
always drawn men's longing (so that, indeed, for
wistfulness one might fancifully say westfulness) ?
Is it that we feel the sun's daily going as so great a
loss that we must follow him with our pensive hopes?
Not so with us all, certainly. To me, for one, the
sun has always seemed an enemy, the ally of tedium,
a huge Evaporator sucking the spirit and leaving
naught but the plodding clay. "The gaudy, babbling,
and remorseless day" — well said, Shakespeare!
But this is verging on metaphysics: the point is, that
somehow there is not in desert sunset hues that
deepest, most sensitive note. They are fairyland, a
sheer marvel, the quintessence of beauty in color;
but they have not the ineffable quality that goes,
perhaps, with murkier, less all-revealing skies. It
may be that, being mysterious to ourselves, any-
thing less than mystery in Nature must fall short.
" Abyssus abyssiim invocat."

As a fact, I have seen more of that moving glory
in sunset skies from the top of a London 'bus than
anywhere else, even Sierra crest or open vastness of
the Colorado. Perhaps it is the presence of six mil-
lion human souls (I do not mean bodies) that gives
the needed atmosphere, the spiritual haze.

But the metaphysical must be reckoned with,

14 CALIFORNIA DESERT TRAILS

after all, to explain the strange attraction of the
desert. Space, solitude, quiet — our minds at their
best are tuned to these, and when they find them
they expand like the anemone welcoming its native
tide. The merely objective things of the desert are
another and transitory matter: I am speaking of its
underlying, undying charm. It is a somewhat awful
attribute, with more of subjugation in it than of
charm. It disembodies us, takes away what hides us
from ourselves. The aged earth speaks now in sol-
emn tone to its child, and he must listen. No friendly
tree or buoyancy of wave meets the daunted eye
with encouragement or excuse for levity. Here jus-
tice is the word, not mercy. The universe seems lis-
tening for your word, and appraising you by your
silence. If there comes a sound it is so momentary
as only to startle, swallowed up instantly in the
waiting void — the thin, single note of the cactus
wren, one of the lonesomest of sounds, more lost
and eerie than the midnight bleat of sheep on
Cumberland fells.

Is there attraction in this, then? To most people,
No : to a few. Yes : and Yes to an increasing number,
I think and hope, as the loud roar grows louder ; the
times more complex and out of joint; the strife of
tongues more clever and useless; simplicity, the
touchstone of good, more than ever reverend yet
less than ever revered.

CHAPTER II

THE PALM OASES AND CANONS

Poetry of the palm — Palm canons and oases — The desert's travel-
centres — Snow Creek Canon — Dual characteristics — Chino
Canon — The vegetation of drought — Palms, snow, and luxury

— Tahquitz the Rumbler — Cave-life in Andreas Cafion — Indian
relics — A palm temple — La Reina del Canon — Cave-company

— A winter storm — Narrow escape for Kaweah — Marooned —
Not drowned as reported — Tahquitz Canon, a desert Colosseum

— Magnesia Spring Canon — Tropic luxury — A night vigil for
cougar — Bighorn — A cached olla — Deep Canon — The oco-
tillo — Animal and bird life — Palms and flowers — Rattle-
snake company — Thousand Palm Canon — A palm forest —

— "The Twelve Apostles" — Seven Palms Oasis — Harried by
wind — Two-Bunch Palms — Unique landscapes — Wagnerian
moonlight — Palm Springs Village — Its medicinal spring —
Romantic Palm Canon — "Movie" vandals — Suggestion: a
National Park.

THOUGH the palm is certainly not the most
beautiful, it is perhaps the most poetic of trees.
In symmetry of tapering shaft, fountain-like burst
of crown, and play of glossy frond, it is the ideal of
gracefulness in plant life. Incidentally, there is the
charm of its "atmosphere" of literary allusion, of
which it probably has more than any other tree can
claim. To dwellers in cold or temperate climates it
brings also alluring thoughts of tropic warmth,
skies normally sunny, and a life emancipated from
winter flannels.

Spreading up from Northern Mexico, a number
of groups of the fan-palm, Washingtonia filifera, are
found in the cafions and oases of the Colorado
Desert. They are known to but few, and those are

i6 CALIFORNIA DESERT TRAILS

mainly prospectors and such stray characters,
whose business or hobby makes them wanderers in
that harsh region. Such human Hfe as the desert has
— that is, the actual desert, the unconquered and
unconquerable wastes of burning sand and moun-
tain—drifts and circles about these spots: neces-
sarily so, since the presence of palms means the
presence also of that rarest, strictest necessity,
water. The Arabs' axiom regarding the date-palm,
that its foot must be in water and its head in open
sun, is true of its relative the fan-palm. Thus, in
the talk of desert men the palm figures constantly.
You hear of Dos Palmas, Thousand Palms, Palm
Springs, Twenty-nine Palms, Seventeen Palms, Two-
Bunch Palms, and so on; and the names mean to
the traveller not only water, but shade, with the
chance of grass for his animals, and the relief of
verdure for his sorely harassed eyes.

Some of the groups occur about the boundary of
the sea that anciently filled the great depression
which is now partly occupied by the Salton Sea, and
whose beach-mark is to-day startlingly plain at the
base of the encircling hills. Such groups, probably,
represent the indigenous growths, A number more
are found at higher altitudes, but of these many are
known to have been planted by the present or for-
mer Indian inhabitants of the region.

The westerly limit of growth is a rocky defile on
the south side of Snow Creek Canon, which is a rift
of San Jacinto Mountain, about opposite White-
water Station on the Southern Pacific Railway. This
group marks the nearest approach made by the wild

THE PALM OASES AND CANONS 17

palm to coastal conditions of climate, for the spot is
within a few miles of the crest of the San Gorgonio
Pass, which here forms the dividing line between
California barren and California fertile. A thread of
tepid water moistens the roots of the trees, while
not a mile away rushes the icy brook that gives its
name to the caiion.

I camped, at various times, in most of the con-
siderable caiions of the upper part of the desert.
Each has its special charm, while those that come
down from the high mountains that shut off desert
from coast possess a dual beauty — the character-
istics of a true mountain canon, such as trees, cas-
cading streams, and the varied life that goes with
them, together with the features of a land made
savage by torturing sun, unblessed by the mercy of
rain. The mingling of the two elements gives often
a fascinating result.

It was still winter, the end of January, when I
pitched my little six-by-three-foot tent in Chino
Cafion. This is a great rift opening on the north-
western arm of the desert directly under the peak of
San Jacinto Mountain. It gets its name from old
Chino, a former chief of the Agua Caliente Indians,
whose rancheria adjoins the little village of Palm
Springs, a few miles to the south of the cafion. I had
visited the spot years before, and kept an affection-
ate memory of a warm spring that breaks out near
the head of the great apron of talus that sweeps
down from the neck of the canon to the level desert.
It was toilsome work navigating my burro, Mesquit,
through these miles of boulders, with a rise from

i8 CALIFORNIA DESERT TRAILS

five hundred feet to two thousand feet of altitude,
and there was neither mood nor leisure for scenery
until we reached the little clump of palms that
marked our destination.

But when camp was pitched and serenity re-
turned I found a high coign among the rocks and
took my satisfaction. I was at about the limit of
growth of the water-loving trees that accompanied
the creek as far as they dared — sycamores, alders,
cottonwoods, and willows. Here they stopped short
abruptly, and from here desertward only the starve-
ling vegetation of drought held the ground. The
pale shrubs seemed to have copied the look of the
gray boulders, as if hoping by subterfuge to escape
the notice of the sun. Each bush of encelia or burro-
weed grew rounded and compact, and in twilight
or moonlight would not be distinguished from the
rocks, except where they grew among the rust-
brown slabs of the caiion walls, when one would
swear he sav^ a flock of grazing sheep, every one
distinct to the eye.

Straight in front the canon opened in steep,
smooth descent, bounded by high and barren walls,
the western already dark in shadow, the other in full
sun and glowing with volcanic intensity of red. At
three miles' distance these ran out into the level
like capes extending far to sea — a sea of lifeless
gray that broke southward in one huge crest of sand
that was like a tidal wave stopped and held in full
career. In sharp relief against the neutral hue of the
sand stood the dark, gleaming fans of palms. The
distance was closed by a level rampart of moun-

?5
o

<
o

s

u

THE PALM OASES AND CANONS 19

tains in faint ethereal tones of rose, chrome, and
amethyst.

I had not many such evening prospects during the
two weeks I camped in Chino Canon. It was a wet
winter, and I was not far from being perpendicularly
below the ten-thousand-and-odd-foot peak of the
mountain, which was engaged in perpetual storm.
After days of rain I would determine to move, at the
first cessation, down to the valley, which I could
often see stewing in sunshine while I shivered over
an unwilling camp-fire in the rain (I don't know
why it did n't occur to me to get into the warm
spring and wait until the clouds had rained them-
selves out). But when a change came my mind
changed with it and I stayed. At last there came a
drop in temperature, and after three days and nights
of torrential downpour I awoke one morning to find
the sun shining and the mountains sheeted with
snow down to a few hundred feet above camp.
Then it was high luxury to lie in my thermal pool
and get a startling effect of shining green palm-
fronds with background of solid snow.

The Indians hereabouts have a legend that
Tahquitz, alias Chowk, their evil spirit, lives in
San Jacinto Mountain, and attribute to his opera-
tions the peculiar noises, rumblings, and so forth,
that are sometimes heard proceeding from his
haunts. Several times, while in this canon, when
lying on the ground at night, I heard the sounds
plainly. There was no tremor of earthquake, but it
is possible that the heavy rains caused a movement
of the rocks on the mountain-side. The sounds,

20 CALIFORNIA DESERT TRAILS

whatever made them, were easily transmitted to
me, since my ear was practically in contact with the
earth. Who knows but it was "the fellow in the
cellarage," old Truepenny himself?

Some miles to the south is Andreas Caiion, an-
other of the gateways of the same mountain. It also
is named after an Indian, old Captain Andreas, the
remains of whose adobe hut and orchard of vines and
figs are yet in evidence. Here the following winter I
camped for nearly three months, gratifying aborigi-
nal instincts by a return to cave life. The cavern
which serv^ed for dining-room, study, and kitchen
had been the home of Indians, and was adorned with
their picture-writings, while a sort of upper story was
quite a museum of age-dimmed records in red and
black. One upright stone was worn into grooves like
knuckles, where arrow-shafts had been smoothed;
another showed evidence of having been used for
polishing the obsidian points. The great table-like
rock where I kept a store of hay for my horse Ka-
weah (Mesquit and I had had a difference and parted)
was bored in a dozen places with circular holes where
acorn and mesquit meal had been ground by gene-
rations of diligent squaws, whose deer-horn awls and
ornaments of shell and clay I occasionally unearthed :
as I did also bones in remarkable numbers and of
questionable shapes.

Of Andreas, now long gathered to his fathers, the
word goes that he was given to the distilling of
aguardiente from his grapes, breaking thereby the
law of the land. However, considering that the art
had been learned from the whites, that he had no

THE PALM OASES AND CANONS 21

voice in making the law, and that the land In ques-
tion had been taken from him and his people, there
seems not much logic in blaming him. Peace to your
ashes, Andreas ! I can certify that your fig trees still
do bud, and yield better fruit perhaps than some
of us.

The same striking conjunction of desert and coast
vegetation rules here as in Chino Caiion. Down to
the very neck, a bare hundred yards from where
open desert comes in view, trees grow in full ver-
dure, curtained in wild-grape vines that make an
arbor of summer green or autumn chrome and
sienna over the darkling pools of the creek. At the
point where they cease they are met by a colony of
palms, and these give place to the low-toned herb-
age of the desert. The caiion is notable for a fine
rank of "palisade" cliffs, which with their massive
sculpturing and dark Egyptian hue make a wonder-
ful foil for the beauty of the palms. Some of these
stand statue-like in vertical alcoves of the wall:
others bend in tropic grace above crystalline pools,
or spring in rocket-like curve from thickets of mes-
quit or arrowweed.

One cluster, arranged in the form of a great hall,
especially took my fancy. The palms that compose
it have kept all their dead foliage, which, hanging
in straw-yellow masses about the stems, gives them
impressive girth and solidity. While wind is stirring
the fronded capitals, these massive pillars, standing
in unbroken stillness, seem like the immemorial
columns of Babylon, My nights in that strange place,
worked up into mystery by glimmer of star or trickle

22 CALIFORNIA DESERT TRAILS

of wandering moonbeam through the tracery of the
roof, were the sort of experience one loves to repeat
in memory.

In a narrow gateway of the upper canon stands
a single stately palm, framed by tall cliffs of Egyp-
tian red. Its solitariness, spiry grace, and statuesque
pose give it special individuality, and sentimentally
I allowed myself to name it "La Reina del Caiion."

Evenings by the camp-fire in the cave were en-
livened by visitors, kangaroo-mice, skunks, and
tarantulas, who adopted me without reserve into
the ancient order of cave-dwellers. The mice were
charming companions, eating beans and hardtack
with me off our common plate, and only occasionally
needing an admonitory rap with the spoon. By day,
quail were frequent callers, aligning themselves on
a shelving rock overhead to criticise my housekeep-
ing: and once a lynx halted bashfully when ten
yards from the breakfast- table. Bighorn tracks were
often fresh on the cactus mesa beyond the creek,
and my regular morning alarum was the practising
of chromatic scales by a caiion-wren midway up the

cliff.

Andreas Caflon had become endeared to me by
these and other social ties when, about noon one
Saturday, a gentle but persistent rain began — one
of the occasions one recognizes as meant for the
cooking of beans. I charged my biggest pot and
passed the afternoon in holding the fire at that
scientific minimum that the "free-holy "^ justly de-

1 The red or pink Mexican bean, frijol in Spanish, pronounced
free-hole' or, affectionately, as above.

LA REINA DEL CANON

THE PALM OASES AND CANONS 23

mands and wondrously repays. The rain continued,
taking on the industrious look that Cahfornians
know and love as forecasting a successful season in
real estate. At intervals I brought in fuel, storing it
in dry crannies of the cave.

Kaweah, protected by his heavy blanket, was tied
close to the creek, under a tree against which I had
built his manger. Darkness came early, and the rain
increased to a heavy downpour. I ate supper in
dusk, fed and watered the horse, covered the hay
with a tarpaulin, and turned into the blankets on
my camp-cot to smoke a pipe. This proved more
than usually cheering. A tent with sousing rain were
revealed as the ideal conditions for the combustion
of Virginia Long-Cut. This discovery I had oppor-
tunity to confirm in the days that ensued.

Before turning in finally I lighted the lantern and
took a look at the creek. It had risen a few inches,
as was natural in a cafion stream, but the tent was
six or eight feet above it and a rod back from the
bank. Nothing to worry about, so I went to bed,
and, lulled by the roar of rain on the canvas, was
soon fast asleep.

This placidity was ill-judged. Some suffocating
object, something heavy and wet and cold, came
down and embraced me with what I felt to be undue
familiarity. For a few moments I was puzzled, then
realized — the tent: it had sagged with weight of
water and the pegs had pulled from the softened
ground. I noticed, too, that the sound of rushing
water was oddly close. Pushing away the wet can-
vas I put out a foot. Instead of the expected boot it

24 CALIFORNIA DESERT TRAILS

encountered a cold swirl of water that came half to
the knee. Next my groping hand took note of the
abnormal position of the tent-pole, which leaned
almost horizontal under the ruin of the canvas. I
saw what had happened: the creek was over its
banks, had undermined the pole and brought down
the tent, and was making a clean breach through
my quarters.

My thoughts flew to Kaweah. He was some
twenty-five yards downstream from me and on
lower ground. Struggling under the water-logged
canvas I hurriedly got into my soaking clothes and
somehow got clear of the tent. It was pitch-dark,
raining like fury, and the water was now knee-high
and running like a sluice. I stumbled down to
Kaweah, who neighed shrilly when he saw me. He
had taken the highest spot his rope allowed him,
but the water was almost to his belly, and we were
both in some danger of being swept away. Cutting
the rope I scrambled with him up the bank and tied
him on high ground near the cave.

Then for an hour I slopped to and fro rescuing
what remained of my effects and storing them in
dry comers of the cave. Not a few articles had been
carried away, but most were caught under the col-
lapsed tent, which itself was anchored by a rock
against which it had stranded. It was wet work, but
warming, and I soon worked up a first-rate Turkish
bath.

The next need was fire. By now the cave was a
poor refuge, though it might have looked enjoyable
to a naiad. Rain dripped e'ver>where from the shelv-

THE PALM OASES AND CANONS 25

ing rocks that formed at best a nominal roof, and
cascades ran picturesquely down the walls. The
floor was a mere bog. Only a space about three feet
square was free from overhead drip, and on this
islet I built a tiny fire over which I crouched in par-
tial shelter. I supposed it was near daybreak, but on
looking at my watch found it was eleven o'clock.

I cherished that fire as few things are cherished
on this planet. When gusts blew the rain in upon it,
I covered it with my hat. When it sulked and sput-
tered because the bog encroached, I fed it with
splinters from my tripod. Wlien the wind scattered
the cupful of embers, I scraped them up reverently
like a Parsee. At last I got a good blaze, made a billy
of coffee, and settled to the night's work of drying
myself, blankets, gun, camera, and ''et caeteras."

The storm maintained a headlong deluge which
did not moderate for a moment. The creek had risen
higher, and was making wild uproar as huge boul-
ders began to come down from the upper caiion,
thundering and bumping along like barrels tumbling
down a stairway. With the boulders went the trees.
The one to which Kaweah had been tied (a full-
grown sycamore) had disappeared soon after I
moved him. Only by a few minutes had he escaped
going with it. Now I watched tree after tree suc-
cumb. First their tops, which showed dimly against
the sky, would begin to shiver as the water tore
away the earth like a terrier at a rat-hole: then as
roots broke from their grip the victim stooped lower
and lower, until water and granite between them
gave the coup-de- grace, and the unlucky alder or

26 CALIFORNIA DESERT TRAILS

sycamore toppled over and was whirled off to make
camp-fires for fortunate prospectors.

Daylight came, and with it the end of my fuel.
By now the cave was worthless: water poured in
steady streams from roof and walls, and the floor
had become a pool. Among my salvaged traps was
a little three-by-six-foot tent of light waterproof
stuff which I carry on winter horseback trips. This I
pitched on the highest spot available, first laying a
thick stratum of arrowweed over the sodden ground.
Inside I spread half a bale of dry hay: then crept in
and sat tight.

This was Sunday. It passed ; also Monday, Tues-
day, and Wednesday, and not for a moment did the
storm hold off. I read, smoked, ate, slept, and dashed
out when necessary to attend to Kaweah or drive
the tent-stakes deeper into the spongy earth. When
I awoke on Thursday a yellow glow was brightening
my tentlet. It was the sun, shining in the old, whole-
hearted, California way, and I hurried out to renew
acquaintance. Looking up the caiion there was little
that I recognized. The place where the other tent
had stood could be known by a scrap of canvas pro-
jecting above a new creek-lbed of dazzling, freshly
scoured granite, while Kaweah 's former quarters
were submerged in mid-stream.

In the afternoon came Pablo, Marcos, and Miguel,
to round up their remaining cattle and mourn the
six or eight head that had vanished in the storm
together with all their possibilities of pesos, came,
and cuero. Finding me in the act of replenishing the
bean-pot they expressed slight Indian surprise, and

THE PALM OASES AND CANONS 27

mentioned that, certain of my belongings having been
picked up some miles away where the flood had car-
ried them, it had been supposed that I was drowned.
By way of congratulation they stayed to help with
the beans. It was fifty years, they said, since so
heavy a storm had visited the desert, and news
that came later of broken dams and loss of life in
the adjoining coast region made this seem likely to
be true.

Just to the south of Palm Springs there is an im-
posing gash in the mountain wall which goes by the
name of Tahquitz Canon. The stream which de-
bouches here rises on Tahquitz Peak, a subsidiary
summit of San Jacinto Mountain and whispered to
be the private eyry of Tahquitz himself. The cafion
is remarkable for magnificent cliffs, forming at the
mouth a cirque with walls rising sheer for hundreds
of feet. This titanic Colosseum makes a superb
effect by morning light, when the vast, crater-like
shadow is outlined by grim though sunlit rock-bolts
that guard the towering gateway. It would be a
worthy portal to Avernus, and when Tahquitz has his
waterfall in full blast a quite infernal uproar reigns
in the confined place, while the great southern cliff,
acting as sounding-board, projects a full-mouthed
roar upon the ears of the villagers of Palm Springs.
Twelve miles to the southeast is Magnesia Spring
Cafion (or, to give it the old Indian name, Pah-
wah'-te, signifying, "the drinker"), where I made
camp for a couple of weeks in early spring. It is
different from the cafions already described, being
a long, winding gallery instead of the usual wide-

28 CALIFORNIA DESERT TRAILS

mouthed triangle narrowing suddenly to a gorge,
and is typical of strictly desert conditions. Here no
"Cataracts blow their trumpets from the steep."
One finds no growth of water-loving trees, for the
caiion does not lead down, as do the others, from
rain-compelling peaks, and only the slenderest
thread of water trickles in it, for the most part
underground. This was enough, however, to main-
tain one lovely rock-bound pool in which, by skin-
ning one's knees, a miniature swim could be achieved.
High falcon-haunted cliffs partly encircled the pool,
and a couple of palms growing in a niche fifty feet
above gave a tropic touch of luxury.

On arriving at the pool I found fresh tracks of
mountain lion in the damp sand. My main object
in this caiion was the chance of photographing big-
horn, which are rather plentiful hereabouts, but
there would be small prospect of these so long as
lions were in the neighborhood. It would be some
compensation, I thought, to add a cougar pelt to
my coyote-skin mattress, so I built a brush blind
twenty yards from the spring, made an early supper,
and took my station, shot-gun with full charge of
buckshot across my knees, seven-shooter and hunt-
ing-knife in reserve. There was a half-moon, and on
the open space of sand around the spring even a
small object could be plainly seen. But my warlike
preparations went for naught. For five hours I
crouched at qui vive, but no such dark shape as I
looked for came pacing across the moonlit sand. A
fox trotted by, stopped with paw upraised, and
trotted on : and later I made out a group of shadowy

THE PALM OASES AND CANONS 29

forms sixty yards away that certainly were bighorn,
the first I had met in their own haunts. My nerves
tingled : suppose the cougar were stalking the band !
But the moon sank behind the cliff, and when I
could no longer see my gun-sights I concluded that
the coyote-skins would do very well alone, and
turned in. The next two nights I again sat on watch,
and not unprofitably, though with no result of
cougars. It is in the purity and stillness of such hours,
in tranquil fall of moonbeam on rock and shrub,
and in such sense of awful but calming solitude, that
one learns, by the sacredness of Nature, the beauty
of God.

The face of the cliff near the spring showed a
number of likely crannies, which I searched for
Indian relics. Most of them were packed with bits
of stick or cactus, the caches of those punctilious
thieves the trade-rats. In a side canon, however, I
found a handsome olla (or ka'-wo-mal, to give it the
Indian name). It had been hidden in a breakneck
place, fifty feet up a precipitous cliff, where I
glimpsed it by chance. It stood upright on a bed of
earth that must have been carried up from below,
and was protected by slabs of rock with padding of
palm-fibre. Probably it had held water, perhaps
stored in case of siege, but that had long vanished,
and it contained nothing but a deposit of dust al-
most intangibly fine, like dust of mummies or of
Time itself, which had somehow gathered in spite
of the neck being closed with a flat fragment of rock.
I suppose this mysterious dust would distil, in course
of ages, from the upper ether itself, some product of

30 CALIFORNIA DESERT TRAILS

cosmic disintegration. How many years the olla had
stood there is matter for free guessing — perhaps
fifty, perhaps five hundred. Its circumference was
over fifty inches, and its capacity about eight gal-
lons. A furious wind was blowing that threatened to
throw me from the cliff and gave me trying mo-
ments, but hugging olla with one arm and cliff with
the other I got my prize safely down.

Next I moved some miles farther south to Deep
Canon (To'-ho of the Indians, commemorating
some " hunter- who-never-gets-his-game"). This is
a canon of Santa Rosa Mountain, opening just west
of the long, rocky point that runs out on the desert
at Indian Wells. It is notable for its vast apron of
debris, through which Mesquit and I struggled for
endless hours, being forced at last to make a dry
camp when hightfall overtook us in a jungle of
choUa. In the morning we soon reached water, and
also the ocotillos, the view of which in flower was
my special object here. Since first meeting the plant
the previous year I had looked forward to camping
among them when in full blossom, as these now
were (it was the middle of March), and so entering
them in my lasting book of remembrance.

I have described this remarkable plant of the
Western deserts in another chapter. Here I pitched
my tent in a thicket of them, enjoying their splen-
dor of color by day and their weird shadow-play on
my moonlit canvas at night. The dead canes and
stumps made an excellent camp-fire, burning with a
white flame, as of wax, that justified the plant's
alternative name of "candle-wood." Near by were

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THE PALM OASES AND CANONS 31

specimens of the agave, or wild century-plant, some
just beginning to send up their giant flowering-
stalks. Measuring the rate of growth of one of these I
found that it gained five inches in twenty-four hours.

Tracks of bighorn were plentiful about camp
every day, and their deeply worn trails marked the
caiion walls in all directions. Often at night the
rattle of falling stones told of their movements on
the cliff-side above. Wild-cat and coyote also left
their footprints in my absence. I met here a flock
of the interesting pinon-jays, which long puzzled
me by their unj ay-like traits, as they flew swiftly
along the face of the mountain, uttering a wild,
sweet, plaintive cry. Who ever heard of a plaintive
jay! Eagles, too, I often saw, and ravens croaked
from unscalable crags. Friendlier birds were the acro-
batic flycatchers and phainopeplas that performed
from the tops of the agaves, and a pair of rose-
breasted linnets that regularly came to breakfast and
made me long confidences in happy cavatina. The
cactus wrens gained my respect by the nonchalance
with which they treated the formidable chollas.
Since the nightingale prefers to lean her breast
against a thorn, it seems a pity she cannot try the
effect of a cholla.

A tramp at dawn up the higher caflon was full of
pleasure. At the point where it narrows to the main
ravine the stream became a series of cascades linked
by many a circling pool so fishable in look that there
was pathos in the thought that they must be forever
troutless. As the caiion doubled and twisted, the
walls became ever higher and more precipitous.

32 CALIFORNIA DESERT TRAILS

When the sun came up, the western cliff became the
battlements of some castle in the realm of faery.
I often halted in wonder as some reach opened be-
fore me, filled with mystical light. The conjunction
of extreme beauty of color with savagery of giant
walls and thundering water gave a strange effect of
unreality.

A few isolated groups of palms were set high up
on the walls. They seemed to have a conscious air,
as if they had been waiting until now for first recog-
nition. Mountain-sheep make these lonely groves
their shelter in summer heat and winter storm ; but
human foot, unless perhaps some Indian hunter's,
may never have been set in them.

On little benches here and there I came upon de-
lightful beds of flowers, usually of one kind. Here I
first met the exquisite malvastrum, in delicacy and
fragility more like some hothouse product than the
child of desert sand and sun. Those who know the
globe-tulip of our coast mountains may picture this
as a blossom of the same ethereal character, but
palest lilac instead of white, and stained at the base
of each petal with a spot of carmine. A plant with
half a dozen of the lamp-like flowers is as fairy-like a
thing as a child could dream. Another new acquaint-
ance was the fagonia, a low-growing relative of the
creosote, having starry blossoms of pale magenta.
Dwarf lupines occupied stretches of pure sand, and
eschscholtzias, with pale yellow flowerets comically
small, showed the effect of drought upon the magnifi-
cent copa de oro of the coast. On the driest places,
exposed to the sun's full blast, the lovely little

THE PALM OASES AND CANONS 33

eremiastrum, or desert-star, looked up, winsome as
daisies on an English lawn.

Upon returning to camp I found the first rattle-
snake of the season had arrived and was enjoying
my blankets in the tent. He seemed firm but calm,
as if open to any reasonable offer. While I sought a
tripod he vanished. In the night I felt something
creeping over my chest under the blankets, and with
panic remembered my visitor, who might have come
to claim a share of the accommodation. I made a
really brilliant jump, struck a match, and met the
reproachful gaze of a large, stout, comatose lizard
that was searching affectionately for the nice warm
bedfellow who had suddenly turned unkind.

Crossing to the east side of the desert, here not
many miles wide, a wonderful spectacle is seen in
the crowding groves of Thousand Palm Cailon. In
this wide gallery, opening from the foothills of the
San Bernardino at near sea-level, the palm seems
most thoroughly at home, growing in companies of
hundreds that make what might almost be termed
a forest. One has a sense of strangeness in threading
these pillared aisles. One's steps rattle harshly on a
pavement of dry yellow leaves whose mahogany-
brown stems, long, tough, and thorny, impose care
in walking, while the mind does not easily ignore
the thought of snakes, tarantulas, and scorpions
that find the deep dry cover highly agreeable to
their constitutions. The summer temperature here
is of the hottest, for weeks ranging daily over ioo°
in the shade, and often over iio°, with not infre-
quent excursions into the hundred-and-twenties.

34 CALIFORNIA DESERT TRAILS

A few miles out on the plain another group shows
a distinctive feature of chance arrangement. Twelve
palms stand approximately in line, and the number
has given them the name, "The Twelve Apostles."
Local fancy takes pleasure in pointing out that one
of them is headless and dead, the result of lightning-
stroke. This, of course, is Judas, and verily there
is something infamous in the mean, misbegotten
shape. Nothing in the vegetable world is so hideous
as a headless palm. Other trees when killed or de-
cayed have at least the touch of the grotesque or
pictorial. The palm that loses its head loses all : there
remains merely a hateful stick, not even pathetic,
only sinister.

Out on the wind-swept plain to the east of Palm
Springs lies the oasis of Seven Palms. The name does
not now describe the group, though no doubt it once
did so. Placed here and there in picturesque mode,
singly or in twos, threes, and one larger cluster, a
score or so of Washingtonias inhabit a space of a
few acres, surrounding a pool of alkaline water.
Years ago a settler made a homestead here, and
his flat-roofed, unpainted dwelling, weathered into
drab conformity of hue, merges with gray thickets
of arrowweed. The charm of the place, apart from
its palms, is in the grandeur of its mountain pros-
pect, dominated to the south by colossal San Jacinto,
whose two-mile height soars close at hand, un-
dwarfed by intervening foothills. San Gorgonio rises
somewhat more distant, but not less superb, a little
to the west. The spot has a special drawback too —
the pestilentwind which blows down the pass for days

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THE PALM OASES AND CANONS 35

and weeks, or, for aught I know, months and years,
together, making the daylight hours a misery, the
nights a howHng nightmare. ReHef could generally
be found, however, by the margin of the pool, and
always enjoyment in noting the quaint, humorous
ways of the bird and animal life that resorted there.

Four miles farther north, near the foothills of the
San Bernardino, are twin colonies, which have given
the place the name of "Two-Bunch Palms." Grow-
ing at the edge of a little bluff they are finely placed ;
and from among them one gets again vistas of those
two great peaks, always claiming the gaze, whether
serene under cloudless blue, hallowed with snow, or
darkly freighted with storm. Such things are unique
in American landscape, and send one's thoughts
wandering for comparisons to Ararat, Ruwenzori,
or famed Kashmir.

I shall not soon forget one spring night when, be-
neath these palms, I was for once near the intoxi-
cation point of moonlight. For hours I lay unable
to sleep, while I was showered with moon arrows,
"passionately bright," that streamed from the pol-
ished fronds as they thrashed and undulated in a
screaming wind. It was the Valkyries' ride trans-
lated into moonlight, but outdoing Wagner, almost
beating the incoherencies of Strauss.

The village of Palm Springs, ten miles to the
south, has some fame as a winter health resort. It
also offers the tourist, by comfortable accommo-
dations, the means of exploring with ease a few of
the palm communities. In the village there is a val-
uable medicinal spring, which rises, with a tempera-

36 CALIFORNIA DESERT TRAILS

ture of 103°, beneath a flourishing cluster of palms.
The spring is on the Reservation of the Agua
Caliente Indians, and the bath-house is operated for
their financial benefit. It is a new, crude affair, and
I confess I enjoyed more the quite primitive con-
trivances of a few years ago, when to the weird sen-
sation produced by the gulpings and gurglings of
the spring, which is a kind of quicksand in consist-
ency, was added the excitement of guessing whether
the rickety little hut would fall to pieces while you
were taking your bath or would spare you and col-
lapse over the next comer. This zest of adventure
has now been lost, as has also the healthful exercise
of pursuing the key all over the Reservation to its
lair in the capacious pocket of old Maria's wrapper
of antique, well-washed blue.

The arm of desert that reaches southward from
the village ends in a long, winding ravine known as
"Palm Canon." Hundreds of palms grow here along
the course of a romantic stream, bending in dreamy
beauty over glassy reach and pool, or disposed in
natively artistic attitudes on the lower slopes of
the cafion walls. The combination of arrowy brook,
wild ravine, and tropic multitude of palms makes
the spot an enchanting one, and it never fails to
draw a tribute of surprised approval from even the
callous globe-trotter. In winter and spring a feature
of contrast is added when one may catch from some
high viewpoint the gleam of San Jacinto's snow.
Then it is a scene over which artists rave, the note
of white giving the last touch to a landscape already
crowded with powerful colors.

THE PALM OASES AND CANONS 37

Naturally, those nuisances the motion-picture
people have seized on Palm Canon for their antics,
with the result of setting fire to some of the finest of
the palms. But why repine? Rather let us rejoice
that Nature is thus honored in serving Art. Hardly
less picturesque than Palm Canon is the adjacent
Murray Canon. Here again clusters and files of
palms give brightness to a ravine sombre with high-
piled rocks. Not far away are Eagle and Andreas
Cafions, similarly beautified with these graceful
trees.

It is much to be desired that some square miles of
this locality, with Palm Canon as a centre, should
be set aside as a National Park. Scenically the place
is more than remarkable; it is strictly unique for
this country, as well as strangely beautiful : while for
its botanical rarity alone it should be preserved in
the public interest. As facilities for reaching it im-
prove, ever larger numbers of people will come to
view this bit of pure Arabia that has somehow fallen
within our territory. As it is, I am expecting shortly
to find installed at the strategic point a notice-
board, a fence with little gate, and a cool highway-
man collecting dollars, halves, or quarters — "what-
ever the traffic will bear."

CHAPTER III

TREES AND TREE-LIKE GROWTHS

Flora's gifts to the desert — The palm — The two mesquits —
Nature's great benefaction — Deep-rooted mesquits — Cicadas —
A mesquit-clump camp — The Gambel quail — Beans for all —
The tree that bears screws — The palo verde, green but leafless
■ — Laburnum of the desert — A desert Goliath — The smoke-
tree — A transformation — Complaint of a layman — The desert
willow — The ironwood: a desert forest — The affectionate cat-
claw — Desert mistletoe — A vegetable pirate, the Joshua tree —
The ocotillo, epitome of the desert — A miracle of blossoming —
The saguaro, giant of_ the cacti — An elf -owl hotel — Sunset and
the saguaro

CONTRARY to the general notion, the desert
is far from being neglected by Flora. Even in
the matter of trees, she has denied to a few valuable
and interesting kinds the territory they would have
preferred, and has bestowed them on these unkind
regions, where they are a first-class boon to the
scanty animal life that shares their hardships. There
is a good assortment of shrubs too; and of the
smaller growths a surprisingly large number, though
it is only in spring that most of these show them-
selves. For the rest of the year they exist only in
embryo as seeds, or as a final minimum of brittle
stems and shrivelled leafage, making no contrast in
the universal drab, yet the hope and support of the
forlorn cattle that stray "with melancholy steps
and slow" about the parched and starving ranges.
Among the trees, the palm Washingtonia filifera
claims first place (though I always feel that the
name of tree hardly applies to those columnar shapes,

TREES AND TREE-LIKE GROWTHS 39

so opposite to our thought of out-reaching branch,
shady gallery, and spreading contour). But I have
spoken of the palm at length in another chapter.
And, after all, it is rather an incident of the desert
than a characteristic, appearing only sporadically
and as a rule about the margins of the territory,
limited always to the rare spots that yield the need-
ful conditions of moisture.

The principal desert tree is the mesquit. Of this
there are two species, differing in size, mode of
growth, and some other details, the most noticeable
of which is the seeding. The larger, Prosopis glan-
dule sa, bears a typical bean, the other, Prosopis
pubescens, a unique seed-vessel exactly like a rather
large screw. From this feature the latter tree takes
the name of "screwbean," or tornillo, the Spanish
word for screw.

The larger mesquit is the one great benefaction
of Nature to her desert-dwellers. Were it only in the
matter of shade, what songs should be raised to it
by man, bird, and beast; and indeed are raised by
sparrow, wren, linnet, and, to the best of his ability,
by that arch black sprite, phainopepla, who thinks
the topmost spray of a mesquit the cap of the uni-
verse! Reptile and insect revel in it too, for, as I
write these pages under the shade of a mesquit
(driven from my tent by a mid-morning March
temperature of 108°), I am buzzed and bitten by
gnats and flies of all degrees, cobwebbed by spiders,
explored by serious beetles, and adopted by cater-
pillars as a happy idea: while nimble lizards scam-
per about sniping my tormentors. Every mesquit is

40 CALIFORNIA DESERT TRAILS

a green caravanserai, and one that is patronized to
the full.

These islands of shade are naturally the preferred
spots for camping-places by desert travellers, and
that they have been so from of old may be known
by the presence near them of unusual quantities of
the broken pottery that everywhere amazes one by
tokens of the large populations that the desert once
supported. In places, mesquit thickets may still be
found that extend for miles, though near the rail-
way great stretches have been cleared for cultiva-
tion, and the wood, which makes excellent fuel, is
regularly sold in the towns and cities of the coast.
The aboriginal passion for rabbit would itself render
these thickets the pick of desert real estate to the
Indian, for they are always alive with bouncing bun-
nies, easy targets for his arrows or throwing-clubs.

The mesquit is also evidence of water, though not
necessarily of water near the surface, as In the case
of the palm. Far down below the burning surface
sands the great cable-like roots of the mesquit go
searching for the beds of water-bearing gravel, and
the plant that shows only a five-foot tangle of thorny
scrub aboveground may have roots running to ten
times that depth. As the sand is constantly heaped
higher about the mesquit by the wind, the plant
struggles to keep its head above the drift, and in
places, as at Seven Palms, mile-long dunes have
formed that show a mere fuzz of twigs aboveground
while your feet may be tripped by the great cylin-
drical roots, as thick as your leg and almost as hard
and rigid as iron, from which the sand has been

TREES AND TREE-LIKE GROWTHS 41

blown away. In examining a small one of these roots,
with a thickness of about two inches and looking
like a smooth brown rope stretched taut, I noted
that in a distance of twenty feet it showed no varia-
tion of diameter.

Besides its boons of game, fuel, shade, and possi-
bly water, the mesquit yields food for man and beast
and insect. The vivid young green of late February
becomes tinged in March with clouds of fragrant
yellow catkins. This is the bonanza of the thrifty
desert bees: now or never they must re-stock those
rows of empty golden honey-pots in the rocky
cranny of the hillside, and they go to the work with
all the proverbial ardor, plus the stimulus of need-
ful haste. Later the mesquits form the great har-
borage for those most objectionable creatures the
cicadas. All day the thickets ring with their nerve-
racking pipings, like the whizz of steam escaping
under high pressure. I frankly hate these insects
for their way of dashing out and squirting at one
a spray of some vile secretion. I was puzzled to ac-
count for these disgusting anointings, which fell
upon me even at night, until, camping under a big
mesquit near Indio, I tracked the offenders down.

That camp, by the by, deserves description as
illustrating the possibilities of growth of the mes-
quit. Other wayfarers, probably Indians or Mexi-
cans, had used the place before me, and had spent
no little labor on making it convenient. From the
outside it was a dome-shaped, isolated clump, a
hundred yards or so in circumference and perhaps
fifteen feet in height. A sort of tunnel had been cut

42 CALIFORNIA DESERT TRAILS

leading to the centre, which when reached revealed
the fact that the whole clump was one enormous
tree. The short butt, a yard or so in diameter, broke
into several big recumbent branches which went
rambling about on hands and knees, all crooks and
elbows, and threw out a young forest of twigs and
branchlets cantankerously thorny. Near the main
stem there was ample space and head-room for
camp quarters, and the friend who left his comfort-
able Pasadena bungalow to visit me there had no
fault to find with the accommodation, though he
had now and then with the temperature. It was
pleasant at odd hours to listen to the conversations
of a family of Gambel quail that shared our mesquit
with us, pater's loud clear call, or quieter admonish-
ment of Mrs. G., answered by absent-minded twit-
terings or headlong scamperings of the youngsters.

At this camp Kaweah had to be picketed outside,
but in a similar mesquit clump, that furnished me
quarters for a week a few miles farther on my w^ay,
a stable had been installed by some predecessor,
with manger and room for two or three horses.
There was ample space here also for an average
family's camp requirements.

The mesquit yields excellent food for both man
and beast. One authority says that the bean, of
which husk and all are used, contains over fifty per
cent of practicable food elements. The Indians now-
adays do not call on it to the extent they did for-
merly, when the meal ground by the squaws from
the beans of this plant was the staple of their diet,
though they still use it freely: but horses and, need-

TREES AND TREE-LIKE GROWTHS 43

less to say, the omnivorous burros and the desert
cattle rejoice at sight of a bean-hung mesquit.
Many times, during expeditions that took us far
out of range of orthodox fodder, the situation has
been saved for Kaweah by our finding a mesquit or
two, the twigs pendent with plump clusters and the
ground whitened with the fallen fruit. I sometimes
feared that dislocation of the neck would be his por-
tion as I watched his giraffe-like manoeuvres over
the capture of some coy, high-hung ho7ine bouche.
Nature did a kind turn to her deserving poor when
she reserved the mesquit for the desert.

The screwbean is a more spindling tree, sparser
of foliage, and content with poorer alkaline soils
where the other mesquit seldom cares to dwell. It is
equally good, perhaps even better, as a source of
food, but has little to offer in the way of shade — a
mere thin grayness that scarcely breaks the stroke
of the sun. In the diary of that fine Borrovian char-
acter, Fray Francisco Hermenegildo Garces, who
was roaming these deserts, with the enthusiasm of an
explorer as well as of a missionary, in the years just
about the birthtime of this nation on the other side
of the continent, one easily identifies the tornillo
when he writes that he has found a tree that bears
screws. Flora had one of her quaintest fancies when
she fashioned these odd seed-vessels, which one finds
sprinkled in tousled clusters all over the tree.

Next in size to claim attention is the palo verde,
Cercidium torreyanum. To give the Spanish a literal
translation, it would be the "green stick," or, more
suavely, the "greenwood tree." It has no recognized

44 CALIFORNIA DESERT TRAILS

English name, and to speak of it as the greenwood
tree raises a most incongruous association of ideas.
Shades of Arden, what a difference ! Yet the Spanish
name, taken hterally, is apt enough, for green the
tree certainly is, vivid green and green all over: only
one must banish all thought of whispering forest
and woodsy lawn.

An odd thing is that this very green tree is a tree
almost without leaves; at least, the leaves are so
small, and so short-lived as well, as to cut little
figure in the general effect. It is the skeleton of the
tree — trunk, branches, branchlets, and twigs —
that is green, a green vivid and smooth, though the
butt of a very old palo verde may be roughened and
blackened by age. Such scanty foliage as the tree
puts forth in spring, in response to some old vernal
urge still strong after ages of forced adaptation to
desert conditions, falls by early summer, and leaves
the airy, broom-like branches bare against the china
blue of the sky. Often the branches are hung with
great globes of the desert mistletoe {Phoradendron)
so dense as to look like bee-swarms, adding to the
remarkable appearance of the tree.

The palo verde, however, is a miracle for bloom.
In mid-March it takes a tinge of yellow, and soon
each twig becomes a jewelled chain, petals of whim-
sical gold set with chips of ruby for anthers. Its
other Spanish name, lluvia de oro, shower of gold,
then fits it well. For charm and profusion of bloom
it is the desert's premier tree, and reminds me often
of that glory of England's spring, the laburnum.
Ah, those Thames-side gardens, spilling their over-

TREES AND TREE-LIKE GROWTHS 45

flow of lilac and laburnum over old rosy brick walls !
Those sea-washed Devon villages, each cottage
plot a bower of floral gold! Those steep lakeland
streets which I used to climb with you, lady of my
dedication, to the dark-firred Beacon, each garden
raining yellow largess upon its neighbor next below!
Excuse the lapse, good reader, and in return I will
wish that you may never know the sharpness of exile.

On the side of usefulness the palo verde has its
virtues as well. Its beans are grist for the pestle and
mortar of the Indian squaw; and though usually a
small tree, it is capable of growth to a size that
would furnish lodgment to man. There is a palo
verde near the mouth of Deep Canon that I take to
be the Goliath of its tribe. The trunk at its narrow-
est aboveground is eight and a quarter feet in girth,
the largest limb five feet around, and the space cov-
ered by the tree has a circumference of seventy
yards. For the desert, that is a triumph of tree
growth. I do not know of another palo verde that
comes to half its size.

The smoke-tree, Parosela spinosa, may hardly be
called a tree, though sometimes tree-like in size of
stem. More common than the palo verde, it is al-
ways a strange and noticeable object. It, too, is
leafless, but it is wholly pale gray, a mass of prickly
interlaced twigs that at a distance has much the
look of a cloud of smoke. It is the characteristic
plant of the desert "washes" or water-courses. I
have often found the beds of these fugitive streams
filled for miles with this ghostly semblance of a river.
To see this phantom river come winding out, snake-

46 CALIFORNIA DESERT TRAILS

like, upon the plain from some red, mysterious
canon brings nightmare thoughts of the grim genii,
Thirst and Famine, that might here have their
abode.

In early summer one may see this torrent turn
suddenly from gray to liveliest color. The smoke-
tree, like the palo verde, makes up for absence of
foliage by a huge burst of blossom. In this case it is
blue, the purest ultramarine, each tree a cloud of
small, pea-like flowers that as they shrivel and fall
collect in windrows like drifts of azure snow. (An-
other name for the tree is indigo bush, though the
true hue of the blossom is not indigo : yet another is
desert cedar, which is totally without point.) Some
day a painter will chance upon this sight, and at
danger of death by thirst will refuse to move from
the spot until he has fixed upon canvas the desert
at its highest color power. He had better, though, be
a painter unusually reckless of his reputation, for all
the world will swear he lies.

The smoke-tree gives me occasion to voice an old
grudge that I have long held against the botanical
tribe. Harmless, even kindly, as botanists in general
appear, how is it that they take delight in embitter-
ing the lives of laymen by their eternal juggling
with the names of genera and species? If they really
wish to discourage us poor "popular" chaps, all
right ; let them say so and we can turn to something
lighter, say eugenics, or those frivolous things, conic
sections. For many a year the smoke- tree and its
relatives were known to all the world as of the
genus Dalea. To-day the puzzled amateur finds that

TREES AND TREE-LIKE GROWTHS 47

name tacked to a quite different class of plants, and
only by chance recognizes his old acquaintance
under the title of Parosela. And this is but one case
in a long and grievous list. When I hear of convoca-
tions of botanists I smile and say, "This is no inno-
cent convention. What are they up to now?"

Often found near the smoke-tree in the gravelly
washes is the desert willow, Chilopsis linearis. It is
not really a willow, and only slightly resembles that
tree In Its leafage and irregular shape. In size, how-
ever, this often becomes a genuine tree, and I have
found specimens with trunks two feet thick and an
area of thirty yards diameter or more. The notable
feature of this tree also is its flower, which Is a
large, fragile, orchid-like blossom, white relieved with
lavender and yellow, and very delicately scented.
There is something childlike about it, a hint of
dainty pinafores In the crinkled edges of the petals:
altogether a rare, undesert-like bloom. In the with-
ering summer heat of a torrent bed there Is refresh-
ment In meeting these airy blossoms with their
fresh, cool look and gentle fragrance — a thought
of violets and primroses in mossy woodland ways.

The desert willow blooms profusely and remains
long in flower. The fruit Is a long, narrow bean,
which, on shedding Its seeds, leaves the tree hung
with silky gray pods that flutter in the wind like
pennons on the lances of Indian warriors.

One true tree remains, the Ironwood, Olneya tesota,
called arbol defierro, or palofierro (alternative hierro)
in Spanish, meaning Iron-tree or ironwood. This is
a sturdy, trim, well-branched growth reminding one

48 CALIFORNIA DESERT TRAILS

of a well-shaped apple tree. The foliage Is abundant,
yielding welcome shade, and the wood is exceedingly
hard and makes excellent fuel. Its dull-blue flowers
are not specially attractive, and it bears beans that,
so far as I know, are not eaten by man or beast,
though I have seen my horse nibble the young
leaves with a resigned air when sugary mesqult,
humdrum galleta grass, and even that furniture-
polish sort of stuff, burro-weed, have all left us in
the lurch.

The ironwood has not a wide range, and one
might travel the desert for a long time without meet-
ing it. In the northeastern part of the Colorado
Desert, not far from the river, there is a little-visited
range of hills called the Ironwood Mountains, or
sometimes the McCoys. On their southern outskirts
I rode for hours through what, for the desert, might
be called a forest of these trees, some of which had
trunks more than two feet in diameter.

There is a widely distributed, straggling bush that
at a cursory glance looks rather like an unthrifty
mesqult. It is the cat-claw, Acacia greggii, an affec-
tionate creature that grapples you to its soul with
hooks of steel and loves to keep you tTiere, taking a
double hold for every claw you gently disengage.
The leaf is mesquit-like, but smaller and finer, the
blossom also similar, a fuzzy catkin, and the fruit
a curious curly bean that dries into gouty-looking
contortions. You will not go far on the desert with-
out meeting the cat-claw, nor will you part without
cursing it.

A feature of all desert trees, except the palm, is

TREES AND TREE-LIKE GROWTHS 49

the great quantity of mistletoe, Phoradendron cal-
ijornicum, they often carry. It is a common thing
to see mesquits in which one half of the bulk of the
tree is made up of dense masses of this parasite. It
has no leaves, but in spring carries berries of a pretty
coral color. Though classed by botanists as a " false "
mistletoe, it has, I know, played the good old Christ-
mas part with entire success.

In speaking of the Ironwood as the last true tree
of the desert, I must not overlook three other plants
that in size may deserve the name — the tree-yucca
or Joshua tree, the ocotillo or candlewood, and that
giant of the cacti the saguaro. They are hardly to be
thought of as trees, however, but rather as growths
allied to trees, but wanting in almost all tree-like
features.

The first is Yucca arborescens, of the tribe of that
"Spanish bayonet" which is so common about the
foothills of Southern California and so noticeable
for its gigantic spike of cream-colored flowers. The
Joshua tree (so named, it is said, by Mormon immi-
grants who, meeting these eccentric growths as they
neared the end of their long march, hailed them as
heralds of the promised land) is more typical of the
Mojave than of the Colorado Desert, but it extends
southward into the mountain ranges that divide the
twin desolations.

It is a weird, menacing object, more like some
conception of Poe's or Dore's than any work of
wholesome Mother Nature. One can scarcely find
a term of ugliness that is not apt for this plant. A
misshapen pirate with belt, boots, hands, and teeth

50 CALIFORNIA DESERT TRAILS

stuck full of daggers is as near as I can come to a
human analogy. The wood is a harsh, rasping fibre;
knife-blades, long, hard, and keen, fill the place of
leaves; the flower is greenish white and ill-smelling;
and the fruit a cluster of nubbly pods, bitter and
useless. A landscape filled with Joshua trees has a
nightmare effect even in broad daylight: at the
witching hour it can be almost infernal.

The ocotillo, Fouquieria splendens (commonly but
wrongly taken for a cactus), is to me the most strik-
ing and characteristic of the desert plants. In it are
expressed the desert's intrinsic qualities, its haggard-
ness and gray sterility, its cruelty of thorn and claw,
'its fierce, hot beauty. In a landscape crowded with
these lean, sinuous shapes, as one finds them filling
great tracts of the barrenest desert of the Colorado,
one feels an added wildness and fascination. Of the
cacti, a few are really beautiful, many interesting or
quaint, others ugly but grotesque. The beauty of
the ocotillo is the beauty of Cleopatra or Carmen,
fierce and fatal. The scarlet streamer that comes in
spring at the tip of every stem is like a darting drag-
on's tongue. A company of ocotillos writhing in a
hurricane makes as eerie a sight as anything I know
in the vegetable realm.

In shape the ocotillo is a sheaf of thin, whip-like
canes from six or eight to twenty feet long, spread-
ing more or less widely from a main stump near the
ground. The canes are closely armed with curving
thorns, which give the plant a cactus-like appear-
ance. For nine or ten months of the year it stands
gaunt, leafless, seemingly lifeless, and one strange

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feature is the suddenness with which, on the coming
of the rains, it changes from dead, dry gray to hving
green. Small leaves appear as if by magic and feather
the canes with vivid green. The canes themselves
become a delicate lavender; even the thorns put on
a half-inviting look and entice the unwary to closer
acquaintance. Then a flower-spike starts from the
tip of each cane, and bursts into a flame-like tongue
a foot or so long, made up of scores of tubular scarlet
and yellow blossoms.

I have been told that the flowers of the ocotillo
are used as food by some of the desert Indians. I
tried them once, but failed to find them attractive.
But I had no recipe : perhaps they should be served
with a tarantula sauce, or stewed with lizards' tails.

The giant cactus, Cereus giganteus (Spanish sa-
guaro), is a common object of the Arizona deserts,
but in California is only represented to the extent
of a few individuals, probably not many over a
hundred all told, that have gained a footing on the
western bank of the Colorado. It, too, is an abnormal
plant, but not an ugly one. Indeed, it is beautiful
in an outlandish kind of way, but so far is it removed
from all the shapes that we think of as trees that it
might be a type of vegetation belonging to Mars or
the moon.

Ordinarily the saguaro, for ten or fifteen feet of
its height, is a single dark-green column, regularly
ridged or fluted, and set with rosettes of spines. Then
it sends out arms, one or very few, which stand up
parallel with the main stem ; or it may divide into
a number of equal branchings, taking the form of

52 CALIFORNIA DESERT TRAILS

a candelabrum. A mature saguaro may be fifty feet
high or more, but the tallest specimen I found on
the California side of the river was not over forty
feet. It was an odd-shaped, untypical growth, with
a few stumpy arms that looked as if they had been
amputated.

In nearly every saguaro one finds a number of
neat round holes, the entrances, originally, to wood-
peckers' nests, but often used rent free by that
quaint little goblin the elf owl, Micropallas whitneyi,
the Tom Thumb of his tribe, hardly six inches high
when full grown. My tallest saguaro must have had
a score of these holes, a veritable hotel or skyscraper
of owls. I was disappointed that I could not make
camp beside it, but I think I can warrant any other
traveller who may do so some pretty weird music for
his lullaby.

The plant bears large waxy blossoms that grow
directly on the stem and branches, and the fruit is
a first-class luxury to the Indians.

When the red flood of sunset comes on those great
plains and hill slopes, where no other object breaks
the far expanse, while the ancient river moves
silently on to the lonely gulf and the mysterious sea,
and the traveller's steps halt under that old spell of
evening, then the dark, upward-pointing finger of the
saguaro gives an added solemnity to that impression
of the vast, unchanging, and elemental which is the
eternal note of the desert.

CHAPTER IV

THE SMALLER CACTI, SHRUBS, AND FLOWERS

The cacti, children of the desert — The biznaga or "nigger-head" —
An emergency water-supply — The villainous choUa — A cactus
that jumps — The Devil's Garden — A torturing imp — Deer-horn
cactus and the cactus wren — Gorgeous blossoms — Beware of
hasilaris — Fish-hook cactus or chilito — The ubiquitous creosote-
bush — Solitude and monotony — Arrowweed thickets — Pro-
tective shapes — Desert holly — The self-defensive agave —
Indian confectionery — Baking mescal — A floral surprise, the
desert lily — The encelia or incense-plant — Billows of bloom —
An ambiguous color — The desert verbena — Rose-purple acres
— A memorable spring flower show.

THE desert is the kingdom of the cacti, for the
cacti are the special offspring of the desert.
With ingenious pains Nature has wrought out this
unique family, fitted to endure the very reverse of
ordinary plant conditions. Their part is to hold the
frontier that meets the Empire of Drought, and
they are shaped and armed for the task. Since leaves
yield too much to evaporation, spines and thorns
are adopted. Rainfall being a matter of doubt, the
cactus models itself on the canteen, and fills up
to the limit when it gets the chance. And since a
canteen is a temptation to thirsty tramps such as
jack-rabbit and coyote, the spines are hooked,
barbed, clawed, and made as generally troublesome
as possible. Yet, it seems as if when the matter of
blossoms came up. Nature's heart relented: she
could not bring herself to fashion a forbidding flower.
After the giant saguaro, described in the previous

54 CALIFORNIA DESERT TRAILS

chapter, the barrel cactus, Echinocactus cylindraceus
{hiznaga or viznaga of the Mexicans) is the one that
first claims notice. Here and there about the rocky
hillsides and mesas stand these odd shapes, upright
cylinders from two to six feet high. The surface is
beautifully fluted and covered with a close network
of spines three or four inches long, hard as ivory and
sharp as needles, real works of art. On the top of the
cylinder there comes in spring a circle of papery,
rose-like, lemon-yellow flowers. They sprout di-
rectly from the cylinder, making a dainty pale gold
coronet that seems strangely out of place on that
preposterous tousled "nigger-head" (as the plant
is sometimes called).

This portly vegetable is, as I suggested, really a
reservoir of water. The interior is a sponge of water-
holding tissue, protected from evaporation by the
leathery skin. Desert men, of course, know all about
this convenient arrangement, and draw upon it at
need: and many a life forfeited to the thirst-demon
would have escaped out of his hand if the doomed
wretch had but known the secret. He is an unwise
man, indeed, who dares that demon without the key
to many of the desert's problems.

The process of tapping this source of water is
simple enough. The top of the "barrel" is cut off;
a depression is scooped in the pulp ; the surrounding
tissue is crushed by pounding with axe-helve or any-
thing that will serve as a pestle; and then a clear
liquid, rather flat in taste but quite drinkable, will
gradually exude into the hollow that has been made
in the pulp. Like Samson's conundrum, "Out of the

CACTI, SHRUBS, AND FLOWERS 55

eater came forth meat," one may say of the hiznaga,
"Out of the drinker came forth water."

Next, if not first in obtrusiveness, is the cholla
(pronounced choy'a), Opuntia bigelovii. First it cer-
tainly is in villainous traits and in the ill-regard of
every desert traveller. It is an ugly object three
or four feet high, with stubby arms standing out
like amputated stumps. The older parts are usually
black with decay, the rest of a sickly greenish white,
and the whole thing is covered with horrible barbed
spines, uncountable in quantity and detestable in
every regard. It has, moreover, a very vile habit of
shedding its joints, and these roll by instinct into
the places where they can most easily achieve their
purpose, which is to stab the feet of horses and spike
pedestrians through their boots, as they readily can
do. Every one who has travelled w4th horses on the
desert !has had the job of ridding his animals of these
devils, which in many places grow so thickly that to
dodge them is out of the question. The Indians say
that they jump at you: this sounds like an exaggera-
tion, but upon my word I don't know. Often when I
have felt sure that I passed clear of a certain cholla
I found he had me after all.

I remember some years ago crossing the Devil's
Garden, a great cactus thicket between the White-
water Wash and Seven Palms. My companion and
his Arizona cow-pony were both old desert habitues
and past-masters in cactus, while my mount also
hailed from the Arizona ranges, where cactus is "the
daily round, the common task." Yet our combined
sagacity came far short of keeping us out of trouble.

56 CALIFORNIA DESERT TRAILS

First one and then the other of us had to stop, kneel
in the roasting sand (with the sun at somewhere about
140° Fahrenheit), and pull out one by one the long,
barbed thorns from the feet and knees of the wincing
animals. In these minor surgical operations we gradu-
ally lost sight of each other, and it was not until
long after dark that we met again at our designated
camp at Whitewater.

The cholla is the general enemy. In autumn, when
the range is at its poorest, I have often seen cattle in
horrible distress from a great lump of this fiendish
plant that had got hooked on to their muzzles as
they searched for browse. At every attempt to feed,
the tormenting imp of course took a stronger hold.
As one cannot come near these half-wild cattle of
the ranges except by lassoing them, many an un-
lucky steer has died of starvation from sheer in-
ability to pick up feed.

I could willingly devote a chapter to abusing the
cholla. Enough, however, to add that the blossom
is of a pale, unwholesome green, hardly noticeable;
and that if the plant bears any helpful or even inno-
cent part in the scheme of things on this planet, I
should be glad to hear of it. I do, indeed, remember
to have seen hornets in search of building-sites in-
specting the cholla with evident approval, but that
hardly counts for a virtue.

Prominent almost everywhere in the view is an-
other cactus, often called, from its branching, antler-
like habit, the deer-horn cactus {Opuntia echino-
carpd). Unobservant people are apt to confuse this
species with the last-named, and call it cholla. If

CACTI, SHRUBS, AND FLOWERS 57

one should do so, it would be proper to apologize.
Without being a saint, one may object to being
taken for a murderer. The deer-horn grows in spread-
ing shape to a height of six feet or more, a maze of
bristling ramifications that form the favorite nest-
ing-place for one of the desert birds. Here the cactus
wren builds and broods, as secure from snakes and
other enemies as if she were housed in the interior
of a hedgehog. I have once seen the nest of this bird
in a true cholla; probably the device of some super-
careful mother who had had unfortunate experience
in speaking with the enemy at the gate.

The deer-horn bears a rather pretty flower of an
uncommon brownish green or bronze hue, seen, I
think, in this plant alone.

Less frequently met is a species much like Echino-
carpa, but with stems and joints much thinner, and
thorns fewer though not less aggressive. This is
Opuntia ramosissima. It bears a small brown flower,
a hue that Flora does not greatly love. But though
she is no Quaker, variety is her breath of life, so
even brown is adopted as a novelty.

The handsomest of all the cactus blossoms, to my
mind, is that of Cereus engelmanni, which grows usu-
ally in company with the two foregoing species. The
plant looks like a colony of a dozen or so spiny
cucumbers, set up on end, generally under the shade
of a creosote bush or in the lee of a boulder. I have
no grudge against this fellow, who bites only if you
strike him. The blossom is a most charming one, a
sheeny, rose-like cup of superb purple or wine color,
crowded with golden-anthered stamens and with a

58 CALIFORNIA DESERT TRAILS

pistil breaking into soft green plumes that curl as
daintily as a moth's antennae. One who is on the
desert in spring should on no account miss the sight
of this exquisite flower.

Almost as handsome is the blossom of another
common desert cactus, Opuntia basilaris. This is one
of the flat-lobed or "pancake " species, and is sim-
ilar in general habit to the common tuna, prickly
pear, or Indian fig. The flower-buds sprout in a row
from the edges of the lobes, and make a fine show
with their cups of silky cerise. This plant, like the
tuna, is valuable to the Indians, who achieve a
special delicacy by cooking the young buds in a pit
heated with hot stones.

But let the unwary beware; there is more in the
basilaris than meets the eye. The lobes have a
downy, innocent look, spines apparently absent.
"Trust her not, she is fooling thee." The velvety
surface is covered with myriads of infinitely fine
prickles that come off at the lightest touch and form
a sort of plush on the rash person's skin, almost in-
visible but most aggravating to the touch. The re-
moving of them, though a fine exercise in patience,
is one of the most melancholy occupations that I
know.

All the foregoing bear cup-shaped, papery blooms
of what may be called the usual cactus character.
There is a quaint little cactus, not very common,
Mamillaria tetrancistrus, usually only two or three
inches high, that has an entirely different flower.
It is claret-color, fleshy, and vase-shaped, and bears
for fruit a bright coral-red vessel like a tiny chile,

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CACTI, SHRUBS, AND FLOWERS 59

from which it gets its Mexican name of chilito.
I have heard it called "strawberry" cactus, a puz-
zling misnomer. "Fish-hook" is another and better
name, arising from the inch-long thorns, curving
sharply at the tip; and "pin-cushion" has an evi-
dent bearing on the little green cushion stuck full of
shining prickles. But as is so often the case, the
Spanish word is the most apt. Do the Mexicans love
flowers more than we? Perhaps they understand
them better, if only because they look at them with
more simplicity.

There is another species of Mamillaria, almost
identical in appearance with the foregoing except
that its flowers are white, rather like the tube-
rose.

Leaving now the thorny subject of the cacti, the
ruling plant and the one of widest distribution over
our southern deserts is the creosote bush, Larrea
glandulosa. It is a handsome bush, often eight or ten
feet high, airy and spreading, with small leaves of
brilliant varnished green which give it a pleasing
effect in the general scheme of gray. From the tarry
feeling and smell of the foliage it gets its common
name of "greasewood," or among the Mexicans and
Indians, hediondia, meaning "bad-smelling," though
the peculiar odor is not to me disagreeable. In spring
the plant is set profusely with starry yellow flowers,
which mature into little woolly globes as pretty as
the blossoms. Over wide tracts of desert the creo-
sote is the sole object that breaks the cheerless
expanse, and I often felt that the sense of solitude,
vastness, and monotony, was deepened by the

6o CALIFORNIA DESERT TRAILS

presence of this plant, growing for league on league
almost identical in size and spacing, now stirred to
a momentary sigh by the fitful wind, then, in a mo-
ment, motionless as death in the trance-like stillness
of the heat.

A noticeable plant about water-holes and oases
is the arrowweed, Pluchea sericea. It wears the des-
ert's regular livery of gray, and forms dense thick-
ets, six or eight feet high, through which it is not
easy to push one's way. The cane-like stems grow
straight and stiff from the ground, needing only
smoothing, by rubbing on a grooved rock, to make
excellent shafts for the light Indian arrows. The
feathery leaves have an acrid smell, always associ-
ated in my mind with the thought of jaded arrivals
at long-expected camping-places, and eager draughts
of tepid, unsatisfying water. The blossom is a fuzzy,
dingy, pink affair, appropriate to the unwholesome
alkaline soils which the plant seems to prefer.

The general grayness of desert vegetation is largely
due to one class of plants, the genus A triplex, which
with its many species makes up a large proportion
of the total growth. Wide areas of low-lying desert
are dotted with great hummocks of quail bush,
A. lentiformis, curious in their perfect, dome-like
form and easily mistaken at a little distance for
drifts of sand. This shape, typical of the desert
growths, no doubt represents an effort at self-
protection from the general persecutor the sun.
The canny tortoise seems to have set the model with
his make-what-you-can-of-that contour; and there
really is not much to be made of it, either by wind,

CACTI, SHRUBS. AND FLOWERS 6i

sun, or sand-storm. I often wished that I had been
cast in a similar mould.

Another A triplex, of the species canescens, is no-
ticeable for the bright-green tassels of its seed-
vessels, of a papery texture and peculiar shape for
which it has been given the common name of "shad-
scale." Since it fruits in the late summer, when the
desert is doubly deserted, its unique feature is not
generally known.

One more relation of the quail bush that is worth
noting is the little prickly leafed A. hymenelytra.
The young foliage, of palest gray with rose or lilac
shell tints, whitens under the summer sun to almost
a look of ivory. At Christmastide it is sold in the
coast cities as "desert holly," sometimes with red
berries of other plants artfully attached to make it
better fill the part. The leaves are really holly-like
in shape, but after all a poor substitute for the royal
green ilex without which Christmas is only half a
festival.

Often found growing with the ocotillo, which was
described in the previous chapter, is the Agave
deserti. This is a relative of the century plant of
parks and gardens, and is almost identical with the
indispensable maguey of Mexico. Again we have the
desert's eternal note of gray, in the huge bayonet-
pointed leaves, from the midst of which, when the
plant is from twelve to twenty years old, a single
straight flowering-stalk shoots up to a height of
eight or ten feet, breaking into crowded blossoms
of honey-dripping yellow. Once having bloomed, the
plant dies.

62 CALIFORNIA DESERT TRAILS

Like the ocotillo, the agave makes a striking figure
in many a desert landscape. On scarred, sun-smitten
hillsides and down league-long stony bajadas, the
earth bristles with their blue-white daggers in im-
penetrable chevaux-de-frise, stuck here and there
with leaning poles, relics of former years' flowering.
Flora is again on the defensive, for without those
pikes and lances she could never hold her own
against the cattle, bighorn, and deer that covet the
succulent flower-stems, and whose tracks you find in
spring all about these forbidden preserves.

From time immemorial the agave has supplied
the desert Indians with one of their few luxuries, one,
moreover, that is both food and confectionery. Now
that every country store offers easy satisfaction to
stomach and sweet tooth, this old source of supply
has fallen into neglect; but now and then the Indian,
answering the call of the wild, still goes afield to
bake mescal. One recent spring I was able to join
a friendly Volcan Indian who was bound on this
time-honored function. Briefly, this is the manner
of it:

Arrived at the mescal ground, which was on the
southern desert overlooking the Borego Valley re-
gion, our first work was to search for plants with
flower-stalks in the right stage of growth. The deer
and wild-sheep had been before us, and it took an
hour or two to secure a dozen young and tender
shoots that Antonio pronounced bueno. With his
axe he cut deep into the core of the plant, at the
base of the great asparagus-like stalk. The shoot
was cut out, its top struck off, and the leaves trimmed

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away, leaving a clean butt fifteen inches or so long,
eight or ten thick, and weighing several pounds.

Next a pit was dug, two or three feet deep and
somewhat more in diameter. This was lined, bottom
and sides, with flat slabs of rock, and a loose coping
was laid also about the edge. On this coping the
agave butts were laid. A good bonfire was built over
the pit, and allowed to burn for twenty minutes or
so, the embers falling into the pit and covering the
bottom thickly. Then the butts, already charred by
the fire, were tumbled into the pit, and with them
the heated coping stones and all the still-glowing
embers. Earth was banked up over all, and the pit
was left for the day. The next afternoon we resur-
rected our booty after some thirty hours' baking. The
charred lumps had much the appearance of ele-
phants' feet. Cutting away the blackened skin we
arrived at a golden brown mass, as sweet as molasses
and with a flavor that I first found peculiar, then
interesting, finally seductive.

In a cranny of the rocks, Antonio's quick eyes had
sighted a relic of mescal-bakings of old — a long,
straight pole of the heavy wood of the mountain
mahogany, one end shaped to a chisel-like edge. It
was, Antonio said, a peh-wee', the tool used for cut-
ting out a-moosh' (mescal) by his people of bygone
days, before the white man and his wonderful things
of iron and steel had come within their ken. It had
an uncouth look that suggested the weapons of cave-
dwellers, and I wondered whether the formidable
old tool might not have seen wilder service in its
day than just the peaceable reaping of agaves.

64 CALIFORNIA DESERT TRAILS

I early learned that the desert is full of floral sur-
prises, but I was not prepared to find among them
a snowy, virginal lily. Down on the sun-seared flats
about the upper end of the Salton Sea I came upon
the wonderful Hesperocallis undulatus, a flower that
might be looked for in some carefully warmed and
watered greenhouse, but never in these arid spaces
of sand. It was mid-April, near the end of the plant's
flowering season, and only a few of them were left in
bloom. I was told that a week earlier they had stood
in thousands all over the gray levels that stretch
from the edge of the bitter sea back to the ochre
mountains. Tall and slender, they carried their deli-
cate large bells, three or four to a cluster, knee-high
above the mat of wavy, ribbon-like leaves. One rubs
one's eyes at meeting these Easter-lily-like flowers
in this "dry and thirsty land where no water is."

In the same region, but scattered over a wider
territory, is found another choice flower, one of the
Mentzelias. Its blossom is creamy white, of the most
satiny sheen of any flower I know, each petal closely
pencilled with vermilion in very fine parallel lines.
The foliage, however, is harsh and scaly, rather a
drawback to the beauty of the plant, whereas the
lily is wholly gentle and Madonna-like.

I must pay tribute also to the great white evening
primrose, (Enothera trichocalyx, which on moonlight
nights throws the glamour of fairydom over the dry,
commonplace sands. The huge four-inch blossoms
shine up like little moons ; but beware how you stoop
to handle them, for the plants are a favorite har-
borage for the sidewinder, that wicked little horned

CACTI, SHRUBS AND FLOWERS 65

rattlesnake that goes sideways and bites without
"ringing the bell."

I have not yet spoken of the plant that makes the
greatest show of all about the borders of the desert,
where it covers dark canon walls and the lower slopes
of mountains with a stipple of gray that changes in
spring to gold. This is Encelia farinosa, a stiff bush
up to two feet high, growing in the favorite hemi-
spherical shape of desert shrubs, with pale gray
leaves and brittle twigs that exude a yellow resin.
This resin, it is said, has been used, under necessity,
in place of orthodox incense, so that Mexicans and
Indians call the plant " yerba de incienso." The flow-
ers are yellow stars, profuse and beautiful, and are
borne on long slender stems that project evenly sev-
eral inches beyond the outline of the bush, which
then is like a big gray pincushion stuck full of yellow
floral hatpins. The plant is very prolific, and, whether
in flower or not, is a noticeable feature in any land-
scape in which it finds a place. Another species, E.
calijornica, with dark-green leaves, is found oftener
on the levels than on hillsides.

The mention of the encelias brings to mind spring
days a year or two ago that I spent in Deep Canon,
one of the principal carious of the northwestern part
of the desert. The winter had been one of unusually
heavy rains, and every desert plant was doing honor
to the rare event. It is hopeless to attempt to give
the reader any true impression of the floral outpour-
ing that year as it was revealed to me in Deep Caiion.
To put it in one weak figure of speech, it was a tor-
rent of floral color, billows of red, yellow, and blue,

66 CALIFORNIA DESERT TRAILS

that filled the long canon from side to side ; the en-
closing walls, for hundreds of feet up, all painted to
one hue of yellow by uncountable myriads of encelia
blossoms. To name all the plants that entered into
the spring show would be impossible, but the three
plants that were most overpowering in volume were
the encelia, the beloperone, and the phacelia, yel-
low, red, and blue respectively. The caiion was a
jungle of these plants, the bushes of beloperone espe-
cially wonderful, many of them six feet high and
eight or ten feet long, wholly covered with the crim-
son blossoms. Humming-birds were whirring about,
nonplussed like myself at the sight (the plant is
known as flor de chuparosa, humming-bird flower,
in Mexico, I am told), and honey-loving insects of
every degree joined in keeping the air in a conglom-
erate hum.

The other plant I named, the phacelia, or so-
called wild heliotrope, grew in loose tangles all about
the sturdier encelias and beloperones, climbing as
high as their support allowed and encircling their
yellow or crimson in wreaths of delicate blue.

I must not overlook, either, that glory of desert
cafions in late spring, the flame-colored wild holly-
hock, Sphceralcea ambigua. I call it flame-colored,
but it is not that, and everybody whom I have asked
to name the color has either named it differently or
politely declined to try. Along the base of rocky
walls you find bushes of the plant, with pale gray-
green leaves and superb sprays of blossom which
you may call pale vermilion, or apricot, or brick red,
or flame, without being correct in any of the terms.

CACTI, SHRUBS, AND FLOWERS 67

In the neighborhood of Palm Springs and in Deep
Caiion I have seen it at its best, but every one who
sees it in a good season will agree that it is a splen-
did, strange, and wonderful flower.

One other notable flower must be mentioned, the
so-called desert verbena, Abronia aurila. This, like
all desert plants, varies greatly in its show of blos-
som according to rainfall and other conditions ; but
when the season is propitious the verbenas make a
never-to-be-forgotten impression. The rosettes of
blossom, of a color between pink and purple, are
crow^ded together in solid acres, almost miles, of
bloom, so closely as to be crushed at every step. The
gentian meadows of the Sierra and the golden poppy
carpets of our few yet unploughed foothills are
matched and outdone by these rosy purple verbena
plains of the desert. My little sleeping- tent, six feet
by three, pitched where the ground was freest of
blossoms, enclosed scores of the clusters, and the
scent within was like that of an orchid house.

It would be impossible to give here even a brief
reference to all the desert growths that are interest-
ing for their uses, strange in their characteristics, or
beautiful in their flowering: for instance, the odd
sandpaper plant, Petalonyx thurberi, whose name
indicates its peculiarity to the touch ; the dye weed,
Parosela emoryi, that announces itself too late by a
deep yellow stain on your hands or clothing; and a
great number that the Indians value for medicinal
or other purposes. My notebook shows over a hun-
dred plants that I found remarkable. Some of them
will be spoken of in the chapter on Indian lore.

68 CALIFORNIA DESERT TRAILS

From the bladder-pod of February to the lowly but
lovely navarretia that in midsummer tints wide
spaces with its delicate harebell blue, there is an
unbroken flow of color. Any one who may find him-
self on the desert in spring, especially if it be a spring
following a winter of good rainfall (as rainfall goes
on the desert) may count on an experience of wild
flowers that, if he is a stranger, will yield him a
memorable and surprising impression.^

1 In an Appendix are given brief descriptions of other desert plants,
by which many, at least, of them may be identified.

I

\

CHAPTER V

SOME DESERT INDIAN LORE

Doubtfulness of Indian lore — The Tahquitz demon: his haunt —
The Pleiades legend — Toluache and its properties — The raven
again ill-omened — Indian word-building — Cahuilla fire-makers
— A desert Indian views the sea — Uses of sundry plants — Coyote
tobacco — Bows, arrows, throwing-clubs, baskets — Ever-useful
cacti and yuccas — Mesquit and chia — The hunter's instinct —
Fruits, wild and cultivated — Indian baskets and pottery, passing
arts — Medicines and other things — All necessities supplied.

IN this chapter I pass on to the reader some items
of information that I have gathered, in some in-
stances directly, in others at second-hand, of the
beHefs and practices of the desert Indians, especially
with regard to the uses of certain plants. The topic
is a large one, and cannot here be more than touched
upon. Even so, much of what follows cannot be
taken as trustworthy. Every one who has attempted
to delve into affairs ethnological, even if he be fitted
for the task by study and training, knows the hope-
lessness of efforts to clear up the doubts and contra-
dictions that arise at every step. Hence these scraps
of supposed fact or belief are offered more for the
passing interest or amusement of the reader than as
reliable fragments of knowledge. The only items
not subject to this qualification are those referring
to the medical qualities of plants, in so far as they
may have been proved and accepted by authorities.
Of Tahquitz, or Tahkoosh, the bad spirit of the
Cahuillas, an Indian friend tells me that his visible
manifestation is as a meteor: not, however, any

70 CALIFORNIA DESERT TRAILS

ordinary shooting-star, but such as carry a train of
sparks. If an explosion is heard (the sound of the
meteor striking), it is said that Tahquitz has caught
a victim: otherwise he is supposed to have failed in
his attempt. The Tahquitz meteor seen in daytime
is called Tahm-ya-su'-wet. It also tries to catch the
spirits of men. There is a certain rock on Palomar
Mountain, many miles to the south of San Jacinto
Mountain (where Tahquitz has his home), to which
this methodical demon is said to carry his prey,
there to pound the flesh and prepare it for his maw!
(My criticism that spirits have no flesh was thought
irrelevant. "I tell you what we say," was the take-it-
or-leave-it reply.) The Diegueno Indians — that is,
those formerly tributary to the Mission of San Diego
— recognize the same evil spirit, having his haunt
on the same mountain at a spot they call Awik'
Kai-yai', but they name him Chowk.^ The curious
rumblings sometimes heard to proceed from this
mountain, and which I have noticed myself, are, of
course,^ attributed to Tahquitz's operations.

A Diegueno Indian with whom I camped, point-
ing one night to the Pleiades, said, "We call them
Stete Cabrillas" (seven buzzards). He went on to
explain that when the First People — that is, the
original inhabitants of the earth — were seeking to
escape from death, they were taken up into the sky
and became the stars. There were seven sisters, with
one of whom Coyote (who figures largely in Western

' It is seldom one finds anything like agreement on any point of
belief between the various tribes, or even between villages of the same
li.i '.-K pj^^^^^^ble diversities of language that occur among these
little tnbal divisions make another source of confusion.

SOME DESERT INDIAN LORE 71

Indian mythology) was in love. The sisters climbed
up by a rope, and the love-lorn Coyote, catching the
end of the rope, was drawn up after them. But the
sisters, once safe, cut the rope behind them and he
fell; but not back to earth, for, "See," said Antonio,
pointing to Aldebaran, "there he go. All the time he
try catch that girl, but he never catch her yet."

The creosote bush, Larrea glandulosa {at-a-qual-
sa'-na), produces scantily a red, scale-like gum which
is considered very valuable. It is used for repairing
ollas, attaching arrow-heads to shafts, and also as a
medicine for the throat. Of this gum the barrel was
made in which the semi-divine hero of the Papagos
(a southern desert tribe) was saved from death in
the great flood. The creosote bush itself is used
medicinally, a strong decoction of the twigs and
leaves, taken internally, being thought excellent for
maladies of the throat and chest and of the stomach.

The virtues and vices of the datura, a common,
rank plant very similar to the well-known jimson-
weed, with large trumpet-shaped, white or lilac-
tinted, sickly-sweet flowers which open at night, are
well known to the Indian. They call the plant tolu-
ache (to-loo-ah'-che) and put its narcotic properties
to use in connection with certain of their social and
religious ceremonies. It is believed to confer clair-
voyance, so that by its use one may recover lost
articles ; though it is capable of more difficult feats.
For instance, it was reported to me of a certain blind
Indian of my acquaintance, who was formerly a
noted gambler, that he had lost his sight through
too frequent use of toluache, by means of which he

72 CALIFORNIA DESERT TRAILS

used to read the faces of his opponent's cards. The
pounded leaves, applied hot as a poultice, are said
to be effective for relieving pain, however acute,
"but you must not eat hard " (that is, heavy or indi-
gestible) "food soon before, or it will kill you," said
Lugardio. As a remedy for saddle-galls it is reputed
to be sovereign, as is also a powder of the mistletoe
of the desert juniper, or of the root of the common
wild gourd, or calabazilla, mixed with sugar.

The raven, or carrion-crow, eminent for sagacity
since Noah's day, and made half supernatural by
Poe, is a bird of omen to the Indian also. A certain
part of Santa Rosa Mountain (Wa-hut-now'-ha) is
known, in Spanish, as Casa de Cuerva, raven's house,
or in Indian, Ahl-wah-tem-hem' -ke, house of many
ravens, and is held in superstitious regard. Rock-
crystals are believed to be missiles which the raven
has cast at men with evil intent. I have noticed that
any piece of glittering rock is apt to be considered
"bad medicine," and such are always part of the
stock in trade of the pohl or medicine-man (Spanish,
hechicero) .

It is natural that the two great contiguous moun-
tains, San Gorgonio and San Jacinto, should be
thought to be brothers. Their names are Kwaid'-a-
kaich and Ai'-ya-kaich, respectively, the former
being looked upon as the elder.

It is a pretty idea that is embodied in the use of
the Spanish word ojo, meaning eye, for a pool or
spring of water (with ojito for diminutive). The
Cahuillas have the same poetic thought in their
word pal-he' -push t for a pool. In the word or phrase

SOME DESERT INDIAN LORE 73

applied to their ancient wells, now non-existent, to
which one descended by steps cut in the earth, we
have an example of natural language-building. The
Cahuilla word for a water- jar (Spanish, olla) is
ka'-wo-mal, and that for earth or ground, te'-mal.
Hence the well was te'-ma-ka'-wo-mal, or ea.rth-olla,
neatly enough. t

Making fire by friction of dry sticks is an art not
often practised in these days, but two Palm Springs
Indians with whom 1 once camped were experts at
the game. Two pieces of dry palm-fruit stem were
the tools, one an inch or so broad, length immaterial,
the other less than half as thick, about a foot long,
and perfectly straight. A few dead leaves were placed
in a little heap : the larger stick was laid beside them
and held in place by one of the men, a hollow having
first been made in the surface of the wood, with a
little groove leading from it to the leaves. Then the
smaller stick, trimmed to a blunt point, was put to
the hollow, and rapidly revolved by rolling between
the open hands of the other Indian. His hands moved
down as he rolled, returning again and again to the
top. The friction sent a fine stream of wood powder
down the groove upon the leaves. In less than two
minutes smoke showed at the point of friction, then
sparks began to fall on the tinder, and finally a flame
was started by blowing. Less than three minutes
sufficed for the operation. It was hard work while it
lasted, for the fire was endangered by the perspira-
tion caused in kindling it.

An Indian woman, one whose industry, dignity,
and general high character I admire, when on her

74 CALIFORNIA DESERT TRAILS

first trip "inside," was taken by friends of hers and
mine to see the ocean. The place chosen was a sea-
side resort near Los Angeles, one that aspires, I be-
lieve, to the proud title of the Coney Island of Cali-
fornia. On coming in view of the sea she was deeply
excited, though self-possessed. The car was stopped
so that she might gaze her fill. Her childlike wonder
and murmured words of awe were a study in natural
emotion. Approaching the water's edge she was a
little reluctant at the boom and wash of the surf.
Then she stood quiet and intent, as if striving to
grasp the hitherto unimaginable fact of such an
infinity of water. Her companions made no unwise
attempt to overwhelm her with statements of the
real vastness of the ocean. When at length they
turned to leave the beach she still stood enthralled:
then knelt by the margin and tasted the water, beck-
oning to it, and speaking to herself, or to it, in the
Indian tongue. It was hard for her to turn away.
Again and again she stopped to gaze ; and when they
came among the side-shows and switchbacks she
had no eyes for these irrelevancies, but at every
opportunity she turned afresh to the great simple
marvel of the sea. It was to that, not to Fat Ladies
or Pink-Eyed Cannibals, that the "uncultured"
Indian nature reacted.

The leaves of the quail-bush, A triplex lentiformis,
whose hemispherical gray hummocks are almost the
sole feature of the monotonous silt flats, are used
for soap, and the seeds are boiled for food. The twigs
and leaves of the Suceda, which inhabits the same
localities, besides being boiled and eaten, yield a

SOME DESERT INDIAN LORE 75

black stain that is used for dyeing the material for
baskets. A more sophisticated use for the plant is
that of a hair-dye, for which purpose it is mixed
with wet clay and plastered on the head, where it is
left until dry.

The common Isocoma acradenia {mah' -cha-wal)
is a standard remedy for cold and sore throat, and is
used by pouring boiling water on the bruised leaves
and inhaling the steam. The leaves after being so
used may be applied as a poultice on the forehead.
It may be noted that the genus Isocoma is closely
akin to another, namely, Solidago, whose etymology
tells the curative properties of the genus.

An odd-looking, not uncommon plant, in appear-
ance like a mass of stiff green straws, is Ephedra
californica, or desert tea. A decoction of the twigs
is of well-recognized benefit in stomach and kidney
complaints. Indians, Mexicans, and whites alike are
firm believers in its efficacy. It is occasionally found
in drug-stores.

For tobacco the desert Indians had Nicotiana
attenuata. It is a true member of the tobacco family,
though prospectors, jealous for the honor of Navy
plug or Black-jack, name it "coyote tobacco" in
contempt. It was used both for smoking and chew-
ing. The dried juice of a milkweed, and the gum of
one species of oak and of the incense- bush, Encelia
farinosa, supplied the primitive chewing gum. Thus
it may be proudly claimed that the great American
habit is truly national, even aboriginal. It was
thought comme it faut to chew flowers of the poppy
{EschschoUzia) with one's gum, a touch of senti-

76 CALIFORNIA DESERT TRAILS

ment not more misplaced than some that the world
of fashion can show. Tobacco pipes were made of
clay, but were usually stemless, which suggests that
the smoker took his whiff lying down — perhaps
an excuse for enhancing the luxury.

Bows were made of the screwbean mesquit, Pro-
sopis pubescens, or of willow, and light hunting ar-
rows of arrowweed, Pluchea sericea, or of carrizo,
Phragmites communis, with points of mesquit hard-
ened by fire. The carrizo also supplied a fibre for
bow-strings. War-arrows, of course, were more for-
midable, armed with barbed points of bone or ob-
sidian that were of excellent craftsmanship. I have
seen such arrow-points several inches long and as
finely wrought as a piece of jewellery. For clubs
used in hunting rabbits or birds the wood of the
mountain chamiso, Adenostoma sparsijolia, was pre-
ferred.

The large storage baskets for holding the family
stock of acorns, pinon-nuts, and so forth, are usually
made of willow withes (sometimes of a species of
arrowweed), often in ingenious shapes. They are
called may'-a-nut-em (the syllable em is the mark of
the plural).

The cacti, from tiny Mamillaria to giant saguaro,
almost all yield food to the Indian, and many of
them serve other purposes as well. Water in quan-
tity sufficient to sustain life may be taken from the
great barrel cactus or "nigger-head," Echinocactus
cylindraceus, and the saguaro, Cereus giganteus. The
former, hollowed out, has been known to be used
as a cooking-vessel, by means of dropping heated

SOME DESERT INDIAN LORE 77

stones Into the food which has been placed in It.
The fruit of another kind serves as a hair-brush. My
fire-making friends brought a new vegetable to my
notice, in the shape of the flower-buds of the barrel
cactus {ko'-pash-em, they called them). They grow
In a circle at the top of the plant, and we had no
difficulty in gathering enough for a meal. When
boiled they taste midway between Brussels sprouts
and chestnuts, a very satisfactory dish.

In another chapter I spoke of the agave. All its
relatives, the yuccas, are plants of many uses to the
Indians. One still finds old men and women wearing
sandals of yucca-fibre, and excellent saddle-blankets
are made from it. The root of one species, Yucca
mohavensis, makes very fair soap, and its seeds are
roasted for food. Of another species, Y. whipplei
(the well-known "Spanish bayonet," or quijote),
both fruit and flowers are eaten. So also are the
scarlet blossoms of the ocotillo, and the yellow flow-
ers of the agave; the latter, probably, for the sake
of their honey, which Is very plentiful, but somewhat
bitter. The ocotillo, by the by, when not in sap,
makes a capital torch, burning with a white, steady
light as if there were some waxy Ingredient.

For food purposes, the two kinds of mesquit and
the chia sages, Salvia columbaricB and 5. carduacea,
were the great stand-by of the desert Indians, to-
gether with acorns and pinon-nuts from the sur-
rounding mountains. Comparatively little use is
made nowadays of these wild resources, but one
may still chance to see some old housewifely crone
seated on the ground and embracing with out-

78 CALIFORNIA DESERT TRAILS

stretched legs the wooden mortar in which she
pounds out the family flour; or creeping about
among the brush, beating with bat of palm-fibre the
chia seeds into her bowl-basket: a basket that she
wove, perhaps, threescore years ago, while her
Hiawatha was stalking antelope or wild-sheep, and
into which she may have woven more of legend
and romance than wise men of the Smithsonian
would easily unravel.

The hunter's instinct is strong in the men still.
The other day I met old Tolomeo, patriarch of his
rancheria, ambling homewards on his wall-eyed
pony with rifle and half-a-dozen jack-rabbits at his
pommel. Tolomeo is old, very old, but the jack
that gives the slip to the old capitan must be en-
dowed with more than the supernatural speed of
most jacks, and Lugardio, just home from prosaic
prune-picking in the mountain orchards, finding
that my plans did not admit of an autumn hunting
trip, remarked with a sigh, "Then I guess I don't
get a buck this year again. Two years now I don't
get me a deer. 'Sta muy malo."

The nourishing properties of chia seed should be
better known. It is said that a handful or two of
them, roasted and ground, will sustain a man
through a day of hard exertion, such as continuous
running. Mixed with flour it becomes the famous
pinole of the Mexicans, the staff of life of the com-
mon people. It is believed to have stomachic as well
as nutritive value. The mesquit bean is a good sec-
ond: analysis of the meal has shown it to contain
over fifty per cent of food elements, largely sugar.

SOME DESERT INDIAN LORE 79

The beans of the palo verde, and even of the cat-
claw, though not so good, were formerly pressed
into service.

The curious martynia, with its great curved seed-
vessels and claws like spring steel, was not over-
looked. A use was found for it in basket-making,
and it also served for riveting broken pottery. Holes
were bored in the pieces to be joined, and the tough
hooks, inserted in them, gripped the parts together.
The seeds were chewed by Indian boys, who relished
their sweet taste.

Many uses were found for the palm. Its fibres
were woven into baskets, though these were not of
the finest grade, and brushes were also made from
them. The broad fronds were excellent as thatch for
houses, and strips from them made material for
plaiting where close texture was not needed. The
leaf-stems were handy flails for threshing seeds, and
the fruit, which is small and hard, but with sweet,
date-Hke flavor, when ground entered into the com-
position of the all-embracing Q,tole.

The sweet tooth is well developed among our des-
ert Indians, and Nature has provided for it by fur-
nishing many of the cacti with fruits that are sweet
and healthful. The flat-lobed Opuntias yield the
prickly-pear, or tuna, sometimes called Indian fig.
The little Mamillaria bears a small, red, pleasant-
tasting fruit: even the hateful cholla has a fruit that
is said to be agreeable, though I refuse to believe it.
The saguaro is held in highest regard by the tribes
that inhabit its range, for the lusciousness of its
fruit and for its many other uses, included in these

8o CALIFORNIA DESERT TRAILS

being the furnishing of an intoxicating drink little
less atrocious than the mescal from across the line.
According to Mr. Lumholtz, the Papagos date their
year from the commencement of the saguaro har-
vest, which occurs about the middle of our year.

In many desert canons the so-called wild apricot,
Prunus eriogyna, is plentiful and bears good crops of
small sweet berries. Prime luxury of all, however, is
a-moosh' (a Dieguefio word), which is secured by
baking the heart of the agave, as I have described in
another chapter. But these natural dainties are
coming to be little prized now that sweets of greater
charm, because americano, are offered in paper bags
or lace-frilled boxes at the store.

On the Reservation at Palm Springs there are a
number of magnificent fig trees, descendants of the
old historic figs of San Gabriel Mission. One that I
measured showed a circumference of over nine feet.
These furnish an abundance of delicious fruit, the
surplus of which the Indians are not slow at turning
into money, finding a demand for it in Los Angeles,
where it brings high prices, as it comes early into
market. Old Marcos is the proud owner also of a
few fine date-palms, real Deglet Nur aristocrats im-
ported many years ago from Algeria and planted
here by the Department of Agriculture to test their
adaptability to our climate. No wonder if the tunas
from his great cactus hedge, full twelve feet high, are
less prized than of old.

The Indian who panted for cooling drinks "when
heated in the chase" was not condemned to water
alone. A handful of crushed beans of the mesquit, or

SOME DESERT INDIAN LORE 8i

the berries of the sumac, Rhus ovata, or, when ob-
tainable, those of the manzanita (Arctostaphylos) of
the upper caiions, added to the water in the olla,
gave it a refreshing flavor. For society occasions a
"pink tea" effect could be obtained by serving a
decoction of ocotillo flowers.

The vogue for Indian baskets that has arisen in
late years, quite justified by their beauty of shape
and design and their admirable workmanship, will
help to keep alive for a time this ancient and honor-
able craft. Many of the older women are wonder-
fully adept, but it is rare to find a young one who
has learned the art ; and there is, besides, a tendency
towards discarding the old traditional designs in
favor of wall-paper patterns or crude attempts at
realism. The woman whose introduction to the ocean
I described above is one of the best basket-makers I
know, and I was pleased lately to find her giving her
little niece, eight or ten years old, a first lesson in
basketry. In even a small basket of fine weave there
may be ten thousand or more "stitches," so it was
not surprising that little Conchita was not enthusi-
astic. It was remarkable to meet recently an Indian
woman of certainly over eighty years who had
taught herself the craft in the last few years, and
whose baskets are marvels in design, color, and
texture.

Pottery-making is now seldom practised among
these desert Indians. With the necessity for hand-
made utensils the art has almost ceased. I found
pottery still being made recently at San Ysidro, a
mountain village of the Cahuillas, and at Rincon, a

82 CALIFORNIA DESERT TRAILS

Luiseno rancher ia. The shapes were good, but the
workmanship clumsy or careless. In graceful outline
and delicate construction, the older specimens one
finds are admirable. The old ollas were sometimes
decorated, though seldom elaborately. In view of the
fragility of the vessels it is not to be expected that
great pains should have been spent over ornament.
The ground about the sites of old villages is lit-
tered with an astonishing amount of pottery debris,
and the traveller reflects with awe upon the centu-
ries of spanking to which these countless tokens of
youthful misadventure solemnly bear witness.

Of medicines that were resorted to by the Indians
in olden days there were too many to be more than
briefly touched upon here. Some have already been
noticed. To name a few others that were most in
vogue:

The gum of the incense-bush, Encelia farinosa,
was heated and applied for pain in the chest, whence
the plant was known as yerba del vaso. The twigs
of the chamiso of the desert mountains, Adenostoma
sparsifoUa (yerba del pasmo), furnished an emetic.
A famous remedy, almost a cure-all, was the yerba
santa (Eriodictyon) . The wild buckwheat, Eriogonum
fasciculatum, yielded an eye-wash and alleviated
pain in head or stomach; and an infusion of the
leaves of the sumac, Rhus ovata, gave relief in case
of colds. Another herb of renown was the yerba
mansa {Anemopsis calif ornica), found in damp places
and thought excellent in sundry complaints. The
herbal remedies were supplemented by the curative
virtues of the thermal springs and by the very

SOME DESERT INDIAN LORE 83

effective temescal or sweat-house, prototype of our
Turkish bath.

Cord for fish-lines, snares, slings, and nets was
procured from several plants. The agave and yucca
were the principal sources, but a superior fibre was
taken from one of the milkweeds, Asclepias eriocarpa.
Brushes came from the ever-useful agave. Glue was
at hand on the mesquit, or was ingeniously prepared
from other plants. A sort of coffee was made from
the roasted nuts of the Simmondsia. Paints of vari-
ous colors were taken from the earth, and splendid
dyes were obtained from sundry herbs. In short,
there were few, if any, needs of a natural life in a
mild climate that these people — whom the early
whites, in conscious superiority of whiskey and six-
shooter, named "Diggers" in contempt — had not
found the means of supplying. Many more pages
could be filled with the list of their discoveries and
appliances, for those I have named are but examples
drawn at random from an astonishing number.

CHAPTER VI

A DESERT RIDE: PALM SPRINGS TO SEVEN PALMS

A circuit of the desert begun — My burro Mesquit — And horse
Kaweah — Nonchalant orioles — Rebellion of Mesquit — Hot en-
gagements, a parting, and a new start — Engulfed in gray — Last
flowers — Enchanted sand-dunes — San Gorgonio Pass: a blow-
pipe and sand-blast — Wind-trained shrubs — The sand-chisel
■ — Lilac the desert's color — Railroad flotsam — Nature's hy-
draulics — Seven Palms oasis — A desert homestead — Effects
of alkaline water — An inhuman wind — Coyotes oblige.

AFTER some months spent about the north-
western part of the desert, with headquarters
at the village of Palm Springs, I made ready to
launch out on a complete circuit, with variations, of
the Colorado Desert, It was within a few days of
the end of May, a much later date than I should
have wished for the start, for the sun had settled
down to his summer's work, and came up each
morning at full blaze in a merciless sky, with that
baleful mien which always throws me into anticipa-
tory perspiration, and which still brings to mind
the morning burst of my old dominie into the class-
room, menacing, bloodshot of eye, and gnawing on
his fingers like a famishing ogre.

Delay had been caused partly by a long course of
unsettled weather, partly by fly-sores on the neatly
striped legs of my burro, Mesquit. I had purchased
her at Banning, the desert-portal town lying in the
neck of the San Gorgonio Pass, where the railroad
had dropped me in January. We had had bickerings,
such as are bound to occur when similar constitu-

PALM SPRINGS TO SEVEN PALMS 85

tions are thrown together: but on the whole the con-
nection had been pleasant and I think profitable on
both sides. In many a caiion "we twa had pu'd the
gowans fine," and in friendly tandem we had "wan-
dered monie a weary fit" of unprofitable sand and
cactus ; and for my part I had no thought but that
our fortunes would keep one trail for many a mile
yet untrod. I meant, moreover, to get Mesquit a
comrade when we reached the settlements down the
valley, for though her load for the long journey was
no more than her accustomed one, I wished to make
the best arrangements so as to ensure reasonably
fast travel. Also, I hoped thus to have the means
of carrying water in excess of the capacity of my
two canteens, one of gallon, the other of half-gallon
size.

For my mount I had bought from an Indian ac-
quaintance a small, tough horse. Born and bred on
the desert, he promised (or Francisco promised for
him) to be excellent for my purpose. His Indian
name of Po'say (meaning "little") did not quite
please me, with its inapt suggestion of flowery
meads, and I rechristened him Kaweah, partly in
allusion to the name of the tribe to which his old
master, and therefore he, belonged, namely, the
Cahuilla (of which Kaweah is a phonetic variant),
but more out of compliment to the memory of the
loyal companion to whose virtues Clarence King
does honor in a book which I am never tired of
praising, "Mountaineering in the Sierra Nevada."
Let me say at once that in many a hard day's march,
and sometimes, under necessity, night's to follow at

86 CALIFORNIA DESERT TRAILS

a stretch, Kaweah secundus did full honor to his
name.

On the morning of starting I had been up since
four o'clock, and we got on the move while Palm
Springs was yet rubbing its eyes. As we passed the
Reservation there came the chatter of orioles break-
fasting with nonchalance on old Rosa's early figs
at forty cents a pound. The racket, checked while
the thieves listened with bored amusement to the
rattle of her warning bell, — a kerosene can with
horseshoe clapper, hung high among the branches
of the patriarchal tree, and operated by Rosa's foot,
so as not to interfere with the fashioning of baskets
or tortillas, — went on again the moment the tattoo
was ended. Not so, I guessed, the slumbers of her
neighbors.

Turning northward I struck toward the western
point of the great sand-hills that rise conspicuously
across the valley. I had long been tantalized by
their artificial shape, their mysterious changes of
color, and the secret of what lay behind them,
whether palmy canon, wind-swept mesa, or char-
acteristic characterless plain. I meant now to find
a way in their rear, more interesting than the regu-
lar road down the valley, already familiar to the
point of tediousness.

Before we were a mile on the way, certain doubts
that I had had as to Mesquit's good-will toward the
expedition hardened into certainty of trouble. Of all
the crimes that are latent in these complicated
beasts, the most terrifying is that of lying down
under the pack. In my dealings with Mesquit hith-

PALM SPRINGS TO SEVEN PALMS 87

erto, when I had either led her by halter-rope or
marched alongside or behind, this had occurred once
or twice, but, laying it to some momentary qualm, I
had passed it by. Now, whether it were some sudden
access of those traits for which the tribe is notorious,
awakened by a suspicion that we were bound on a
long hard voyage, or mere spite at seeing me for the
first time riding while she was left to walk, I cannot
guess. Anyhow, of a sudden I felt a check on the rope
by which I was leading her, tow-line fashion, and,
looking quickly round, saw her deliberately gather
her feet, kneel down, and compose herself in an
attitude of luxury. I dismounted and pulled; she
was uninterested: I shouted and feinted blows; she
seemed coldly to smile: rope-ended, she put her head
to the ground and tried to roll, and though the pack
balked the attempt, I knew by disastrous sounds
that ruin was rife among the contents. In the last
resort I hit on a goad. Prodded lightly, she grunted
in contempt: prodded urgently, she kicked, but
shivered: prodded ruthlessly, usque ad sanguinem
(reader, the case was extreme, and the temperature
a good hundred and forty in the sun) — triumph !
she scrambled to her feet and stood quaking and
defeated — for the time.

Another quarter-mile, and the whole business was
enacted again: a furlong, and yet once more: and,
in brief, within the space of six miles, which brought
me to my first intended stop, eight several battles
were fought — I cannot say, and won, for the strife
was but intermitted, never closed. And on three occa-
sions the load had all to be thrown off and repacked.

88 CALIFORNIA DESERT TRAILS

This settles it, my fine girl, I said at the second
repacking. Kaweah and I can manage without your
help, since this is an instance of it; and the last of
your disastrous tribe shall perish from the earth
before ever I put faith in burro again.

To dispose of Mesquit finally from these pages I
may say that the next day I took her back to Palm
Springs (with no trouble whatever, now that she
was not outward bound). There I left her, and with
no such relentings as Stevenson noticed in himself
on parting from the classic Modestine. I sorted over
my baggage, cutting down to the barest needs and
to the point where they could be contained in two
pairs of saddle-bags. One of these fitted at the horn
and one at the cantle of my McClellan saddle, with
two light blankets strapped behind the rear pair.
The two canteens were necessities, and I carried
also a light hatchet, a picket-pin, and a single-
barrel 20-gauge shot-gun (though this, useful as it
was, I later discarded for saving of weight). My
camera, of course, was indispensable. Thus equipped
I made a second start.

The circumstances of the former attempt had not
conduced to enjoyment of the scenery or other nat-
ural incidents of the way. Now, with "peace of
mind, dearer than all," I had leisure and mood for
observation. I was riding northward to the oasis of
Seven Palms. Almost before the last stunted pepper-
tree outpost of Palm Springs was passed, I was en-
gulfed in the gray waste, gray not alone of sand and
boulder, but also, in the main, of vegetable and ani-
mal life. Isolated bushes of creosote rose here and

PALM SPRINGS TO SEVEN PALMS 89

there above the level, enough of them merely to
accent the general hue by momentary relief of glossy
olive. Encelia and burro-weed made up the bulk of
the plants, but by now the yellow stars of the former
had burned to ashes; the latter makes little show of
bloom and wears a perennial garb of gray. These
dense-growing, round-topped shrubs afford the
minimum relief of shade to the eye. The light is
thrown back unbroken from their hemispherical sur-
faces, and all there is of shadow is kept for their own
needs as if under a close-held umbrella. Of animal
life little was to be seen but scurrying lizards, them-
selves mostly gray, but some of ivory white. These
are bony little goblins with sharp tails and a leer in
the eye that comes near being devilish.

A few late flowers were out, principally the ethe-
real sky-blue navarretia, with which one slowly but
surely falls in love. Large white evening primroses
were still blooming under the creosotes, and here
and there the daisy-like desert-star {Eremiastrum)
showed like floral Pleiades. A desert willow in a dry
water-course kept a few of its frail, orchid-like blos-
soms, and the indigo sparks of the dye-weed were
plentiful, but almost lost in the wide sea of gray.
A month earlier a page would hardly have held the
list of the flowery multitude: now, by late May,
floral autumn had come on the desert, and this in
spite of its being a season of unusually late rains.

But desert color does not lie in vegetation alone.
A few miles north of Palm Springs there rises a great
dome of sand that for color effects I can only com-
pare to a vast opal. I have seen it pass in a few hours

90 CALIFORNIA DESERT TRAILS

from milky white, through pale chrome, gold, ochre,
rose, madder, royal purple, indigo, and duskier
purple, to almost black : such enchantment does this
desert atmosphere work, even at no distant range.
As I now passed near it the magic was as totally
gone as that of Hamlet's dull firmament; it was "a
foul and pestilent congregation " of sand atoms,
weary to foot, weary to eye, most of all weary to
thought, the embodiment of drought, hopelessness,
infinity of number, infinitude of Time.

This strip of desert, lying at the eastern approach
to the San Gorgonio Pass, is a veritable blow-pipe
and sand-blast. The heated air rising under this
fierce sun acts as a suction-pump, drawing from the
coast a compensating volume, and this pass forms
the main channel for the daily interchange of sea
and land air that gives the Southern California cli-
mate its peculiar quality. It is by means of this regu-
lar wind-current that the great sand-hill has come
into being. On most days, especially of spring and
summer, to cross this tract is a highly unpleasant
job. The force of the wind is phenomenal, and the
steady, concentrated action results in launching
volumes of sand with hurricane power against any
object in its path.

As an instance of the violence of this wind, I re-
call an average day of a former spring, when a party
of whom I was one stopped hereabouts for a meal.
A sheltered spot was chosen and a canvas sheet
rigged against the wagon-wheels for extra protection :
yet a cup of coffee set on the ground would be in-
stantly blown over unless weighted down with a

PALM SPRINGS TO SEVEN PALMS 91

sizable stone, and no amount of dodging availed to
prevent every mouthful getting liberally sanded in
transit. The conversation was lively, yet it was not
a cheerful meal.

On the present occasion, for a miracle, only a
harmless breeze was blowing. It was instructive to
note the effect of these sand-laden winds upon vege-
tation, and even rock. Wherever a fair-sized stone or
boulder stood in the windway, some thrifty shrub,
usually creosote or dalea, crouched in its shelter,
growing to leeward in a long streamer, like a quick-
set hedge. Some of these bushes were from ten to
fifteen feet long, with height and width strictly regu-
lated by the size of their rock protector. Any
attempt to extend by so much as an inch beyond
shelter was rendered hopeless by that deadly sand-
scour.

In other cases, where some hardy, low-growing
shrub kept a foothold, a long dune had formed in the
rear where the check to the wind allowed the sand
to settle. Both hedges and dunes ran invariably to
eastward, following the course of the wind. For vari-
ety, here and there were creosotes with a grotesque
look of being on stilts, the soil having been gouged
away from the roots by the wind to the depth of
two feet or more. Many are the quaint comparisons
suggested by the postures of these wind-thrawn
plants.

A yet more impressive token of the power of the
sand-blast is seen in the scarred and corrugated
faces of boulders. The rocks hereabouts are all of
the igneous kinds, but often differentiated, as geolo-

92 CALIFORNIA DESERT TRAILS

gists say; that is, not homogeneous, but made up of
strata of varying degrees of hardness. Many of these
bear deep-etched testimony to the sand-storms of
ages, the softer parts being chiselled away and the
harder left in bold relief. They might have been
antiques carved from fragments of the bones of
Chronos.

The same thing happens, of course, and in very
brief time, to softer structures. The telegraph poles
along the railroad used to need renewal constantly,
being soon cut through, a few feet above the ground,
by the beat of hail-like gravel and the fret-saw of
the sand. Now they are sheathed with iron. Frag-
ments of clear glass quickly take on the appearance
of ground glass or dull metal. Upon everything,
living or dead, the flying sand stamps its seal.

Another noticeable thing, by the by, about glass
that is exposed to the desert sun is that it quickly
takes a hue of amethyst or lilac. This tint, expressive
of light at its highest actinic powTr, may almost be
called the characteristic color of the desert. I have
often been forced to admire the beauty of the shadow
tones cast by rock or tree — a thin, pure, violet hue:
nay, I have even been charmed with my own image,
drawn in this ethereal air-color by my enemy the
sun.

Half buried in sand I noticed some weather-worn
timbers. They proved to be railway ties, with
twisted rails still spiked to them. This was the mark
of another destroyer, one that comes seldom to the
desert, but is apt then to come in fury. It was water
that had tossed this scrap of railroad miles from

PALM SPRINGS TO SEVEN PALMS 93

where it had been laboriously placed: either some
rare, long-continued winter storm, or, more likely,
a sudden summer flood. A glance at the surrounding
mountains makes the matter plain. Figure the cer-
tain effect of a heavy fall of water on those two-
mile-high walls of almost barren rock. Like raging
giants the floods come leaping down, torrent reen-
forcing torrent, and burst roaring from the cafion
gateways. What work of man's hands could with-
stand that assault, even when the shock is weakened
by miles of distance? In the path of these desert
floods a railroad might as well be a bit of fish-line.
Here, at any rate, as I said to Kaweah, who stood
with pricked ears, pondering at the sight, the age of
horseflesh is not yet gone by.

Partly hidden among dunes of sand bristling with
a scrub of mesquit, there is an oasis and a pleasant
group of palms. Its name, dating from bygone
decades, is Seven Palms, but there are now a score
or so of the trees scattered about the place. A cow-
boy acquaintance of mine years ago " homesteaded "
the spot, captured by the charms of a patch of dingy
salt-grass, a pool of barely drinkable water, and un-
limited quail, rabbits, snipe, and duck. Perhaps he
had also an eye for a landscape which might move
the toughest of "punchers" to admiration. His
cabin, sheds, and corral, almost lost in the jungle of
arrowweed, made up the picture of a typical desert
home, and three slender palms, in shadow cameo
upon an amethystine sunset, gave the touch of per-
fection which is seldom far from the commonplace.

I made camp under a cluster of palms that grew

94 CALIFORNIA DESERT TRAILS

in a hollow where a spring of alkaline water breaks
out and spreads a white, unwholesome efflorescence
among the arrowweed. It is one of the drawbacks of
desert travel that the water, scarce at best, is gen-
erally charged with substances that not only impair
the thirst-quenching quality, but may have ill re-
sults on the health. One of the minor effects of alka-
linity (which is an almost universal fault of desert
waters) is a swelling and cracking of the lips, and I
have known hardy cowboys, inured for years to
desert life, to be disfigured, hardly able to speak,
and positively refusing cigars, after a week or two
of water unusually "tough." I came near serious
illness myself, from this cause, when I camped here
for some weeks earlier in the year: yet this is com-
paratively good water, as desert water goes.

There is another black mark against Seven Palms
— the inhuman wind that constantly blows here all
through spring and summer. After half a dozen vis-
its to the place I fail to recall one day uncursed by
that harrying wind. Ordinary wind I can stand; a
breeze is often refreshing; but this sort of thing is
frankly beastly. It seems a sort of horseplay, aggra-
vating, useless, simply silly.

On this occasion, though the day had been de-
cently quiet, toward evening the old nonsense began.
The palms took up the regulation scream and rattle
that had blasted so many a night's sleep for me, and
by sundown you would have thought the Valkyries
were in full career. I picketed Kaweah on the most
sheltered patch of salt-grass I could find, and passed
the evening in my cowboy's cabin with a phono-

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PALM SPRINGS TO SEVEN PALMS 95

graph that screeched its best, yet failed to drown
the racket that reigned outside.

The locaHty is prolific in coyotes, and in fact has
supplied me with the trio of skins on which I spread
my blankets when Mother Earth's ribs are my bed-
stead. It must have been the songs of some of these
vocalists that put me and kept me asleep, for in
spite of the uproar I slept calmly in my palm bivouac
till Kaweah's shrill neigh called me at daybreak.

CHAPTER VII

A DESERT RIDE: SEVEN PALMS TO THOUSAND PALM

CANON

An oasis aviary — Desert farmers and the non possumus — Poor
man, poor land — Two-Bunch Palms — A plucky woman-settler

— Thirsty poultry — " Desert rat " and poet — Pottery fragments

— San Jacinto and San Bernardino Mountains — Desert light-
houses and sunset — A morning of heat — Storm brewing —
Hospitable settlers and a phonograph — A thunder-storm on San
Jacinto — Abruptness of desert contours — Roof -like slopes —
Lilac lights and shadows — Questionable landmarks — Thousand
Palm Canon — Drought-mountains — Night visitors.

MY plan on starting had been to make the first
day's march a few miles longer, and to camp
at the next water beyond Seven Palms. This spot,
known, somewhat uncouthly, as Two-Bunch Palms,
now became an easy objective for the second day:
for one's marches in desert country are figured from
water to water, be the distance little or great. The
wind had somewhat lessened by morning, gathering
breath for the next attack, so I lay at middling ease
for an hour, interested in the morning business of
the birds that made the grove a literal aviary. The
matted heads of the palms, with their dead hanging
fans, made the snuggest of roosts and was as full of
small sleepers as a boarding-school dormitory. These
now came bursting out in twos and threes, linnets,
sparrows, finches, buntings, totalling scores, with
an enthusiasm for breakfast that I soon found infec-
tious. They had the weather gauge of me there, how-
ever, for even in the best-sheltered corner it was

TO THOUSAND PALM CANON 97

hard to keep fire enough together to boil my billy
of tea.

A few swallows were racing about, like little in-
carnations of joy. A prospector who is a frequent
camper here had told me that they built their nests
against the smooth boles of the palms, and I looked,
but without success, for this example of the skill of
the jolly little masons.

Kaweah showed more than his usual alacrity
when I led him in to be Saddled, and we took our
way again northward. There was no trail, but none
was needed, for after a mile or two we came in sight
of the two palm groups, conspicuous objects against
the light ochre of the foothills. In recent years a few
land-hungry settlers have come into this region and
are engaged in what seem, to my judgment, pathetic
attempts at farming. Lack of water is, of course, the
first obstacle, and almost certainly a fatal one. Sur-
face water, sufficient for household use, is easily got
in most parts, but this may be counted a misfortune,
since it merely makes possible a losing fight. Next
stands the poor quality of the soil, which, with the
exception of a patch here and there, is much too
light to produce crops, except of one of two kinds
that could only succeed by means of copious irriga-
tion. It is possible that wells sunk to sufficient depth
would yield a good supply, but there the checkmate
comes in: it is the poor man who clutches at poor
land, better being beyond his means (a truism that
has special point in this State of booms and fantastic
valuations) : while, per contra, the sole chance of
productiveness with such land lies in a heavy initial

98 CALIFORNIA DESERT TRAILS

outlay for securing water. It is the tribe of Scadder
alone, I fear, that reahzes profit from these "desir-
able acreages," and his neatly baited trap is ever to
the fore in the advertising columns of California
newspapers. It would be an act of both mercy and
statesmanship for the Government to withdraw
from entry these delusive tracts, whose very poverty
makes their fascination for the impecunious — at
least until official experiment has shown whether
they can ever be made to repay cultivation.

Nearing "Two-Bunch" (for brevity the third
syllable is dropped in common usage) I came upon
the tiny store that serves this ungrateful land. Here
a young Englishwoman was wrestling with fate,
struggling to make ends meet by merchandising on
the microscopic scale. Her clients are as varied as
they are few — Indians, cowboys, prospectors,
chance travellers like myself, and such other uncon-
ventional folk as are content to seek health, wealth,
or prosperity under circumstances that most people
would think intolerable. For example, this young
woman (far from Amazonian in physique) for lack
of a well fetches her water day by day per burro
from a mile away, herself going afoot — and it is
along no shady lane or boulevard either. I took a
new view of chickens when I heard her speak bitterly
of their heavy demands for liquid, and felt respectful
sympathy when a scatter-brained young rooster
upset the water-pan.

The two "bunches" of palms that give the place
its name grow near together on a little bluff, where
the level desert breaks to the foothills of the San

TO THOUSAND PALM CANON 99

Bernardinos. A spring of good water issues below
the smaller group, and here I made camp, A settler
has built a small cabin above the spring, and as he
was absent I made his house my windbreak.

On my first visit here, some years before, I found
an old scarecrow of a fellow in possession, living in a
kind of burrow or dugout. A more Crusoe-like object
I never expect to meet, weird as many of these
''desert rats" are to the view. He could not be said
to be clad, but antique rags were hung about him,
and he wore a scrap of debris on his head, under the
delusion that it was a hat. His hair was snow-white,
long, and plentiful, his skin like that of a well-
roasted fowl, and his eyes bright and very blue. The
blue eyes gave an infantile touch, and somehow half
prepared me for his proud announcement that he
was a poet. What more he was or had been I never
fully knew, though I learned that he had known
such spheres of life as teamster, preacher, prospector,
with others perhaps less blameless. Once only I got
a taste of his poetic quality, but of that all I recall
is a frequent loud roar of "O Isrul!"

A noticeable thing on the desert whenever one is
in the neighborhood of water is the quantity of
broken pottery that meets the eye. About Seven
Palms the ground is littered with fragments in many
places, and a number of fine unbroken specimens
have been found by the cowboy settler. Here again
broken shards were plentiful, and I have often been
surprised at meeting these evidences of bygone pop-
ulations in the most unlikely places. The pottery,
of the common red sort, but sometimes decorated

r\ .->

5 58 3

100 CALIFORNIA DESERT TRAILS

with colored designs, is so light that the fragments
remain on the surface, not buried by the wind. It
was the custom of these desert Indians to burn the
bodies of their dead and bury the ashes in a jar or
olla, often along with such articles as baskets, stone
or bone implements, and beads. Excavation in these
places of old habitation often yields interesting
treasure trove.

Two-Bunch Palms has one of the finest outlooks
on the whole desert. On the west. Mount San
Jacinto stands near at hand in gray severity of gran-
ite, with many a league-long buttress, gallery, preci-
pice, chasm, and livid avalanche scar, from the vast
apron of Chino Caiion that casts its burden on the
desert floor up to sky-piercing, splintery crag and
high-hung glimmer of snow. The topmost cliffs have
a fine cathedral look, with their fretted coigns, and
dark-niched, brooding pines.

Separated from the northern spurs of San Jacinto
by the San Gorgonio Pass rises another magnificent
mountain, San Bernardino. With its height of 11,485
feet^ it slightly overtops San Jacinto, but being
rather more distant it makes from here a less majes-
tic though not less beautiful impression. The twin
mountains stand like portals for the traveller's gate-
way to the fertile coast, the Western ocean, and the
new-old world of the Orient. When, in winter and
spring, they are hooded with snow, they make a
memorable sight, and when a ruddy sunrise sets
them aflame they seem torches, lighthouses of a
continent, beacons of the old westward march.

1 The mountain has two main peaks, San Gorgonio, 11,485 feet,
and San Bernardino, 10,666 feet.

TO THOUSAND PALM CANON loi

At evening I climbed a hill for a sunset view. A
curtain of murky gold hung over all the west. The
sun had set cloudless behind the pass. In clear sil-
houette the mountains cut the glow, all their rugged-
ness of contour lost in shadow, leaving only peaceful
line and quiet color to charm the eye. Near at hand
the palms pointed upward with a gesture of tranquil
hope.

The western gold grew duskier; the world seemed
dying, life passing again into its first unity. It was
such a desert hill as this, I thought, that was once
the favorite haunt of the Son of God. Often He must
have taken joy, like me, in the full, calm glory of
the evening star.

Forage for Kaweah was limited to burro-weed
and a scant picking of galleta grass, that stand-by
of the desert horse : but I had brought a little barley
for emergencies, and Indian frugality had to make
up the balance. The breeze was broken in the shelter
of the house, and I took a couple of hours of camp-
fire comfort before turning in. I slept unharassed
by wind, and when I awoke, the morning star was
above the eastern divide, beaming on me like a
promise for the day.

That morning, however, proved one of the worst,
in the way of heat, that I ever experienced. There
was something positively blasting in the air, a
deadly quality, as though all oxygen were with-
drawn. The light itself was a sickly whitish glare.
I should think this sort of morning must forebode
vast eruptions such as of Mont Pelee and the Sou-
friere. I breakfasted, packed, and then changed my

102 CALIFORNIA DESERT TRAILS

mind and declared to Kaweah that we 'd be hanged
if we would move so long as that state of things
lasted. So I off-saddled and lay all morning with
canteen at hand watching ominous clouds pile
higher and higher over San Jacinto, then spread
north and south over San Gorgonio and Santa Rosa.
A storm was certainly coming, one of those sudden
violent bursts that fall on this region at long inter-
vals in summer, brewed almost in an hour in the fur-
nace of the desert sky. A hundred yards in front of
me was a palm that had lately been struck by light-
ning, and was now a ghastly, headless stick, like a
skeleton finger pointing at its murderer the sky. At
Seven Palms I had seen others like it, carrying scars
that told the story. Being the only objects of height
on the desert the palms are naturally marked for
attack. The first boom of thunder seemed to be a
warning, but I could not bring myself to move.

By noon a little freshness crept into the air, and I
gathered energy to eat my cheese and hardtack and
make a start. We were now at the back of the great
sand-hills, and I turned eastward toward where a
long gallery opened between them and the higher
San Bernardino extension ridge. The storm still held
off us and seemed to be pouring its wrath wholly on
the western highlands, a thing that often occurs,
resulting in those sudden floods of water from appar-
ently dry canons that are so dreaded by desert men.
When the clouds extend in summer over the open
desert, rain may often be seen falling, yet never a
drop reach the earth, all being evaporated while
passing through the heated air.

is

OS

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I knew of a settler who had an outlying holding in
the direction I was taking, and presently came in
sight of his homestead, where I hoped to camp for
the night and replenish my canteens for the long
stretch that would come before I should reach the
next water. It was mere luck that my hope was real-
ized. I had taken for granted that I should find a
well at the place, but it was a rash expectation. Like
others hereabout, this devoted settler brings his
water in barrels from miles away, and had he not
been at home we must have turned back to our last
camp. As it was, we received a hearty welcome from
man and wife, and were made as free of their pre-
cious water-barrel as though it could be replenished
by a word, I was even invited to supper and phono-
graph.

I can never get over a sense of the marvellous
with regard to this invention. I don't mean the thing
itself; it is the improbable places where one finds it
that staggers me, the contrast of this appendage of
artificialized life with surroundings often the most
primeval. Canned beef we look for everywhere, and
find it a commonplace at Lhassa or the Pole; but
"canned music" sounds wild on these terms; yet it
is pretty sure to accompany the other. Probably the
Lama is already tired of the latest Raucotrola, and
only refrains from passing it on to the monks of
Kinchinjunga lest it might seem odd to send any-
thing so old-fashioned.

I never saw so spectacular a thunder-storm as the
one that broke on the peak of San Jacinto that eve-
ning. By sundown the clouds had gathered their total

104 CALIFORNIA DESERT TRAILS

forces. Sulphurous and terrific they piled almost to
the zenith, until it seemed that when the stroke fell
it must crush the mountain out of being. There was
the usual pause; then Jove gave the signal. A spear
of lightning shot through the murk, and the battle
was joined. By the incessant flash and glitter we
could see what seemed a perpendicular shaft of
solid water falling from the black vortex of the clouds
upon the head of the mountain. It was as if a volcano
had opened, and that dark column was spouting up-
ward from a huge crater and spreading mushroom-
wise into death-dispensing clouds.

It was quickly over: indeed, it could not last long
at that rate. Then, after that concert of the Thun-
derer's best, my host turned on "Dem Golden Slip-
pers," as more suited to our capacity.

The storm had done its work and the morning
came clear and, by comparison, cool. I left my hos-
pitable friends early, and riding southeast was soon
well into the long pass. A remarkable regularity of
slope, as well as of level, is one of the desert's com-
mon characteristics, and one that contributes greatly
to that sense of austerity which is its universal effect
on the mind. There is seldom any modulation be-
tween mountain and plain. Rock plunges into sand
with startling abruptness; or, where some cailon
debouches, the rock wall will meet at sharp angle a
bajada ^ that may run for miles in even grade at a

^ This Spanish word, signifying a long, downward slope or apron,
is one of those useful terms that California has kept alive from the
former regime. Like mesa, it fills a real need in briefly naming a char-
acteristic element in Western physical geography. Hardly will one
find a desert landscape in which the bajada is not a feature.

TO THOUSAND PALM CANON 105

slant of from five to twelve degrees, and the slender
angle where it joins the dead level will even then be
clearly marked. Nature's love for the curve is aban-
doned here: she works with T-square and mitre-box
instead of with the free hand that rules elsewhere.

For mile on mile we marched up this roof-like
slope over a surface mainly gravelly, but sprinkled
with boulders and varied with river-like stretches of
unmixed sand where washes came down from the
northern mountains. Cactus, encelia, and creosote
rang the changes on creosote, encelia, and cactus,
and ,animal life was at a minimum. In several hours
I saw but three birds, all cactus wrens, though I
heard perhaps as many more talking plaintively, it
seemed to me, of the loneliness of this post-nesting
season. Even lizards were few, and a red racer was
the only member of the serpent tribe to enliven the
way; nor he for long, for these fellows are like the
Ghost in "Hamlet"; one can barely say '"T is
here!" '"T is here!" when "T is gone!"

At last we came to the divide and could view the
other side of the roof. The downward slope was as
smooth as the one we had climbed, but plainly much
longer. On the north still ran the brick-like wall of
mountain; on the south a jumble of sand-hills and
gullies, most Arabian in look; and ahead mountains
on mountains, drab in near distance, purple in
farther, with blues in ever-paler tone as range re-
ceded beyond range. In the flickering heat they
seemed as if painted on a canvas that wavered in
the wind. This, indeed, is a common feeling in view-
ing a desert landscape. In the intense light, so much

To6 CALIFORNIA DESERT TRAILS

stronger than normal, all seems visionary; the very
ground underfoot lacks solidity, with its pale lilac
shadows.

Of all those thin, spiritual hues that make the
color-charm of the desert and that painters find so
baffling, lilac is the prevailing note. It is the most
ethereal of tints, hardly to be termed color, and
seeming more of the mind than of the eye. Yet, once
realized, one finds it universal. Between you and the
gray boulder three feet away you half see, half feel
a veil of lilac light, and the distance is suffused with
it in varying degrees. Overlying the reds and browns
of the mountain walls it makes its delicate presence
felt, and covers the crudest facts of geology with a
film of fancy, a touch almost of faery.

Desert shadows fall into the same high tone. There
is nothing of darkness in them, no weight, no sense
of dimness, but always that aerial tint of lilac infi-
nitely thin and refined. Over wastes of sand aching
and throbbing with light one catches the same faint
hue, lilac, always lilac.

Caiions opened here and there into the hills on
my right, and in some of them I thought I caught a
hint of palms. A prospector who includes this route
in his wanderings had warned me against being mis-
led by these, but as a group of palms was to be my
landmark, these appearances tended to doubtful-
ness and kept me a trifle uneasy. I had a fair idea,
though, of where I was making for, so kept on hour
after hour, alternately riding or leading my horse,
but always in a little question whether I had not
passed my point — awkward, if so, on Kaweah's

TO THOUSAND PALM CANON 107

account, for there was no prospect of forage or
water for him except by our striking the one right
place in this maze of possibilities. The heat was
severe, though short of yesterday's intolerable de-
gree. It was about noon when I saw a dark spot miles
ahead, which I guessed to signify my palms. By two
o'clock we were there and found that the palms
grew at the head of a long caiion that should open
on desert level. It was Thousand Palm Canon, the
place I wanted.

From under the palms a feeble stream trickled
away, its margin white with alkali; but water is
water, and an absolute requisite. There were scraps
of fair pasturage, too, making it, for the desert, a
desirable camp. It was good to see Kaweah go to
work at the juicy tules and water-grass, and it
stimulated my own appetite, jaded by hours of heat.
I brewed some flat, spiritless tea, made a scratch
meal, and then lay in palmy shade watching Ka-
weah's ribs fill out and enjoying a kind of Lotos-
Eater's ease. The temperature was just at century
point by my little thermometer, and the whole place
was kept on echo with drowsy coo of doves and cau-
tious whistle of quail. Smaller birds formed little
bathing parties of sixes and sevens, turning on the
shower-baths with what seemed criminal extrava-
gance.

At sunset I wandered half a mile down the cafion.
The drab mountains changed suddenly to rose, then
crimson, then furnace-red. It is fortunate that these
transformations come at the hour when one's spirits
are rising in prospect of the coolness of the approach-

io8 CALIFORNIA DESERT TRAILS

ing night: otherwise they might be wasted, meeting
a Hstless, heat-burdened mood incapable of enthusi-
asm or even interest. The great twin mountains were
hidden from me here, but the San Bernardino spur
was close enough for its four thousand feet to show
to advantage. But though these drought-cursed
mountains are admirable for color, one's pleasure in
them is limited, since for mountains to be merely
admirable is almost for them to be failures. The
caiions yonder, bathed in indescribable hues, have
no enticement for the imagination, for one knows
that no streams are there, no trees, no birds, no
ferny pools, nor spouting cascades: only uncouth
boulders, scant, unfriendly shrubs, threatening rep-
tiles, snarling wild-cat and slinking coyote. Such
mountains never reach one's love.

The night was warm, though a breeze rattled the
palm fans over my bed. Once I was roused by the
approach of some large animal and was barely in
time to beat off a couple of mules that were making
for my saddle-bags. There is some instinct in these
brutes that guides them unerringly for miles on any
errand of depredation, yet drives them away from
where their presence is desired.

Toward morning, raising myself on elbow for a
drink from the canteen (which, on the desert, one
keeps at one's bolster, as King Saul kept his cruse
of water), I noticed the odd appearance of a star
that was just rising in the east. It grew quickly to a
little horn, and in a few moments announced itself
as the moon, nearly at her monthly finale. By the
time she had climbed to where her light fell among

TO THOUSAND PALM CANON 109

the ribbons of the palms, It was dawn; and I rose
promptly in order to get breakfast before my un-
welcome comrade, the sun, arrived to keep me com-
pany for the day.

CHAPTER VIII

A DESERT RIDE: THOUSAND PALM CANON TO
COACHELLA VALLEY

Stately palm groves — Desert holly — A settler's camp — Hos-
pitable Edomite — Sand-dunes — Novel tobogganing — Smoke-
trees — The edge of cultivation — Burlap-and-hose luxury — Ef-
fects of erosion — Unique home-sites — Coachella Valley — Camp
in a mesquit — "The Twelve Apostles" — Heat minus fatigue —
Indio — Desert farming: dates and figs: phenomenal growths and
profits — The Romance of Agriculture — Sleep and dress on the
desert — Hot baths and watermelon.

THIS was Sunday, and I was glad that the pas-
turage would allow of keeping it a day of rest
— a thing not always possible, even with the best
of intentions, in these regions where necessities of
forage or water often drive the unwilling traveller
on. During the morning I explored my surroundings,
and was delighted to find myself among the stately
groves that give this caiion its name of Thousand
Palms. There are several distinct clusters, each of
many hundreds, growing at short intervals, and in
side ravines are smaller groups, each showing some
feature of charm, strangeness, or picturesque arrange-
ment. In one, a narrow gallery of ochre-hued rock
that gave wonderful depth to the complementary
blue of the sky, I came on six palms that grew in a
compact block, as wide and thick as it was high,
thatched to the ground with dead, hanging fans.
One could cut into the mass as one would into a
cheese, and a fine cell could be carved out of it by

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TO COACHELLA VALLEY iii

a desert hermit who did n't mind scorpions and
tarantulas for neighbors.

I climbed a hill to the east, from whence I could
overlook a good part of the palms' territory. They
stood like an army, an actual forest of palms, as
unique a sight as can be found in our country, and
as beautiful in its strange, fascinating way. No
other plant grows with them: the straight, dark
pillars stand solidly on a floor deep laid with dry,
fallen leaves which slide and crackle under the foot.
As I moved among the stiff, uniform shapes I felt a
sense of that old Egyptian awe, the awe of over-
powering mass and repetition, of monotony carried
to the point of terror. It would have seemed quite
in place to meet here one of those nightmarish pro-
cessions we see on obelisks, or to discover faint hiero-
glyphs carved on those red, pylon-like shafts.

In this caiion I first found an attractive little
plant, A triplex hymenelytra, which I have seen sold
on the streets of Los Angeles at Christmas under the
name of desert holly. It is a low shrub, with stiff,
holly-like leaves and the characteristic brittleness of
desert brush. The whole plant is dead white, and
looks much like a branch of true holly that has been
dipped in whitewash.

The day was warm — io6° by two o'clock in the
afternoon. I drank often of the irresistible though
unpleasant water, and even managed a bath, which
left me with a sensation of being made of old india-
rubber. In the evening the mystery of the night-
wandering mules was explained when two men came
up the caiion. They were surprised to see me, having

112 CALIFORNIA DESERT TRAILS

had no idea of there being any one in that direction
for twenty miles. I learned that they had ranches, or
rather claims, in the valley below, and were engaged
in "developing" water with a view to irrigation. I
was hospitably urged to move down to the camp
where one of them was working, a mile or so down
the canon, and strong inducement was held out in
the promise of better water.

Accordingly in the morning I moved. My friend's
camp was pitched at the edge of one of the palm
groves, and consisted of a roomy tent, a forge, a
rough stable, and a mountain of debris, the accumu-
lation of three years of "baching." For that term
he had lived here, most of the time alone, working
at his "water right"; tunnelling, sinking shafts,
running drifts and ditches, gradually gathering up
the underground flow that was betokened here and
there by seepages and beds of tules ; a life of cheerless
solitude plus hardest labor plus purgatorial heat.
His task was nearly done, he told me, for he now
had two hundred inches of water almost ready to be
piped to his " half -section " of land down in the
valley at Edom — significant name ! — where he
hoped to grow dates, figs, and early grapes for the
tables of millionaires. If spontaneous kindness to a
stranger deserves reward, my good Edomite's acres
should soon be as fruitful as the land of Goshen.

I was struck by the Arabian look of this locality.
High-walled gullies of red or ochre earth meet and
interlace, their bottoms filled with coarse gravel and
boulders mixed with blue-gray smoke-bush and
stunted mesquit and cat-claw. Among birds, only

TO COACHELLA VALLEY 113

the raven seems to tolerate this desolate spot, and
his morose hue, tragical voice, and general grave-
yard air do nothing to enliven one's impression. The
eye, discouraged by the crudity of the scene, in-
stinctively dwells upon the palm whenever it is in
sight, overlooking its sameness of form for the relief
of its grace, finish, and appearance of culture.

From Thousand Palm Canon I struck south-
westerly into the open desert. My friend's little
brook rippled for half a mile out of the cafion, then
suddenly sank into the sands. San Jacinto was
again in view, but purpled by distance. His load of
snow seemed noticeably less than at my last sight
of it only four days ago.

A few miles to the west there is a tract of dunes
that looked worth visiting. A huge quantity of al-
most unmixed sand has accumulated here, and has
been worked up into remarkable forms. Wind and
the principle of cohesion operating together have
resulted in an arrangement of domes, half domes,
waves, crevasses, all the shapes that snowdrifts take,
but with the characteristic wind-ripple in addition.
The glistening whiteness of the sand carried out the
likeness to snow, but the sharpness of the breakage
lines is what made the sight so interesting. Long
curves, beautiful in their ease of contour, led up to
keen, clean-cut rims from which steep slopes ran
down at sharp angle. From these edges there was
always blowing a wavering veil of sand, as fine as
the spume stripped by the wind from wave crests
at sea.

It was fascinating to stand in that universe of

114 CALIFORNIA DESERT TRAILS

sand. The Scriptural phrase, "like the sands of the
seashore for multitude," seemed almost weak in
view of these great billows like the storm waves of
mid-ocean. Here was not only a shore, but a sea of
sand. The scene stamped itself strongly on my mind
— the strange contours, differing from those of
other materials; the shadow masses of clear blue;
the amethyst of the nearer ridges of San Jacinto; the
deep afternoon purple of the great mountain itself;
the gleam of mingled snow and cloud along its crest ;
over all the glowing sky, too luminous and aerial to
be fairly expressed as blue.

I had been among these dunes once before, when
a youngster from a ranch on the farther side had
guided me to the edge of the tract. I was busied with
camera and notebook, not noting my companion,
when a patter of charging feet and a Comanche yell
made me jump. It was only my guide enjoying a
desert toboggan-slide. He raced to the edge of a
thirty-foot dune, threw up his heels, and took a
header down the sharp incline. Running sand at
every pore, he pronounced it bully, and recom-
mended me to try it, adding that it was one of his
and his sister's regular forms of exercise. But I was
past twelve, and found it easy to refrain.

My way lay now more to the south, where, a
dozen miles away, was the little railway town of
Indio. This lower northwestern arm of the desert,
into which Thousand Palm Caiion issues, was in-
tended to be named the Conchilla Valley, ^ from the
myriads of little shells that powder the ground,

^ Spanish concha, shell; diminutive, conchilla.

TO COACHELLA VALLEY 115

mixed with some of larger size — relics of the brack-
ish lake that for a long period filled this great de-
pression. By some error the name got upon the maps
as Coachella, and the blunder has been retained,
until it is now signed and sealed beyond hope of
correction.

A botanical feature hereabouts was the smoke-
tree, Parosela spinosa, which appeared in great num-
bers. It is the most prominent plant of the dry
desert water-courses, and in some of them grows so
thickly as to form an apology for a forest, though a
forest of strange kind and serpentine form. It was
at this time in full bloom, carrying a multitude of
small, pea-like blossoms of dark, bright blue, from
which the plant is sometimes called "indigo-bush."
I have heard it called "desert cedar " also, though it
would be hard to imagine anything less like the
sumptuous cedar than this spectral thing, blanched
and leafless. The other name, smoke-tree, describes
it well (though it is more bush than tree, seldom over
twelve feet in height), for the resemblance to a col-
umn of smoke is plain enough at a little distance.
At this season it made a beautiful sight in its dress
of gray and blue. Each plant was humming with
wild bees and other insects that were making the
most of the honey harvest, and the fallen blossoms
had gathered in every hollow like drifts of blue
snow.

A few miles brought us to the edge of cultivation.
A small farm appeared, isolated in the waste, but
looking thrifty and attractive. Glad of a chance to
exchange words with my kind, sure to be interesting

Ii6 CALIFORNIA DESERT TRAILS

now that they were so scarce, I halted at the gate
till the good man appeared. He seemed as keen as I
for a chat, inquisitive, moreover, as to my business,
and would have me dismount and come to his shady
veranda. Good man, indeed, I should name him,
heartily pressing me to put up for the night, or in
fact as long as I would ! When I accepted the smaller
offer, "That's all hunkydory then," he cried, and
seizing his hayfork led the way to the stable,
Kaweah close at his heels, for he knew the omen, and
hay already had the pensive charm of "the good old
days." The wife proved as kind as the husband, and
I shared their supper and breakfast, as well as the
hopes, trials, and prospects of their desert farming
venture.

Their water-supply was a well and pump, oper-
ated by gasoline engine. Through all the centre part
of this valley water is plentiful at no impossible
depth. The water is pure, soft, and good (that from
the deeper wells is usually warm, often as much as
100°), making the greatest of boons to the much-
enduring folk who live and work under conditions
for the most part decidedly onerous. An illustration
of these people's hardships had comic details. The
wife was going to the coast for the summer in a few
days — the rule with desert women-folk, though
not an invariable one — and must leave her husband
alone to face the heat and keep the farm alive. But
she had a plan, which she confided to me, for his
comfort. She would send down from town a quantity
of canvas or burlap, which was to be strung on wires
along the windward side of the veranda. The poor,

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TO COACHELLA VALLEY 117

panting man was to take his seat there, lightly ar-
rayed, and spray water on the screen with a hose.
The resulting evaporation would temper the breeze
to a fair degree of comfort. He might even, she
pointed out, have pipe or newspaper in the other
hand, a sybaritic touch that strongly appealed to
me. In the following weeks, when warmth was plen-
tiful and water scarce with me, I thought many a
time with envy of my friend sitting with hose and
pipe in solitary luxury, or perchance comfortably
soaking in the barrel at the corner of the house,
which he had pointed out to me with pride as form-
ing a simple but admirable bathtub.

The burlap-and-hose combination, by the by,
plays a prominent part in desert household economy.
Where ice is not to be had the housewife resorts to
the home-made refrigerator: nothing more nor less
than a skeleton box or frame provided with shelves
and covered with burlap. It is placed in a shaded
outdoor spot, and water allowed to drip on it so as
to keep it damp on all sides. The evaporation is so
rapid in this dry, hot air that the temperature within
is lowered by many degrees, and even milk or butter
may be kept good for a reasonable time. No doubt
it was this simple invention that gave the good lady
a clue. If a pound of butter could thus find relief,
why not a farmer?

Along the foothills that extend in a dull, mud-
hued wall along the east side of the valley, groups
and files of palms grow in almost continuous line.
A visit to them proved interesting. The erosive
effects of the storms that fall (usually in late sum-

Ii8 CALIFORNIA DESERT TRAILS

mer) on the mountains are seen here in sharp bar-
rancas and ravines filled with water-worn debris.
The curiously seamed face shown by these hills at
a few miles' distance becomes on near approach a
wilderness of rugged gullies that meet and cross at
sharp angles and at gradients steep enough to make
the short climb quite laborious. Huge blocks of rock,
carried by storm-hydraulics from the higher back
ranges, lie embedded in the local clay. Vegetation is
scanty except for the flourishing clusters of palms.

Standing in picturesque fashion in alcoves and on
benches, these suggest, even to a mind with no bent
for real-estate speculation, the thought — What
ideal sites for houses! From the shade of these ele-
vated groves the fortunate owner would look out
over the wide, sunny levels to where in the south the
Salton Sea matches the turquoise sky, or, more
westerly, to where the great peaks of Santa Rosa,
San Jacinto, and San Gorgonio rise in fine succession.
There is attraction, too, in the thought that under
the progenitors of these palms, which mark the shore-
line of the ancient sea, the Earliest Calif ornian may
have moored his canoe while he landed to feast on
prehistoric clam and turtle.

In one alcove a recent hurricane had overthrown
a number of the palms, strewing the ground as if
with ruined monuments. From the eagle feathers
that littered the place It seemed that the bird of soli-
tude finds these silent groves with their vast outlook
a congenial resort.

Continuing toward Indio I came to one of the
young date plantations that in the last few years

TO COACHELLA VALLEY 119

have become a prominent feature of the Coachella
Valley, and that seem to indicate that a decade or so
hence this region will be one great date-garden. The
chugging of a gasoline engine guided me to the place.
It was so good to see the generous stream of water
that was being led in furrows to the thirsty young
Deglets and Khadrawis that I asked the friendly
caretaker if I might camp near by. The request was
freely granted, and a shady thicket of mesquit
pointed out as the best spot. The thicket turned out
to be one great, house-like tree, which I shared with
a family of quail, a pair of thrashers, a rabbit or two,
a rabble of rats and mice, and an Egyptian plague of
flies. It was idyllic at dusk to listen to the dozy mur-
murings of quail, apparently confessions of penitent
cheepers answered with maternal forgiveness; while
the evening star rose above the gloaming mountains
and the breeze came cooler from the graying east.

I may remark here a noticeable fact regarding the
climate of the desert. Even on days when the ther-
mometer, hung in complete shade, would register
105° to 110°, walking was not specially fatiguing;
and this in spite of the drawback of the looseness of
the soil. It is to be explained, of course, by the dry-
ness of the air, through which the sun's rays strike
with scorching yet not oppressive effect. It is a
sharp, direct heat, like that of a fire and not in any
degree like that of steam. Perspiration is profuse,
but evaporation keeps pace with it ; and when shade
is reached, coolness at once enwraps the traveller in
an air bath as soft and grateful as evening dusk.

A strong wind blew all night from the northwest.

120 CALIFORNIA DESERT TRAILS

Rats made my mesquit thicket undesirable as a
sleeping-place, but I spread my blankets in its par-
tial shelter and passed a comfortable night, awaking
occasionally to enjoy the moderate breeze, which
came in playful puffs and sifted me lightly with
sand. Kaweah, picketed close by, stood stoically,
tail to the wind, until dawn, when he responded
promptly to my whistle and whinnied for his morn-
ing sugar.

All next day the wind blew without cessation,
filling even the higher strata of the air with sand,
until in the north and west only the snowy heads of
the twin mountains remained in view. They seemed
like floating clouds anchored aloft to mark the Pass
of the San Gorgonio for the sailors of the new aerial
world-routes. By mid-afternoon they too had faded
behind the brown sand-haze, and sunset came with
a bar of turbid crimson, sharply met by the usual
aquamarine of the summer evening sky. Young
and slender, the moon moved gracefully down the
field of lucent green, a lily princess in a Caliph's
garden.

The little town of Indio is an example of the many
California settlements whose hopes have been
blasted by the rise of an upstart neighbor. Indio is
old, for a California town and a desert one, and has
existed as a "division point" since the building of
the New Orleans to San Francisco railway. But
when, a few years ago, desert settlers began to arrive
in earnest, and the fight commenced which has al-
ready turned considerable tracts from gray to green,
a new town, christened Coachella, was started three

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TO COACHELLA VALLEY 121

miles to the south, and has measurably prospered,
partly at the expense of the older place. I stayed for
a day or two about Indio, finding barely tolerable
quarters at a wretched hotel. The sleeping accommo-
dation consisted of a cot bed, with mattress and
sheets, on an upper veranda. My request for a
blanket for emergency apparently was considered
unreasonable, for the article was not supplied (and
in fact proved not to be needed at this season of
early June).

Indio supports a weekly newspaperette, and my
arrival, as a stranger, being duly announced, I was
looked up by an old Los Angeles acquaintance, now
turned desert farmer, who urged that I make my
next stop at his farm. Here again a mesquit thicket
made an ideal camping-place. The only drawback
was the presence of a horde of the insects locally
called locusts, really cicadas. These pests kept up
all day a shrill, monotonous hiss, like the falsetto
shriek of imps, which I soon came to loathe. There
was compensation, though, in the friendship of the
kindly people and the sight and sound of happy
children. I do not forget, either, the melons and
cucumbers, tomatoes, chiles, and egg-plants, that
for a notable week displaced my daily round of
beans, rice, and dull, insipid flapjacks.

The country hereabout is the pick of the Coachella
Valley farming region. Looking south and west from
camp I saw little but greenness; only isolated spots
of gray gave token of the desert. On all sides ranks
and clumps of fast-growing cottonwoods outlined
the stations of farms; and everywhere along the

122 CALIFORNIA DESERT TRAILS

roads one came on bands of chattering Mexicans or
silent Indians at work in shady corners, sorting and
packing into crates heaps of onions, cantaloupes, or
tomatoes: or met wagons creeping to the railway
with juicy freight of watermelons. Plantations of
young dates met the eye on all sides, and here and
there were palms already bearing clusters of ripen-
ing fruit so suggestive of the ancient Assyrian fash-
ion of hair-dressing that I think the idea must have
been copied from this source.

One hears wondrous tales of the profits that are
being made by the owners of these first fruiting
palms. The pioneer date experimenter, Mr. Fred
Johnson, showed me four trees from which he had
realized in the previous year between four hundred
and five hundred dollars. (It must be remembered
that in these early days of American-grown dates
they bring the price of a novelty, as much as a dollar
a pound for the best fruit, which is a temporary
condition, of course.) Tempted by these phenomenal
figures, desert farmers are raising seedling date-
plants by hundreds of thousands, while those who
can afford it are planting "offshoots" ; that is, young
palms imported from the famous regions of Tunis,
Algeria, Arabia, and Persia. The industry is well
past its experimental stage, and my forecast of the
future of this valley is that twenty years from now it
will be a waving forest of palms, with millionaires
competing for acreage in the renowned date-garden
of the United States.

From this locality come also the earliest of figs,
apricots, melons, and grapes. The growth of these

TO COACHELLA VALLEY 123

crops In this once despised soil is truly miraculous.
I saw figs of ten or twelve years, monarchical in
trunk and houselike in spread of branch; while vines
at one year from planting were bearing promising
clusters.

At the Government Agricultural Station I found
some novelties which are still in the experiment
stage; for Instance, jujubes, pistachios, even cocoa-
nuts. Both official and private enterprise are en-
gaged on these problems, and from all sorts of out-
of-the-way places strangers are constantly arriving
who will be encouraged to become "good Amer-
ican citizens." Not only plant strangers either, for
other questions arise, such as that of the Blastophaga
wasp, an insignificant-looking insect who possessed
the secret of why that best of figs, the Smyrna, re-
fused to mature its fruit in this country, and who
for many a year played hide-and-seek all over the
Levant with our agricultural experts. It Is the ro-
mance of agriculture that one sees here, In process
of becoming the commonplace of the future.

The devices to which the white population resort
for comfort in the hot months are various and amus-
ing. Beds lurk In unexpected places. Wherever shade,
or coolness, or protection from wind Is to be had,
there a cot, with mattress and sheets (seldom more),
may be looked for. In a garden at Indio I noted
what looked like a rather roomy rabbit-hutch but
proved to be the six-foot-six sleeping-room of the
owner of the place. At a near-by farm there was a
more elaborate arrangement, a large, well-furnished
room, electric-lighted and fitted with telephone, the

124 CALIFORNIA DESERT TRAILS

roof and walls being all of wire screening, and the
bed shaded from early morning sun by a broad-leafed
castor-bean plant. Everybody, of course, sleeps out
of doors, to escape the heat which during the day-
time fills the timbers and furniture of the house to
saturation point, to be slowly given off into the
cooler air during the night.

Dress is cut to narrow limits, especially by those
who work outdoors and who are fortunate in having
the kind of skin that the sun tans instead of flaying.
I recall two young Swedes whom I met at a ranch
near Indio, who made quite an artistic effect in
brown and blue. Curly-headed, hatless, and encum-
bered only with "shorts" of blue denim, their skins
were of a fine, pie-crust brown that almost made my
mouth water, and their bright blue eyes were
matched to a shade by the hue of the brief cerulean
garments.

My heavy sombrero was often the subject of re-
mark, the comment being that I must suffer from
its weight. True, I did so; but in spite of that I feel
sure that this thick, close felt, which thoroughly shuts
out the sun, is far better than the thin straw helmet
which is in general favor, and through which the
sun rays pass only half disarmed. To my half-pound
"cowboy" I owe it that, though constitutionally a
sun-hater and a lover of cloud and fog, I stand the
desert summer with much less discomfort than I
might reasonably expect. I offer my experience for
what it may be worth.

The dusty street of Coachella yielded one or two
characteristic items, such as a humorous placard

TO COACHELLA VALLEY 125

which offered "Hot Baths at the Ice Factory"; the
spectacle of a bed hung in the air above the com-
munity water-tank at three storeys elevation; and
a fleeting vision of the local banker, in rolled-up
shirt-sleeves, returning from lunch bearing a wedge
of watermelon with him into the financial shades.

CHAPTER IX

A DESERT RIDE: COACHELLA VALLEY TO PINON

WELL

The "Coral Reef" — Sand-wraiths — Belts of desert vegetation —
Vanished races — En route for Virginia Dale — Mexican camps

— Sunrise — The Mud-hills — Erosion again — Taciturnity of
Western men — Heat and drought — The sidewinder — Scene of
a tragedy — Hot drinks — Wholesale suicide of bees — A kindly
"freighter" — Arsenic water — Joshua trees, junipers, and piiions

— A "salted" mine — Hard pulling — View of the Mojave —
The desert's challenge — Piiion Wells.

A FEW miles to the south of Indio there is a
rocky outpost of the mountain wall known (of
course incorrectly) as the "Coral Reef." A ride over
to view it at close range proved well worth while.
At intervals I came upon farms with fields of alfalfa,
acres of grapes or melons, and rows of thrifty young
dates. Between farm and farm lay stretches of un-
touched desert more dreary than ever by contrast
with the cultivated areas. In the distance pillars of
dust, the genii of the whirlwind, moved in ghostly
dance across the view, like dervishes ceaselessly
whirling.

The haze of summer had by now settled on the
desert, and to-day it almost obscured the mountains.
San Jacinto's top was marked by scratches of white
where the last of the snow lay in shaded clefts and
caiions, while San Gorgonio's slightly higher crest
showed in broader streaks and splashes : both seem-
ing to hang without support in the pale cerulean
sky. The ^^ hot, fitful breeze, the dreamy mountains,

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TO PINON WELL 127

and those gliding, melancholy dust-wraiths threw
us both into a drowse, broken unpleasantly when
Kaweah stepped on a ground-rat's or squirrel's bur-
row, with resulting jerk and snort, or when, passing
a mesquit, clouds of locusts came charging at us
with goblin eyes and banshee screech, squirting
their vile artillery.

Shells covered the ground, mostly tiny spirals
smaller than rice grains, with a few three-inch, clam-
shaped ones that gave an iridescent coloring to the
surface. Pottery fragments were plentiful, plying
the fancy with visions of strange aboriginal things.
An occasional litter of cans or bottles raised the
reflection that future ages, judging us by our debris,
will conclude that we were an ugly, uncouth lot,
much inferior to the race we displaced.

On a near approach the mountains on this south-
ern border of the valley showed a more than usually
forbidding aspect. Rising abruptly from the sand-
level, their forms are almost grotesque, with sugges-
tions of plesiosaurus and pterodactyl in their vast,
ridgy backbones. Yet it is these brick-like shapes
that at a distance and with sunrise or sunset color-
ing take on a look that can only be called heavenly.
Perhaps it is one point of the analogy between Na-
ture and the mind of man that in retrospect, life,
even if it has been unlovely, like these crude rock
masses, may gain a quality of beauty from that which
enfolds all, the universal Goodness that is God.

The "reef" itself is an isolated hill, close to the
main rise of the mountain,noticeable for the strongly
marked beach-line, which is seen in a broad band of

128 CALIFORNIA DESERT TRAILS

dark brown that reaches ten or twelve feet above
the level of the soil. Above this line the rock is
lighter, the ordinary granite weathered to red and
ochre. The so-called coral is what geologists call
travertine, really calcium carbonate, which in a
sort of sponge-like formation encrusts the rock that
was once submerged. Little shells are embedded in
the substance, or remain as they lodged in the inter-
stices when washed there by some wave of the van-
ished sea.

The hill is cliff-like in steepness and almost bare
of vegetation. A biznaga or two lean out as if curious
to see the rare visitor, and a few thin creosotes wave
drearily in the wind. At the rear of the reef the
ground rises to a bench of gravelly soil in which one
notes at once a different set of plants — the smoke-
tree, palo verde, several sorts of cactus, bright-
green creosote, and the odd sandpaper plant. There
is always this well-marked difference between the
vegetable life of tracts above and below sea-level,
the difference being based, of course, upon the dis-
tinct characters of the soils. Above the old sea-line
is sand, gravel, and rock, with a varied range of
desert growths; below is a fine silt whitened with
shells and with little vegetation beyond dull clumps
of atriplex and suaeda. This lower belt is much the
drearier region: yet it is this selfsame silt which,
where not rendered sterile by alkalinity, shows
such amazing fertility under cultivation. It is Lower
Egypt over again, with the Colorado taking the
place of the Nile.

A little distance to the west I noticed a small

TO PINON WELL 129

cove, with beach of pure white sand. It was strange
to think what manner of children once played about
it, and how many centuries had silently passed since
their voices ceased with that of the Sea. Now the
hour is close at hand when children will again make
its crannies ring. Will they also ' ' have their day and
cease to be"? And after lapse of other centuries,
will some other fashion of mankind again come,
again to vanish into silence? Above all, shall we
know and watch the recurring drama? — In the
desert one is prone to such aimless dreams. The soli-
tude, the vast unbroken levels, the wandering, idle
wind, perpetually turn one's thoughts inward, yet
seem to lead them out in vaguest reverie. If the
reader finds too much of such matter in these pages,
I can only say that the fault is inherent in the sub-
ject, as humanity has ever found. It was always to
the desert, if possible, that the hermit fled when he
meant to waste his time.

The long ridge of mountains that bound this arm
of the desert on the north and east, and the question
of what might lie beyond them, had been on my
mind for a long time. That locality could best be
reached from the Indio region, so this was my oppor-
tunity. All I knew of it was that a road, of a sort,
ran that way into the old mining districts of Twenty-
nine Palms and Virginia Dale, and that water was
scarce and forage scarcer. By luck I heard of a
freighter who made periodical trips over part of the
distance, hauling supplies from Coachella to a mine
in these mountains. I hunted him up, and arranged
to accompany him as far as our road was the same,

130 CALIFORNIA DESERT TRAILS

buying fodder for Kaweah from the supply he car-
ried with him for his own horses.

At four o'clock of the morning of the last day of
June I left my mesquit bivouac. A camp of Mexican
onion-pickers was already astir as I passed, fire was
twinkling under coffee-pot, and men, women, boys,
girls, and dogs, to the total of a score, were loafing
and yawning with that air of entire leisure which
is a mark of their race, and which I, for one, find
rather enviable. I like to come on these camps,
especially at evening. There is in them a touch of
the patriarchal — padre in blue "jumper" beneath
some rustling cottonwood, rolling and smoking eter-
nal cigarettes: Juanitos and Conchitas in troops
clambering over him like caterpillars or tumbling in
congenial dust: madre an attractive figure in reboso
or with splendid unbound tresses, preparing frijoles
or chile con came, or, more likely, Yankee canned
beef: and Alberto picking out the latest ditty on his
mandolin, wherewith to capture the heart of Encar-
nacion, at the neighboring camp, after supper.
Rarely does one hear any word of contention, for
family affection runs strong in the blood of our
lightly esteemed neighbors from over the line.

At the cross-road I halted to wait for my teamster
and enjoy a sunrise. The morning was half cloudy,
and the sun threw shifting lights on the mountains
to south and west, bringing to view canons and
abysses that I had never known were there. These
bare walls have a trick of concealing important
features in a way that is impossible with wooded or
brush-covered mountains. Some momentary rela-

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TO PINON WELL 131

tlon of sun and cloud may any day give you a topo-
graphical surprise, even after years of acquaintance,
as if, some breakfast-time, you should learn from
your paper that the agreeable elderly gentleman next
door was an experienced cracksman long wanted by
Inspector Bucket.

My friend's caravan, signalled by distant clouds
of dust, at length came creeping along — a huge
wagon with seven-inch tires, loaded with a ton or
two of mixed merchandise, ranging from soda-pop
to Bob Milligan's new suit and a case or two of
dynamite. In the jockey-box was the week's mail
for the score or so of men at the mine, and, what
was of most concern to Kaweah, on the tail-board
were piled sacks of barley and bales of hay.

Crossing the railway we turned northward toward
an opening in the so-called "mud hills" which make
a feature equally fascinating and repellent in this
part of the desert geography. In dreariness they sur-
pass even the great sand-dunes which now lay far to
the westward. Their ashy gray is the most hopeless
of hues, and their few scraps of brush are almost
ghastly. The fascination lies in the strangeness of
the shapes into which the material has been wrought.
The cutting and carving, scoring and scraping, twist-
ing and twirling, gouging and grinding that has gone
on here for ages has given an almost unreal look to
the region. A romancer of the type of Jules Verne,
wishing to depict conditions on the moon, or on this
planet when its turn comes, can here find material
to his purpose, "local color" bleached to the appro-
priate monochrome.

132 CALIFORNIA DESERT TRAILS

There was not much opportunity for conversation.
To ride alongside the wagon was to be enfolded in
the dust from sixteen scuffling hoofs, for at our slow
gait it was much as if we stood still while the horses
milled up dust for our benefit. Moreover, these
teamsters of the desert roads are of a silent breed,
and Emmons was true to type. Yet I knew he was
glad of my company, and I have often proved that
a heart kindly to man and beast may beat beneath a
taciturn waistcoat. Occasionally he would call to a
shirking horse — always a single word and with an
odd way of dropping the leading consonant: thus
"Ete," "111," "Aise," and "Ooze" stood for Pete,
Bill, Daisy, and Suse — and the slack trace-chain
never failed to straighten when these monosyllabic
shots went off.

The creeping pace and the unknown, spacious
desolation into which we were imperceptibly moving
gave me the feeling of starting on some lifelong enter-
prise. A faint breeze came now and then from the
west, but it was dry and parching, and brought no
refreshment. The sky was overcast with a haze
which diffused the sunlight to a blinding whiteness
that was more trying than the direct rays, and that
seemed to intensify the heat by giving it power to
attack equally on all sides at once. There was some-
thing of the same deadly quality in the air that I felt
at Two-Bunch Palms, though not to the same degree.
We resorted often to our canteens, while the horses
were treated to frequent rests, though short ones.
On this kind of day one realizes easily enough how
imperative is the need for water to the desert travel-

TO PINON WELL 133

ler. One feels that, without drinking constantly, one
would shrivel, and perceives with horror the fearful
nature of such an end as death from thirst.

The track — it could on no terms be called a road
— after passing through an opening in the mud hills
at a point where curious caverns, pinnacles, and
arches occur, turned westerly into a long valley that
divides these foothills from the main mountain wall.
Silt was exchanged for sand and gravel, and the
vegetation changed automatically with it. Creosote,
burro-weed, and lippia made a scanty show, with
tufts of the interesting white "holly," which at this
season takes on pale tints of seashell pink and laven-
der, almost iridescent. The going became slower
than ever. I relieved Kaweah by walking, but there
was no amelioration for the straining team that now
could hardly keep way on their huge load, though
they were splendid animals and in the pink of condi-
tion. Looking at my watch I was astonished to find
it was only seven o'clock. I should have said we had
been five hours on the road.

Little as there was of vegetation, there was still
less of animal life. Birds there were almost none,
for the distance to water ruled them out. Jack-rabbit
tracks came now and then, for Jack is almost a total
abstainer. Lizards there were, for they are every-
where; and I noted plentiful tracks of the dreaded
sidewinder, Crotalus cerastes. This is a small, asp-
like species of the ordinary rattlesnake, found most
often in the sandy or silty desert, whereas the larger
rattler likes rocky country and the neighborhood of
water. Two little protuberances over the eyes, like

134 CALIFORNIA DESERT TRAILS

sprouting horns, give the sidewinder an extra devil-
ish air, and his small size makes him the more dan-
gerous, because less easily seen and heard. His track,
however, is unmistakable, owing to his peculiar
mode of travel, which seems to be by looping him-
self along in spiral reaches, so that his trail is not
a continuous line, but a series of short, diagonal
strokes, about nine inches apart. For some reason
he enjoys wheelruts, and always takes advantage
of them : but as he moves mainly by night he is not
often seen by the traveller on the road.

It is a strange fact, of which I have been assured
by more than one person who has put it to the proof,
that a sidewinder kept exposed to direct summer
sun will not live longer than a few minutes.^ The
explanation must be that the thin skin gives no pro-
tection to the cold reptilian blood. Certain it is that
the sidewinder is rarely seen in the open by day, but
is almost always found coiled in the shade, usually
about the roots of brush. It would be a praiseworthy
act of Sol, one for which I could forgive him much,
if he would one day turn on for a short time such a

^ I have recently had an opportunity to test this on a sidewinder
that I brought in to camp for photographic purposes. It was a full-
grown specimen, and was not in the least injured in process of cap-
turing. I turned it into an enclosure of boxes, in the open sunshine.
It was as vicious and full of life as ever at first, but after three or four
minutes became languid, then ceased to move. Soon the head drew
back and the mouth opened, as in the attitude of striking. In ten
minutes it was dead. The month was September and the temperature
at the time io6° in the shade. With a midsummer temperature, ten
or fifteen degrees higher, no doubt, the time would have been much
shorter, perhaps two or three minutes only, as reported to me by
another experimenter. It is certainly remarkable that a desert crea-
ture should be so constituted.

THK SIDEWINDER, THE LITTLE HORNED RATTLESNAKE
THAT GOES SIDEWAYS

CHOLLA CACTUS, THE VILEST OF THE VILE

TO PINON WELL '135

torrid blast as would cook the whole sidewinder
tribe where they lie snoozing in fancied security.

Hour after hour went by in a sort of trance of
heat while we still toiled up that furnace-like valley.
The wagon ground its ponderous way through sand
or slid screeching over boulders. At half-past nine
we reached the point where my teamster was to
water his horses. Here he kept several large iron
drums of water, which he refilled when necessary
at the mine. He unscrewed the plugs with a span-
ner, and then bucket after bucket was given the
eager animals, Kaweah participating. Next we fed
them, and then, while we ate our own lunch, Em-
mons casually mentioned that this was Dead Man's
Point. Why so called? "Oh, a Mexican was found
dead over there, year before last. At least, part of
him was found; not much, on account of coyotes.
He 'd come out afoot from the mines, — the Lost
Horse, think it was, — got thirsty and wandered
around some, and then give out. Name was Lopez
— no, though, that was another feller; well, any
way, some fellers found him up that gully a little
ways: saw his tracks going round and round crazy-
like, and trailed him. Reckon there ought to be
some bits of his clothes up there yet if you 've a
mind to look. Yes, it's dry-like around here."

As we screwed up the drums I had a vision of a
raving wretch — myself? — tearing at the immov-
able plug with bleeding fingers, striking at it with
swollen, lacerated feet, hearing the water gurgle
within: — in vain, in vain! Heavens! I felt faint
at the thought, and was glad to mount and leave

136 CALIFORNIA DESERT TRAILS

Dead Man's Point to the coyotes and the murder-
ous sun.

Here we turned up a narrower caiion leading di-
rectly into the mountains. The grade became steeper
and the vegetation more varied. Canon after caiion
debouched into ours, dozens of them, all dry, bak-
ing, shivering with heat. There is no need to describe
the country in detail ; it was all alike. We ground our
way on and up, the sun, now clear, reflected upon
us from the rocky walls. My canteen, replenished
after lunch, soon grew too hot to be put to the lips
with comfort, while the water itself was at a tem-
perature of over 100°, I am sure, and every drink
threw me into immediate perspiration.

At three o'clock we came to the next watering-
place and halted for the day. We had made just
twenty miles in ten hours of travel. A well is main-
tained here, after a fashion, by the county authori-
ties. There was the usual camp litter, also a rough
bed and a stove, Emmons's property, for this was
one of his regular stopping-places. A little way back
he had inquired whether I liked bees or minded being
stung: also asking Kaweah's sentiments on the same
point. On approaching the well I caught the bearing
of his question. The place was literally alive with
bees. The air was like a swarm in flight, and the well
itself resounded with the buzzing of thousands down
there in the dark. However, water must be got for
the horses, though we had enough for ourselves in
the canteens, which was fortunate, for bucket after
bucket came up covered with dead bees, and the
liquid had a fetid smell from the myriads of decay-

TO PINON WELL 137

ing insects. So we hauled and skimmed and ladled
till the animals had got their fill. The canon there-
abouts must be well sprinkled with bee-caves, and
some one who enjoys the sort of thing might find
exciting bee-hunting, with honey by the barrel.

Then Emmons stripped to the waist and went to
work with curry-comb and brush at his horses while
they fed. No doubt they earned the care he lavished
on them, but it is not every faithful animal's master
that will take his turn and sweat for them as they
have sweated for him. When supper-time came he
would not hear of my drawing on my saddle-bag
stores. "Say, I'll have to call you down," he said
genially. "If you'd carried your blankets forty
years, like I have, you'd know better 'n that. How
many eggs do you eat, that 's what I want to know?
Will four do you? That 's my figure." And when next
day it came to settling our accounts, he was scornful
at the idea of my paying for what I had eaten of his
supplies. "It's all right about the hay and grain,
they cost money," he argued; "but eggs and such
truck — oh, shucks!" And shucks it had to be, at
risk of giving offence. Profane my friendly freighter
was, alas ! at strenuous moments, but it was not pro-
fanity of the usual gross type, and seemed almost
automatic. Experience makes me wonder, indeed, if
there has ever been a really successful Western
teamster who was free from this vice.

Waking about midnight, I noticed Emmons get
up, light a lantern, and again water his animals,
taking them one by one the hundred yards to the
well and back; after which he threw them down

138 CALIFORNIA DESERT TRAILS

more hay. Seeing this, I could do no less for Kaweah,
though I claim no credit for it. (I found it easy to ex-
cuse Emmons for an occasional outbreak of "cuss
words" next day, when I remembered how he not
only "regarded the life of his beast," as the righteous
man will do, but looked to its comfort as well, and
at no small sacrifice of his own.) Being up, and the
night warm and still, it seemed a good time for a
smoke, so we took a pipe apiece, then a pull at the can-
teen, and so to sleep again till four o'clock and dawn.

By half-past five we were again moving up the
caiion. It became constantly narrower, steeper, and
rougher, the wagon bumping and lurching along in
a dogged kind of way, serenely confident in the sound-
ness of hickory and wrought iron. Our surroundings
became more interesting now that we were well into
the mountains. There was no outlook, for we were
shut in on both sides by walls that rose steeply for
hundreds of feet, and the caiion was ever twisting;
but bushes of fair size began to appear, and bird life
too came in. It is the open wastes, where nothing is
and nothing is to be expected, that wear one's spirits
down.

One hears a good deal on the desert about arsenic
water. Prospectors especially are full of tales of
arsenic springs, where death snatches the traveller
unaware. I believe competent authorities deny that
arsenic in dangerous quantity exists in any of the
desert water, and account for the fact that men have
died from drinking the water of certain springs by
the theory that the men in question, arriving at the
suspected spring sufifering from thirst and perhaps

TO PiNON WELL 139

weak from hunger as well, drank too freely and suc-
cumbed to the excess, which, likely enough, was
rendered more dangerous by the unwholesome sub-
stances often found in the water of these desert
springs. (It is a common experience to find one's
expected water-supply contaminated with dead coy-
otes, foxes, birds, or snakes, and water-holes that
are seldom visited, and therefore seldom cleaned
out, may become poisonous even from decaying
vegetable matter.) I have not the means of giving
a personal opinion, but one knows the hold that
poison legends, like those of lost mines and buried
treasure, take on popular imagination: and prospec-
tors as a class are notoriously open to any touch of
mystery or superstition.

I found my companion infected on this subject.
On leaving our last camp I had filled my canteens,
using water that had been boiled to prevent ill effects
from dead bees. Emmons had no particular objec-
tion to decaying bees, but warned me gravely that
there was arsenic in the water. He had found it poi-
sonous himself, he said; but when I asked how he
knew that it was arsenic that had upset him, he
replied that every one knew there were arsenic
springs on the desert, and he figured that this must
be one of them. However, I reckoned that if a horse
could take several gallons at a draught without any
bad effect, I ought to be good for a mouthful now
and then: so I drank, at first carefully, then freely,
and noticed only that the supposed arsenic left lips
and throat gummy, so that there was an inclination
to drink almost constantly.

140 CALIFORNIA DESERT TRAILS

The canon became a gorge, with yet higher walls,
the strata split and upreared at all manner of pain-
ful angles. Wild -looking shrubs leaned out overhead
and stared down at us with startled air. Strangest
of these were the so-called Joshua trees, Yucca
brevifolia, that now began to appear. Nothing in the
vegetable world is more unprepossessing than this
scarecrow, all knees and elbows, with handfuls and
mouthfuls of daggers for leaves. The name is said to
have been given the plant by the early Mormon emi-
grants to California, in reference to its heralding
their approach to the promised land. There seems
to be no great compliment involved in having this
spiteful-looking object for a namesake.

Next to appear was the ever-interesting juniper.
I like our California hero, Fray Junipero Serra, all
the better for his choice of a monastic name, though
it came second-hand (from that one of Saint
Francis's band of whom the Saint cried admiringly,
"O that I had a forest of such junipers!"). There is
some very wholesome quality about this plant, even
in its stunted desert form; and Pliny may be more
reliable than in some other items of natural history
when he declares that serpents shun this tree and
men may therefore safely sleep in its shade. ^ For
fuel qualities, anyhow, it has no equal, and I always
hail the chance of a juniper camp-fire.

The pifion also soon came in, another of my favor-
ites, gnarly but cheerful, a sort of Puck of the pines.
Then appeared small oaks and willows, links with

^ " Juniperus arbor est crescens in desertis, cujus umbram serpentes
fugiunt, et ideo in umbra ejus homines secure dormiunt."

<

2;

o

C/J

W

w
o

-:Tiiiiiit. ' ' 'I > "'^

TO PINON WELL 141

scenes and lands far different from this. All these old
friends looked wonderfully kindly, and when I halted
and listened to the breeze humming in the pifions
it cost me a pang to think that I was in for months,
possibly years, of life in a treeless land, and I won-
dered how I, whose ancestor must have been a dryad,
should ever tolerate it.

At a point where a side caiion ran off to the west I
noticed a weather-beaten sign-board showing that
the Dewey Mine lay up there. This "mine," it
seems, was a notorious case of "salting" (that is,
baiting a worthless "prospect" with pieces of rich
ore), a fraud that nearly came off, but not quite.
Even costly machinery was installed in the effort to
carry the bluff through. Emmons could not recall
the fate of the promoters of the swindle, but we
agreed in hoping that the "darned skunks" were at
that moment unpleasantly engaged with a pile of
oakum.

We were now close to the summit of the ridge, but
the steepest rise remained to be climbed. Emmons
rested his team while he looked carefully over the
running-gear of the wagon: then attached brake-
logs to the rear wheels. When all was ready he
climbed to his perch, gathered the lines, cast a
shrewd eye over the "road" that rose at a sharp
angle ahead, and remarked in a casual tone, "Now,
gals," at the same moment throwing off the brake.
The well-drilled team responded. The trace-chains
grated, the wheels screeched against the boulders,
and the huge wagon crawled up the grade for twenty
yards. The brake came on with a thump, the horses

142 CALIFORNIA DESERT TRAILS

stopped in their tracks, and the wagon settled back
against the blocks. Two minutes' rest, and another
twenty yards: and so on for eight or ten spells. We
reached the top, and crossed the pass at 4600 feet.

A fine outlook opened from the crest. Far to the
west lay my brace of giants, San Jacinto and San
Gorgonio, a sort of Gog and Magog. Behind and to
the east was a jumble of brown ranges, with pale
slips of desert showing here and there between them.
To the north I looked out over the Mojave Desert,
the twin sister of the Colorado, from this point a
wilderness of mountains, arid, aerial, almost phan-
tasmal. Beautiful, too, they were in their elemental
solitude, their delicacy of tone, and most so in their
air of mystery, their magnetic drawing on the imag-
ination. "Come," they seemed to say, "we are wait-
ing for you: have waited since eternity began. You
long to know us: you cannot guess what wealth we
hide. Come and take it if you dare: we dare you."
Yes; and if you yield, and go, you may indeed learn
their secret, perhaps a secret of gold such as never
yet dazzled man's eye and betrayed his soul: but
remember, you may never return to this other world,
the world of men, trees, brooks, all the companion-
able sights and sounds of homes and towns of com-
mon people.

A mile of down grade brought us to Pifion Well.
Here is an abandoned, worked-out mine, with old
buildings and a scattering of other effects — tools,
pipe-lines, and so forth. The old well with rusty
pump is still in order, and now again we tasted good
water; and how good good water is, perhaps is only

TO PINON WELL 143

known to men who travel the desert. We made a
hasty meal, for Emmons had still a few miles to
cover. My road left his not far from this point, so I
decided to stay here for a day, enjoying the moun-
tain air, pure cool water, and picturesque surround-
ings; resting Kaweah also, who was accommodated
with a few feeds of hay from Emmons's store. Lunch
over we bade one another good-bye and good luck,
and I watched the wagon crawl away down the caiion
toward the lonely camp somewhere in that gray
wilderness, where a score of men (with never a
woman) were dragging the deadly gold out of the
grasp of the Sphinx.

CHAPTER X

A DESERT RIDE: PINON WELL TO MECCA

Rats and quail — Natural water tanks — A problem of the trail —
Need of guide-posts — A mineral solitude — Anxious miners —
Camp at Twenty-nine Palms — Sunrise — Fourth of July — Black
and white landscape — A desert grave — Bygone inhabitants —
Rock mosaic — The road runner — Desert mines — Virginia Dale
the First — And the present — "Blind pigs" — Mining-camp hos-
pitality— Dales and dales — The Sheepholes — Old "prospects"

— Hard going and slow — Desert ranges — Changes of vegetation

— Another thirst-tragedy — Cottonwood Springs — A lucky strike
of fodder — Early morning on the trail — The palo fierro and
ocotillo — Right-line contours — Chipmunks — A hot march —
View of the Salton Sea — Mecca and luxury.

I WOULD willingly have stayed for days at Pifion
Well but for that annoying trait of the human
mind that renders ease uneasy so long as there is an
unpleasant task ahead; and there are enough un-
pleasant possibilities inherent in an unknown stretch
of desert to debar the traveller from freedom of
mind. The rats that haunted the old house played
havoc, too, with my scanty food supplies. They in-
fested everything, even the coffee-pot, of dimensions
that might be named Homeric, that hung on the
wall, and in which I had thought my bacon would
be secure.

Accordingly, after a day's rest we left at half-past
five in the morning and took the road down the canon
for a mile, to where a wide valley began. My route
soon left the main track, striking directly north into
a strange looking country, a sloping plain broken by
abrupt hills that looked as if they had burst up from

PiNON WELL TO MECCA 145

below In some recent explosion. My friendly trees
ceased at once at the foot of the canon, leaving only
the Joshuas, which always seem to have been ar-
rested in the midst of some uncouth antics, brandish-
ing daggers like a juggler. Deer tracks were plenti-
ful, and within half a mile I met the three varieties
of quail, mountain, valley, and desert, or Gambel,
a thing I have never noted elsewhere. Far to the
east rose a ragged range, even odder in skyline than
the rest.

Another road went ofif now to the left, leading to
the Lost Horse Mine, and my own route became a
doubtful sort of track, with little sign of travel. In
a pile of rock that I skirted I had been told I should
find one of those natural tanks of water {tinaja is the
common Spanish word) on which the desert travel-
ler often has to place precarious trust — precarious
because they are mere rain catchments. This one is
known as Squaw Tanks. 1 easily found the place,
being led to it by my nose. A small quantity of slimy
liquid remained, nauseous with putrefying bodies of
birds, rats, and lizards. A man perishing of thirst
might have brought himself to drink it, but would
probably not have survived the draught. It was no
disappointment to me, for my canteens were newly
filled, but the incident had a moral for me, neverthe-
less.

At the crest of a long rise I looked out over an-
other great plain studded with brick-red rock piles
and carrying a thin growth of Joshua trees that
spread to the horizon, a ghastly pretence of forest.
In the shimmer of heat they seemed to claw the air.

146 CALIFORNIA DESERT TRAILS

Here yet another track went off, turning easterly to
a mine, or erstwhile mine, called the Desert Queen,
and leaving me to a sort of phantom trail which still
ran northerly mile on mile through the spectral
forest.

Presently this trail also forked, sending off a
branch to the east, and I came to a standstill in
doubt. I had made careful inquiries at Indio and
Coachella, and of Emmons, as to forks, crossroads,
and landmarks, and had been duly warned as to the
roads I had already passed; but this new turn-off
had not been spoken of by any one. However, I knew
that my direction for Twenty-nine Palms was north-
erly, and the trail in that direction seemed a trifle
the better marked, so I resolved on that and started.

In a cactus bush I chanced to notice a scrap of
board, loosely stuck as if it had been tossed there.
Going over to investigate, there seemed to be faint
scratches on it, apparently made with a nail. I
turned it this way and that, but for some time could
not make even a guess at what was written. At last,
by patching possibilities together, the scratches took
on vague coherence, a questionable "2," a hazard-
ous "9," and a conceivable ''P." The fragment as
found pointed toward the easterly trail, but from
the casual way it hung there it might have been
twisted hither and thither by the wind, so it seemed
a matter of chance which direction it was meant to
indicate. It was one of those puzzles that may bring
one into serious trouble in this country where dis-
tances are so great, water and food so far between,
and travel so scanty that it was probably a month,

PINON WELL TO MECCA 147

possibly three times as long, since the last person
had passed or until the next one would appear.

I resolved to trust the dubious sign and take the
eastward track. There was difficulty in following it,
for it was often so faint as to be mere guesswork. It
is this sort of thing that takes the pleasure out of
desert travel. The county of Riverside, in which I
now was, has lately done useful work in the placing
of metal guide-posts at the main desert road cross-
ings, but a good deal more needs to be done, while
other counties quite ignore this need of their desert
populations. Unfortunately, the maps of the Geo-
logical Survey do not cover the greater part of this
troublesome region: and such as are to be had, cheap
"county" or "miners' " maps, are little better than
none at all.

Persistently eastward ran my elusive trail. It was
nearing a mountain range, the Pintos, and must
soon turn either north or south, so I kept on, though
in considerable doubt. At last, when close to the
hills, it ran into a better travelled track, and with
relief I found a sign-post with Twenty-nine Palms
on its northern arm and Cottonwood Springs thirty
miles to the southeast.

At this junction, as marked on my map, there are
supposed to be, near together, two more water-
holes. Stirrup Tanks and White Tanks. I searched
for signs of them (the usual signs being the trails
made by animals going to drink) but failed to dis-
cover either. I learned afterwards that one of them
is half-a-mile away in the Cottonwood Springs direc-
tion; of the other, nobody that I have met has any

148 CALIFORNIA DESERT TRAILS

knowledge at all. Fortunately, I had an ample sup-
ply of water, but Kaweah had to be satisfied with a
promise payable fifteen miles farther on. He is an
intelligent fellow, and quickly grasps the bearing of
any indecision that may arise on the matter of trails.
On such occasions he watches every movement of
mine with almost human anxiety, and plainly re-
flects my own doubtful frame of mind. He had been
as pessimistic as I ever since we left the forks, but
brightened up when we found the road, and made
the best of a dry tussock of galleta while I ate my
lunch: and when we were ready he moved off with
alacrity and surprised me by offering to canter.

We were now on a gradual descent, the southern
rim of the Mojave Desert. From time to time there
opened vistas of volcanic-looking ranges, with
glimpses of shimmering gray level or splashes of
pure white where dry lake-beds glistened with alkali.
For hundreds of miles this strange dead land extends
to north and east, known only to venturous pro-
spectors, a scientific man or two, a few surveyors, a
handful of miners; to the rest of the world as foreign
and unimaginable as if it were some territory of
Mars. Yet what wealth lies locked in that great deso-
lation, for it is, as indeed it looks, a veritable treas-
ure house of mineral. Looking out over it one easily
imagines "goblin or swart fairy of the mine" at
work on veins of wondrous ore under those gaunt
hills, ashy gray, livid purple, or dull red as if they
had been roasted.

At last, five miles down the slope of a narrow val-
ley, I saw a speck that might be a building, perhaps

PINON WELL TO MECCA 149

a ranch-house, though no trace of greenness was in
view as far as eye could see. I pushed on towards it,
indulging thoughts of eggs, "stove" bread, milk,
perchance a lettuce. But these hopes faded when
the supposed farm-house turned into the grouped
shanties of a small mine. However, I was welcomed
heartily by the three men on the place, and Kaweah
was entertained with barley and water — the latter
no trifling gift, for their supply must be replenished
at Twenty-nine Palms, four miles away. I was
eagerly questioned for news, for my items were only
five days old, while their last "news" had passed
into history two weeks before. The six men who
were concerned in developing the mine had formed
themselves into two shifts of three a side, taking
alternate spells at the works and "inside" (the term
used by desert men to signify the cities and the coast
country). The other shift was some days overdue,
ensnared by the charms of Los Angeles, and these
poor fellows were continually scanning the horizon,
like marooned sailors, for signs of the relieving party.
Evening was coming on, so I soon took the road.
Tracks led off to other small mines, reminders of the
lively days of the seventies, when this Twenty-nine
Palms district was a "camp " of renown. Before long
the palms came in sight, and we ended a long day's
march soon after sunset. I off-saddled under a Cot-
tonwood that stood near a deserted house, and found
pasturage for Kaweah in a little cienaga, or marshy
spot, formerly the site of a village of Chemehuevi
Indians from the Colorado River. I do not know
who now owns the land, and, what is of more ac-

150 CALIFORNIA DESERT TRAILS

count, the water; but when I come on these aban-
doned settlements of the Indians, at places where
they would no doubt have wished to remain, I take
them for links in an old but still lengthening chain
of wrong.

The population of Twenty-nine Palms at the time
of my visit numbered two, so that my arrival, on
the eve of the Fourth of July, seemed to cast an air
of festivity over the scene. The two, one a prospector
and old haunter of the locality, the other a consump-
tive from "inside" who was sacrificing every com-
fort of life for the sake of the dry air of this lonely
spot, received me cordially enough, but remained
convinced, I think, in spite of my plain story, that I
was *4ookin' up mineral, ain't you now?" They
felt it an insult to their intelligence to be asked to
believe that any one would come to Twenty-nine
Palms in July for the sake of seeing the country and
"them old pa'ms." "Country?" said the sick man,
waving toward a sunset landscape that would have
thrown Turner into a frenzy — " Country? Th' ain't
no country round here to 'mount to nuthin'. You
ever see any, Mac?" And Mac sententiously re-
plied, "Durned if I ain't forgot what real country
looks like, anyways."

Nevertheless, the country was satisfactory to me.
To lie at dawn and watch the growing glory in the
east, the pure, dark light stealing up from below the
horizon, the brightening to holy silver, the first
flush of amber, then of rose, then a hot stain of crim-
son, and then the flash and glitter, the intolerable
splendor, of the monarch, Phoebus Superbus, tyrant

^>--

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a,

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H

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THE NEW ^

PUBLIC Li:

ABTOR
TILDEN t

PINON WELL TO MECCA 151

of the desert — and of me : I jump up hastily and
hurry through my morning cookery, but not before
he has taken toll of my day's store of energy.

Our Fourth was celebrated with make-believe
shower-baths. At intervals we resorted to the cienaga
and ladled water over ourselves from a tepid pool,
and I may say that with a temperature of 112° I
found it more exhilarating than some displays of
gunpowder and rhetoric that I remember. Between
times we talked "lodes" and "pockets," or my
friends would grind up some bit of "float" and pan
it out at the spring, with brief excitement over
"grades" and "colors." Toward evening I walked a
mile up the slope to the west and enjoyed a memo-
rable sunset. By some peculiarity of the light, the
landscape had much the quality of a wash drawing
in black and white, seen through a thin purplish
haze. The line of palms made a charming foreground,
each one a study of airy grace; beyond rose the
Bullion Mountains, dark dull gray with splashes of
white where sand had lodged far up, as if it were
snow ; farther to east another range, the Sheepholes,
of the dead hue of volcanic ash; and over all the
luminous arch, infinitely remote, with flecks of
snowy cloud like sheep straying in the blue pastures
of the sky. Spaciousness and solitude were the ele-
ments of the scene, and reacted with trance-like
spell upon the mind.

As the sun went down a blood-red light suddenly
came over all the view. I never saw anything more
startling and instantaneous in its coming, or more
theatric in its intensity of hue. For the few seconds

152 CALIFORNIA DESERT TRAILS

that it lasted I held my breath. The mountains
burned as if they were incandescent: Bullion? no,
the lava of rubies. Then in a moment it had paled
and like an expiration was gone.

As I walked back to camp I noticed a small enclo-
sure, almost hidden among arrowweed. It marked
the grave of a young girl, most likely one who had
been brought here in hope of a cure for consumption.
There is something inhuman in choosing such a
place of burial for a girl. Nature sets a difference
even in death, and it seemed a brutal thing to leave
a girl's young body here.

Some tokens of old inhabitation at Twenty-nine
Palms may be seen in remains of shacks and dug-
outs. One of these had been the den — it is the only
word — of one Wilson, the former habitue of the
place, who held on here in more than pagan squalor
until he was lately forcibly removed by the county
authorities. The hut of old Jim Pine, the last of the
Twenty-nine Palms Indians, stands open to sky and
gaze, and shows a litter of "rock" specimens (for
Jim was something of a miner in his day). But min-
ing camps are in their nature evanescent : why build
a house, when to-morrow the rush will move on to
a newer "strike"? But Twenty-nine Palms is still
a base for prospectors in the desert ranges, on
account of its water, which is plentiful and good,
and by reason of being on one of the roads to the
still important mining settlement of Dale.

Thanks to the remains of Jim Pine's alfalfa patch,
Kaweah was in good form when we struck eastward
next morning toward Dale (or, as it was called in

PINON WELL TO MECCA 153

days when It was famous, Virginia Dale). It was a
long, tedious march, the country becoming more
barren at every mile, and the ground a tiresome
alternation of sand with wide expanses of a sort of
pavement, made of small bits of stone, reddish or
black, polished to a slippery degree and set as if in
a mosaic. It was the first time I met with this pecul-
iar condition, though I often encountered it after-
wards. I am still puzzled to account for it : one would
almost think the fragments had been fitted together
by hand and rolled down by a road engine. Little
can grow in such a region. Even the creosote grew
sparse and stunted here; it is a marvel, indeed, that
it can exist at all. A few starved encelias showed
white against the dark ground, and in the sandy
washes spectral smoke trees quivered in the flicker-
ing air. Birds were entirely absent except for the
road-runner, who is a sort of Esau, and whose pecul-
iar imprint, like a St. Andrew's cross, one meets in
the most impossible places.

Ahead ran the ashy Sheephole Range, to south the
Pintos (a word signifying spotted, though I saw no
reason for the name in the barrier of uniform reddish
rock that kept me company hour after hour). Once
I caught a glimpse of a high distant ridge that I
knew must be the Cockscombs, they fitted the name
so exactly. One or two tracks led off to nominal
mines, active only to the extent of the assessment
work which must be performed yearly in order to
keep ownership alive. This rite, as it may be called,
makes the excuse for the owners to set out annually
from city or ranch, with burro, grub, pick, shovel,

154 CALIFORNIA DESERT TRAILS

and rifle, for two weeks' work on their claims. Natu-
rally, summer is not the season chosen, water then
being scantiest and heat most trying, so I saw little
of these pilgrims of hope: but in winter and spring
there will be many such parties, ones, twos, and
threes, creeping about this vast territory wherever
man, horse, or burro may go (automobile must now
be added, for the automobilist's maxim is that man,
with an auto, can go where man has gone before.)

After six hours' travel, a dot in the distance that I
had been speculating upon for an hour past began
to take the shape that I hoped it would — an odd
shape to find in this wilderness, viz. : that of a wind-
mill of the modern iron type. It marked Lyon's
Well, which is a watering station for stock, though
the traveller may see no sign of cattle for days to-
gether. On nearer approach there appeared a few
scraps of adobe wall, all that remains of the first
settlement of Virginia Dale. Of all materials for
building used by civilized man, adobe is the one
soonest effaced. Once the roof is gone the rest goes
quickly "back to the ground from whence it
sprung." Fifty years after its palmy days I could
barely find shelter from the wind in what was left of
Virginia Dale. The historian of a mining camp must
be early on the scene if he is to find anything more
than the ground on which it stood.

The pump was out of commission, but I man-
aged with rope and bucket to supply Kaweah's
needs. A strong wind had begun to blow, adding
discomfort to tedium," as we turned southward up
a rocky slope toward a low divide. My next land-

PINON WELL TO MECCA 155

mark, the buildings of an abandoned mine, were a
welcome sight, for I confess that though I had had
some experience of Western travel I was often
anxious on these desert wanderings, where questions
of forage and water might render a mistake a serious
matter.

On reaching the divide, a row of little buildings
came in sight, two miles away against the foot of a
mountain. This, I thought, was Dale, and headed
Kaweah toward it. As we came near I was wondering
at the deserted look of the place when, turning a
point, I saw the real Dale perched on the skyline far
above me. The other place was a sort of parasite,
whose only reason for being was to help the miners
of Dale to get rid of their money — a matter which
in a mining camp should be accomplished as speed-
ily as possible and with as much detriment to one's
self as circumstances allow. No means of attaining
these ends has yet been found that can compare
with investing in chemical whiskey or "dago red " at
fancy prices, getting gorgeously drunk thereon, and
then playing monte or poker with a sharper. But
now, prohibition days have fallen on Riverside
County, and only one, or perhaps two, "blind pigs"
grow fat on what they suck from the pockets of the
miners of Dale.

One soon comes, in the West, to modify one's
qualms over acceptance of hospitality from strangers.
Emmons had urged me, at Piilon Well, to accom-
pany him to the mine he was bound for, and told
me gravely that "the boys" would n't like it if they
found that I (whom, of course, they had never heard

156 CALIFORNIA DESERT TRAILS

of) had passed so near without paying them a visit.
It would cost me nothing, he assured me: the boys
would regard me as a boon and take care of me as
long as I would stay. So, too, I found it at Dale. At
the first house on the stairway-like street I asked
where I might find lodging, supposing that there
must be something in the nature of an inn. "Well,
the Superintendent is away," I was told: "you'd
better go and see the cashier. He'll fix you up."
That friendly chap at once took charge of me as of
an expected guest: insisted on my taking his room
for my own, and quartered Kaweah in the Com-
pany's stable. Other conveniences were offered by
the resident doctor, and in effect I was made free of
the camp.

This Dale, I learned, was Dale the Third. As old
"leads" or veins of ore "peter out" and new ones
are discovered, the mining camp "follows the lead"
in a literal sense. The present camp is about a dozen
years old, and is supported by one good-sized gold
mine, named the Supply, though there are a few
smaller mines in the locality. Fifty or sixty men, half
a dozen women, a half-score of children, and one
badly spoiled baby made up the population at the
time of my stay. The mine is a highly organized
affair, with electric-lighted buildings and a water
supply pumped from wells six miles away. Day and
night the whirr and crash of engines goes on un-
ceasing. It was strange to wake at night and hear
the roar of machinery in that remote place, all the
more so after weeks of Nature's quietude.

The village consists of (beside the mine structures)

PiNON WELL TO MECCA 157

a score or so of temporary looking houses and cab-
ins, spotted about without any pretence of order.
A store, with kitchen and dining-room attached, and
a cashier's office of stone are all the buildings of any
size. The post-office shares quarters with a Club-
room containing an antique pool-table, the felt worn
to a curiosity and the pockets as hopeless as a
bachelor's. Relics of the Fourth remained in the
shape of a wire cable stretched across the street with
fag-ends of rockets and Roman candles still attached.

I do not know how the place got Its name, whether
through some Virginian who thus showed his loyalty
to the Old Dominion, or perhaps by way of compli-
ment to some charmer of a sentimental Argonaut.
However that may be, the present site, encircled by
steep, rough mountains, is really a kind of dale;
though it brought a pang to think of Martlndale,
Grisedale, Ravenstonedale, and other old Lakeland
nooks, flowery and green where this was harshly
red and gray. Yet when I climbed above the village
at sunset, and the light came warmer on crag and
gully, the shadows more tender in the hollow of the
pass — yes, that might be Glaramara, and that Con-
iston Old Man; in that winding gorge Ullswater
might lie, or, scarcely less solitary than this, lonely,
lovely Wastwater.

The view to the north was memorable as an ex-
ample of the ultra-desolate. Beyond the ragged
brown foreground lay the pale gray expanse of a
dry lake, whitened near Its centre by the alkaline
deposit from its vanished waters. Beyond that rose
the ashy wall of the Sheephole Mountains, quite

158 CALIFORNIA DESERT TRAILS

lunar In their look of geologic age and dreariness. A
thread-like line that skirted the lake bed and faded
in a gap of the hills marked the road to Amboy, forty
miles away, Dale's shortest link with the rest of the
world.

Capping their hospitalities to me, my good friends
would not allow me even to settle for Kaweah's
provender, saying that "the Company" expected
to take care of little things like that. It is unlikely
that these pages will meet the eye of the Croesus
who counts this bagatelle of a gold mine among his
numberless "properties" — his name is one at
which Wall Street holds its breath — but anyway I
hereby make acknowledgment of my obligation.

We left Dale amid the good wishes of a score of
the men, who were gathered before the eating-house
ready for the stampede at sound of the breakfast
bell. One or two of them I met again at later stages
of my journey, and was amused to learn what droll
rumors had been in circulation regarding my object
in coming to Dale. Your miner must have his little
mystery, and if needful will hatch one for himself.
I was even credited with being the agent of mighty
financial interests, perhaps — solemnizing thought
— Croesus himself in disguise.

The "blind pig" of the suburbs was already astir
as I passed, and was as portly a pig as could be ex-
pected. The few sentences that passed while I
watered Kaweah showed that he was a suspicious
pig too, which was not surprising in these times
when even deputy sheriffs sometimes are unfriendly
to pork. My road led eastward through a narrow

PINON WELL TO MECCA 159

canon where every hillside had a metallic look at
the most casual glance. Everywhere were prospect
holes, or deeper workings where the mountain had
spewed out piles of glittering gray rock. Here and
there were scraps of machinery, old windlasses and
boilers, dragged here at enormous expense, now
mere rusty monuments to the ruling passion ; though,
to be fair, one must say to man's energy, hardihood,
and determination, as well.

The stony track made rough going for Kaweah.
Fortunately I had had him shod (a new experience
for him, though he was rising nine when I bought
him) at Indio, in anticipation of the rocky country
we should meet in the mountains. I was glad when
the caiion opened southward upon a wide plain, a
dozen miles or more across, through which the road
ran straight to vanishing point. The sun was unusu-
ally severe; the scanty vegetation gave no relief to
the eye ; and all there was of variety for mile on mile
was the alternation of glaring sand with darker
pavement-like stretches that reflected the sun gleam
with added intensity. The air was in a tremor of
heat, and under my sombrero my eyes ached so
that I often closed them and left Kaweah to pilot
us alone. Sometimes I dismounted and walked in
order to relieve him, but this was a signal for him
to slacken his pace to almost a standstill ; so having
no mind to drag half a ton of horseflesh I soon
mounted again, whereat he sighed, eyed me with
soft reproach, and stood waiting till a touch of the
spur urged him to a spiritless shuffle.

Still far to the east rose the Cockscombs, ghostlike

i6o CALIFORNIA DESERT TRAILS

in the flicker and haze. On my right was the Pinto
Range, now showing a patching of light and dark
masses that gave point to the name. Ahead were the
Eagle and Cottonwood Mountains, into which the
road vanished as if there it must end. Hours passed
in stupefying heat while I alternately dozed in the
saddle or dragged the apathetic Kaweah along at
snail-like pace. The creosotes moved listlessly when
for a moment the wind came with furnace-like
breath. There was little comfort in the canteen, for
the water was unpleasantly hot, and the vacant shell
of a tortoise, or bleaching ribs of cattle, were objects
not interesting to a jaded mind. The spry white
lizards seemed the only things that kept any touch
of energy, I might almost say of life.

By early afternoon we reached the entrance to a
rocky pass that led into the mountains, and stopped
for rest and lunch. I had saved a feed of barley for
Kaweah, which he munched with indifference and
then dozed with drooping head, too fagged to crop
the scraps of galleta that I pointed out to him. Loath
as I was to move on, I could not afford more than
the regulation hour, for there were many miles
ahead of us before we should reach the next water.

The wash that issued from this cafion was filled
with a dense growth of the smoke tree, looking like a
column of men in light gray uniform winding away
in close-shut ranks across the plain. The flowering
season was nearly past, but the ground w^as colored
deep blue by the fallen petals. Plant life became
more varied as we gained the higher ground, as is
always the case in these desert caiions, bare as they

PINON WELL TO MECCA i6i

look from the plain. I saw yuccas of three species,
the lycium with its ruby-Hke berries, the simmond-
sia, which bears a nut of good flavor, the curious sal-
azaria, covered with quaint little bladders, even the
wild buckwheat common on the coast, to say noth-
ing of the eternal cat-claw and the common desert
growths. There appeared also a plant or two of the
rare Nolina parryi, their tall flowering-stalks bearing
masses of yellow seed-vessels that reminded me of
hydrangea bloom.

Soon after crossing the divide I noticed a rude
cross close beside the road. Later I learned that it
marked the grave of a man named Riley who died
here of thirst a few years ago. He had left the Dale
mines intending to walk to the railway at Mecca.
The footprints showed that he reached a point
almost within sight of Cottonwood Springs: it may
have been dark or dusk, so that he failed to see the
spot of green a mile farther on that marks the water.
He turned back towards Dale, but soon turned again,
staggered as far as this, and here died. A brother of
his is said to have lost his life in the same way soon
aftervvard on the road from Dale to Amboy. Similar
tragedies occur every year in these deserts, and it
would seem that the county authorities, or the
State, or the nation, might afford out of our millions
of taxation the small sum that would suffice to set
up guide-posts on these roads, indicating where
water is to be found, the distance to it, and if neces-
sary the marks by which the exact place is to be
known. It is now quite possible for some wretch to
perish in the tortures of thirst within so short a dis-

i62 CALIFORNIA DESERT TRAILS

tance of water that by a final effort he might have
reached it.

It was just sunset when I caught sight of a cotton-
wood in a cleft of the canon wall. In a few minutes
we were at Cottonwood Springs, among shady trees
and with excellent water in abundance. We had
made thirty miles of extra tiring travel, and I re-
solved to stop for a day and enjoy the beauty of the
spot. But when, after we had drunk our fill, I
searched for pasturage, the pleasing prospect faded.
I had been told that I should find grass in plenty
here, but except for a few scraps of half -dead "fila-
ree" there was nothing to serve for forage. For to-
night we must make the best of a bad job, and in
the morning push on to Mecca, twenty-five miles
away. With compunction I picketed Kaweah for the
night on his meagre billet, he watching me with
anxious gaze as I moved away.

I ate a cold supper, drank about five gallons of
water, smoked a pipe, and turned in, not before en-
joying a shower-bath of the desert sort, by means of
my tin drinking cup. With musical rustle of cotton-
woods I was wafted to luxurious sleep.

As I was saddling up for an early start, a Crusoe-
like figure appeared on the hill above a doorless
cabin that I had decided to be uninhabited. The old
man proved to be a caretaker in charge of the ma-
chinery which pumps water from this place to a
mine eighteen miles to the east. (Such are the diffi-
culties that must often be overcome before these
desert mines can be worked.) Crusoe seeming
friendly, and urging a longer stay, I explained my

PINON WELL TO MECCA 163

case, when he mentioned that In a locked building
near by there was a little store of hay, the property
of a Mecca man who occasionally made trips to a
claim In the Eagle Mountains. He also offered the
opinion that "a feller's hoss hadn't oughter go
hungry when there was hay layln' aroun'," Enough
said: I could pay the owner when I reached Mecca:
so I took French leave, off-saddled, and treated my
surprised Kaweah to a hearty breakfast.

Under these circumstances I returned to my
former programme and passed an easy day, revel-
ling in shade, cool sweet water, and leisurely meals
at which Crusoe bore me company. Cottonwood
Springs is one of the few desert watering-places at
which the traveller would wish to stay longer than
necessity requires. Some bygone hermit had planted
a few apple trees, which promised a tolerable crop,
and there was even a garden patch where Crusoe
cultivated radishes, beans, and tomatoes for the
benefit of the local quail and jack-rabbits. An old
arrastra (the primitive means of crushing ore In a
circular pit, by dragging heavy weights over it,
with horse or mule for motive power) spoke of old
times and timers, and the samples of rock scattered
about would have furnished several museums with
specimens. My friend's conversation bore all upon
mining affairs and was Hebrew to me ; while mine no
doubt was equally worthless to him, for the desert
had dried out every Interest but one, and turned
him Into a sort of mineral.

While I was deep in slumber that night I had a
sudden alarm of rumble and shouting, and jumped

i64 CALIFORNIA DESERT TRAILS

up just in time to escape being trampled by a pair
of horses that failed to see me until they were almost
on me, when they reared and backed on the heavy
wagon. It was the owner of that hay, come at mid-
night as if to avenge his wrongs. At the moment,
that seemed to be his mood when he heard my story:
but in the morning he felt better about it, and be-
came quite friendly when he pocketed his scanda-
lous overcharge.

Sunrise found us on the move down the canon, in
shadow of high walls from which came ever and anon
the haunting call of the caiion wren, as charming as
that other

"Sweet bird, that shun'st the noise of folly,
Most musical, most melancholy."

The air in these desert cafions at early morning,
before the sun shines in, is about the finest in the
world, cool, light, mildly energizing, pure as the
upper ether. It was enchanting to ride in ease and
shade, not now too wearied to feel the finer glory of
the sun-ray as it roused the dull tone of common
rock into living flush of color, kindled the upper cliff
to a beacon flame, trimmed each coping and pin-
nacle with tremulous fire. The caiion sides here were
high and precipitous, and weathered at the top into
fantastic confusion. Outlined with toppling crags
and turrets on an almost overhead skyline were
spectral yuccas and ocotillos, their rigid shapes fully
in keeping with the crude rock forms among which
they appeared.

In the cafion bottom a few palo verdes were still
in blossom, along with desert willow and cat-claw.

PINON WELL TO MECCA 165

I here began to meet the palo fierro or ironwood, a
tree that to me has always an interesting, friendly
look. I had hoped to find it in fiower, but it was a
month too late, and the apple-green foliage was
sprinkled thickly with brown seed-vessels. This
locality seems to be about the northwesterly limit
of the tree's growth.

To the cafion there ensued the usual expanse of
gravelly plain, somewhat relieved here by a remark-
ably fine growth of ocotillos. Their short season of
beauty was over, the leaves had fallen and left the
thorny canes skeleton-like and gray, and the fiery
blossoms were dried to the color of rust. But in size
many of them far exceeded the ordinary. Some were
over twenty feet in height, with butts as thick as
well-grown oaks. The typical contour of the desert
mountains also is specially well marked in this local-
ity. The steep slope of the rock wall meets the hori-
zontal abruptly, with no conjoining curve; but from
every carlon a long straight tongue or bajada runs
out at low angle, and even then the junction with
the line of the plain is clearly marked. That is the
desert: no suavity, grace, or curve of beauty, but
always a stark construction of right lines and angles,
repeated to the point of obsession.

A higher mass at length came in sight to the south,
and I recognized Santa Rosa; then, more westerly,
San Jacinto swung into view: both faintly drawn
in the haze, mere bands of uncertain blue hardly
darker than the sky. A few more miles, and far in
the west I caught a glimpse of what seemed a white
iceberg, showing above the long, sea-like horizon of

i66 CALIFORNIA DESERT TRAILS

a distant mesa. It was the topmost crest of San
Gorgonio, the thousand feet or so by which it over-
tops the two-mile mark.

I was now again approaching the so-called mud
hills which here form the inner barrier before reach-
ing the open levels of the Colorado Desert. Presently
the road passed into a gorge framed by high white
cliffs. In this peculiar formation the elements find
free play, and they have made the most of the oppor-
tunity. One can hardly credit those plodding work-
men, water, wind, and frost, with these spectacular
forms, which seem more in the style of Vulcan's art.
Thunderbolts might have riven these vast perpen-
dicular scars, these crumbling turrets and threaten-
ing towers, which hint more of dynamics than of
slow erosion.

A mile down the caiion we found ourselves at
Shafer's Well. It was only mid-morning, so there
was time for a good rest. I threw off the saddle and
left Kaweah to pick what he chose out of a scatter-
ing of hay that some prodigal team had wasted,
while I niched myself into a scrap of shade and
watched, between dozes, the antics of a troupe of
chipmunks. These jolly little scamps, hardly bigger
than mice, are the most entertaining of the whole
Sciurus tribe (which is a good deal to say when one
remembers the Douglas squirrel of the Sierra). Their
impudence is delicious, quite in the style of the
Artful Dodger. They are practical jokes incarnate,
and there is something positively wicked in the cock
of their tails.

The cool of evening was still some hours away

PiNON WELL TO MECCA 167

when we took the road for the last stage of this part
of our travels. The gorge became narrower, the walls
higher and in places vertical. I have changed my
mind so often with regard to the possibilities of tem-
perature, whether greater in canons or in the open,
that I hesitate to say that the heat that July after-
noon marked a new record in my experience. The
winding of the canon shut off all chance of a breeze;
the white walls and the white sand of the bottom
reflected the sun's rays mercilessly; the caiion
seemed to reverberate with heat and light. Once or
twice it grew almost insupportable and I fancied I
felt warnings of vertigo. I have no doubt that the
thermometer, if a shade reading could have been
taken, would have shown 125° or over. Kaweah,
like a true Indian, pushed doggedly on through the
yielding sand. Bronco he may be, but I have found
every ounce of him good staunch horse.

The caiion widened, and at a turn — behold ! the
Salton Sea lay across the opening, faintly blue, mys-
terious, romantic, pictorial. At the same moment a
breeze met us; not cool, oh no, but bringing at least
a touch of life into the stagnation, even a momen-
tary tang of good salty ocean. Beyond the line of
blue rose the opaline barrier of Santa Rosa, and far
to southward, Superstition Mountain, hardly more
than a shadow on the sky.

Passing into the open I looked westward up the
valley. Dark clumps of cottonwoods marked the
sites of the nearest ranches, five miles away: a trail
of smoke, like that from a steamer far out at sea,
showed where a train was running down from the

i68 CALIFORNIA DESERT TRAILS

Pass: hazy in distance, the places of the little settle-
ments of the Coachella Valley could be guessed : and
over all, though now low on the horizon, San Jacinto
and San Gorgonio kept the gateway of the Pacific.
Mecca, a nondescript hamlet and railway point near
the northern margin of the Salton Sea, was now
only a few miles away, and at evening we came to
rest and welcome at the ranch of a friend who grows
the earliest grapes of the season, at appropriate
prices, for "such as choose to buy them." Here we
enjoyed again for a few days plentiful hay, cultured
society, newspapers, music, and, what seemed the
consummation, the sight and sound of water gur-
gling day and night from artesian wells.

The round I had made since leaving the valley
had taken me about a hundred and fifty miles,
roughly in a circle. Ten miles away was Coachella,
whence I had started a week before.

CHAPTER XI

A DESERT RIDE: MECCA TO FIGTREE JOHN

Painted Canon — Complicated shapes and strange colors — The
Heroic Age of Geologies — Work of earth-sprites — Solitude —
Hot drinking-water — A date plantation — Erosion once more —
A "low-down" newspaper — Camp at Toro — A friendly capitan

— Martinez Indian village — Cahuilla Indian wells — The old
fish-traps — Alamo Bonito Indian village — A thunder-storm —
The Oasis Ranch: a swimming-pool — The Salton Sea, its origin

— Engineer vs. River — Pelicans — Figtree John — Valuable
archives — Duke of Conejo Prieto — Hair-ropes and rattlesnakes

— A sophisticated "sitter" — Camp at Figtree John Springs —
Evening colors — Night and coyotes.

A FEW miles to the north of Mecca a canon
opens Into the Cottonwood Mountains that is
remarkable for the contour and the coloring of its
walls. It is known as Painted Cafion. A view of it
well repaid the discomfort of the ride on a July
morning with the thermometer at iio° in the shade.
A broad horizontal band of red on the face of the
mud-colored foothills plainly marks the point of
entrance.^

These foothills never fail to rouse my curiosity
by the complicated shapes into which the material
has been wrought. The material is earth, not rock,
and Is mostly of a pale gray hue, approaching white.
Erosion, supplementing the work of some violent
original upthrow, has produced a most intricate med-
ley of forms. At a mile or two, the light and shade
effects are so eccentric as to seem artificial. Creasing,

1 It is not the canon that opens directly into the red formation,
but the next one to the westward, that is most notable.

170 CALIFORNIA DESERT TRAILS

pleating, braiding, dovetailing, are carried to the
point of confusion; yet on this vast scale it has a
look of orderliness that is unnatural: and under
sunset light this whole foothill range for leagues be-
comes a chequer of red and purple, a charm of color,
a mystery of design.

On entering the caiion the sides are at first not
high, and are built of whitish earth. But as one goes
on the walls increase in height and verticallty, and
in strangeness of form, while the cafion narrows to
a gorge, then a defile. Novel colors appear. Cliffs
mainly of dusky red are banded and splashed with
lavender, chocolate, bright ochre, purple, gray, ashy
dark green, and brilliant lighter red. Clefts only a
few feet in width wind away from the main caiion.
Curious shapes are met — gullies, cirques, domed
recesses, tunnels, perpendicular walls of unbroken
smoothness topped with turrets and spires in peril-
ous balance. There has been wild work here in some
Heroic Age of Geologies: enormous mud eruptions,
I suppose, succeeded by cooling conditions almost
equally violent, and these followed by ages of varied
though slower play of elements. Even Kaweah was
impressed, and stared about him like any tourist.

The passage way became yet narrower, the clififs
more vast. I do not think five hundred feet is an
overestimate of their height in some places, and the
nearness of the walls to the beholder doubles or
trebles their towering efifect. One feels as if he were
at the bottom of a well. A feature that interested
me was the formation, in places, of a sort of lace-
work, curiously fashioned of earth, which hung in

Ix\ PAINTED CANON

THE
PUBLIC LIBHaRY 5

A "TOR

MECCA TO FIGTREE JOHN 171

perpendicular valances from projecting ledges where
water had trickled over the cliff face ; the work, one
might fancy, of some race of gnomes or fairy cliff-
dwellers, who inhabited the crannies of the wall and
wove this airy grill to screen their privacy.

After some miles I dismounted and sat down in
the strip of shade at the foot of the cliff. The silence
was profound. No breeze penetrated thus far, no
rustle of wing, piping of insect, nor hint of delicate
footfall broke the trance-like stillness. The dead air
and the pressure of heat in that confined space
added to the feeling of absolute solitude. Only the
swing of an eagle across the narrow ribbon of sky
told of life, motion, the sentient in Nature. On the
sand near by lay the carcass of a raven. Then, mo-
mentarily breaking the spell, from some ledge far
overhead came a shower of pearl-like notes, the
sweet, unvarying phrase of the caiion wren, plain-
tive, beseeching, like Orpheus' s farewell to Eurydice.

At this season there was no water in the caiion,
though in winter a feeble trickle is sometimes forced
to the surface by an outcropping ledge of granite.
My canteen supplied my own needs, but Kaweah
seemed unhappy and must have longed to drink.
So I refrained from exploring farther than some four
miles of the caiion, which continued to wind on,
apparently into the heart of the mountain. On the
return I noted a few clumps of the rare Aster orcuttii
still holding their large lavender blossoms, the only
flowers and almost the only plants that the place
afforded.

Halfway down the caiion a hot wind met us. It

172 CALIFORNIA DESERT TRAILS

had a fierce, stinging quality that made the skin
smart, and seemed as if it would wither the eyeballs
through the lids. The water in the canteen became
so hot that it was only while in the act of drinking
that thirst was allayed. Kaweah hurried along with-
out need of spur, and when we reached camp drank
until I feared the water resources of the valley
would be endangered and made him stop. I poured
what remained in the canteen into my canvas wash-
basin, and on using it several minutes afterwards
found it uncomfortably hot. Its temperature by the
thermometer was io8°.

When a friend who had a date plantation near
Thermal — an over-modest name at this season — ■
a few miles up the valley, invited me to visit his
place, I was prompt to comply. Months of solitary
travel lay ahead, and I did n't miss any chance of
society while I could get it. My friend himself was
absent, but the jolly young Canadian foreman and
a delightful Mexican family who worked on the
place made my stay pleasant and profitable. The
owner is one of the pioneers of the date industry,
and an importer of the palms on a large scale from
the African and Asiatic date regions. The plantation
was a picture of thrift and perfect cultivation, and
the young Algerians, Arabians, and Persians seemed
as comfortable as though Santa Rosa Mountain,
across the valley, were Ararat, Sinai, or the Atlas.

One of the neighboring cafions gave another ex-
ample of the fantastic in natural carving. The walls
are in places wrought to almost a cathedral look of
fineness, and with their whitish color take on, at a

MECCA TO FIGTREE JOHN 173

little distance, almost the look of old ivory. Deeply
worn trails of bighorn marked the hillsides here and
there, and once the silence was broken by a far-ofif
bleat that only augmented the sense of solitude.

It was a sultry, half-cloudy day when I moved
southward across the valley to the old Indian village
of Toro. There was little token of desert in the green
fields of alfalfa, willow-shaded reservoirs, and flocks
of water-loving blackbirds that I passed ; but along
the mountain-side ran the ancient sea-line, remind-
ing me that I was in one of Neptune's cellarages,
pumped dry by the sun. There used to be a little
newspaper published monthly at Thermal, that bore
the heading, "The Coachella Valley Submarine,
published 122 feet below sea-level." A humorous
sub-heading described this inoffensive sheet as "the
most low-down newspaper on earth." I know of
others to which such a character might be attributed
seriously enough.

Arrived at Toro, I sought an interview with the
capitan. He bore the unromantic name of Joe Pete,
but was a good-looking, portly, friendly fellow, who
willingly showed me a good spot for my camp in a
grassy corner of his little farm. There were evidences
of thrift in his neat house of cement blocks and in
flourishing rows of grape-vines, cantaloupes, and so
forth; also in his wife, busy with the blackberry
patch. Two boys and half-a-dozen dogs made it their
business to interview me, and I was put through a
short but sharp examination : — "What your name?' '
"Where you come from?" "Where you go?"
"When?" "Where you get you pony?" "How

174 CALIFORNIA DESERT TRAILS

much?" "Can he buck?" and "What you do, you
prospect?" When my turn came there was not much
to be got beyond shy grins and much shuffling of
dusty feet : but I learned that one of the boys was Joe
Pete's godson, and that he lived with his godfather
in preference to staying at his proper home, close
by: which seemed to speak well for the big capitan.

There were heavy clouds and vivid lightning that
evening to the north, and I guessed they w^ere
catching it up at Dale and Twenty-nine Palms.
Once or twice in most summers an electrical storm
breaks over these mountains, but the rain seldom
reaches the open desert. It may sometimes be seen
falling but is likely to evaporate in mid-air and re-
turn unspent to the parent cloud. Joe Pete, who came
over while I was breakfasting to present me with a
melon, promised two months of what he called
"Little warm, like this" (it was then about 95°,
less than an hour after sunrise).

In the morning I went on to the next village,
Martinez, a short distance down the valley. Some-
where hereabout there were to be seen until lately
examples of the wells dug by the Indians of olden
days. I got an intelligent young Indian to pilot me
to the sites of three of them, but they were now
shapeless pits filled with mesquit and other brush.
The water supply is now the commonplace one by
pipe and bucket, no longer per squaw, marching
picturesquely with olla through thickets of arrow-
weed and mesquit to draw from the pool at the foot
of the earthen stairway, returning with plentiful
germs of typhoid fever. I have inquired for these old

MECCA TO FIGTREE JOHN 175

wells in other parts of the desert where formerly
there were large Indian settlements, but have failed
to find one remaining in tolerable condition, I am
told that these Indians, the Cahuillas, are the only
tribe known to have solved the water problem by
digging wells.

At the foot of Santa Rosa Mountain, a short dis-
tance from Martinez, there is an interesting relic of
aboriginal times that is fairly well preserved, though
it must be of very great age. A number of years ago
there appeared in a Los Angeles paper an account
of the discovery of remains of a prehistoric city in
this locality. The story had all the marks of a mare's
nest, but I fancy that this that I refer to may have
been its foundation. The object is hard to find, being
indistinguishable until one Is on the very spot, and
even then It might be overlooked. Yet it Is as un-
mistakably man's handiwork as the cliff dwellings,
when once the eye grasps It. In a little recess or bay,
perhaps three hundred yards wide, at the foot of
the mountain one sees a curious arrangement of the
stones that litter the slope. They seem at first to be
grouped in circular formation, as if they marked the
outlines of small round huts. The circles are not
complete, however, but are like horseshoes, with the
openings on the upper side. The slope is covered
with continuous lines of these horseshoes, nearly
touching one another, the rows extending almost
from side to side of the recess. The diameter of the
horseshoes is six or eight feet, and there are several
rows, one above the other, like terraces along the
foot of the slope.

176 CALIFORNIA DESERT TRAILS

When one observes that these stone horseshoes
are placed just at the level of the former sea, their
nature becomes plain. They were simply fish traps.
Whether the entire set was built when this was a
tidal shore, and the sundry rows were meant to
serve for higher or lower tides, or whether the traps
date from more recent times when this was an in-
land (and therefore tideless) sea, and the ranks were
built downward in succession as the water line gradu-
ally lowered, I must leave to heads more archaeo-
logical than mine. When I spoke of the place to one
of the Martinez Indians he knew at once what I
meant and referred to the objects unhesitatingly as
"the old fish-traps."

A short ride from Martinez took me to Alamo
Bonito,^ another Indian village, taking its name
from the trees that mark its location from miles
away. It is ruled by Jake Razon as capitan, and to
him I applied for permission to camp near the water,
and for Kaweah's rations of hay. At first he was
suspicious, for which I did n't blame him, especially
as my military saddle and other traps gave a half-
ofificial look to my coming, I had broken in on a
family watermelon party too ; but after talking me
over while they finished the melon, Jake relented,
and again all was hunkydory, as a former host had
phrased It. He came over after supper for a chat;
but his Anglo-Indian-Spanish was too abstruse for
me, and was complicated by one or two original
compound Idioms that found place In every sen-
tence, for instance, "Sometime-any time" and ** You-
* Spanish, alamo = cottonwood; bonito = beautiful.

MECCA TO FIGTREE JOHN I77

see-you-bet." I gathered, however, that some local
authority was bent upon breaking up the few re-
maining tribal customs of these harmless people,
such as the periodical fiesta and the use of their
Indian language. It seems odd that Indian officials
are so enthralled by the repressive idea, which may
be summed up as "See what those confounded
Indians are doing and make them stop it."

I slept well with Jake's scanty hay pile for mat-
tress, but was aware once or twice of thunder, light-
ning, and sprinklings of rain. Just before dawn
there came a splitting crash right overhead. I jumped
up and found a partial shelter, which only enabled
me to soak piecemeal instead of going in for a whole-
hearted sousing at once, which would have been
much more comfortable. A mare and colt that had
been my neighbors all night, gradually nibbling my
mattress away, dashed wildly about at every flash
and roar. Kaweah was not interested; he had hay
to attend to, and munched on, sloppy but happy.

The farthest outpost of civilization in this direc-
tion is the Oasis Ranch, a flourishing spot where,
owing to plentiful water, desert life is almost luxu-
rious. I had meant to camp there for one night, but
the cordial welcome I met from the caretakers and
from some friendly people who owned adjoining
land was too much for me: though the oranges,
grapes, and melons, with the charms of a reservoir
big enough for swimming-pool, also had weight. It
would be my last taste of such pleasures for a pretty
long spell, and I willingly succumbed to a three
days' stay. Pasturage moreover was plentiful, and

178 CALIFORNIA DESERT TRAILS

the fig season at its prime. At evening we all took
to the water, and for an hour the welkin rang with
shoutings, splashings, and barkings. When I re-
tired, cooled to sleeping point, repose was enlivened
by big over-ripe figs that dropped on me at inter-
vals through the night.

My route now was for a few miles near the margin
of the Salton Sea. This body of water is well worth
a paragraph, and the more so, perhaps, for the rea-
son that it will probably find no place on the maps
of the next generation of schoolboys. The central
part of the Colorado Desert has long been known
to be below sea-level, a fact, indeed, plainly stamped
on the face of the country in the water line of the
ancient beach. The means by which Neptune lost
this corner of his domain can be stated in few words.

In far distant times the point at which the Colo-
rado River debouched into the Gulf of California
was not, as it is now, at the head of the Gulf. The
sea then reached farther northward, to the limit
shown by the old shore line, so that the river's
mouth was some distance to the south of the sea's
northern boundary. In course of ages, the great
stream (then no doubt engaged in the carving of that
marvellous cafion that ranks perhaps first among
the geographical wonders of the world) built up
with its silt a dam which in time extended com-
pletely across the Gulf, leaving the upper part cut
off from the ocean. This isolated part (which was
over two thousand square miles in area, and by
geologists is named Lake Cahuilla, from the Indian
tribe that inhabited its western side) receiving

MECCA TO FIGTREE JOHN 179

practically no supplies of water, tended to disappear
by evaporation.

From time to time, however, the river must have
broken in, with the result that the lake became
brackish. Thus, the shells that are a noticeable fea-
ture of all the below-sea-level area are of kinds
native to fresh or brackish waters. The shell-remains
of the original sea epoch are now found high above
sea-level, betokening some great upheaval in remote
times. It is to the brackish period that the deposits
of travertine (calcium carbonate) are due. Proof can
be seen, in marks of old lake beaches at various
levels, that there was a succession of complete or
partial fillings and emptyings of the lake basin, the
inflow no doubt usually coming from the river, but
perhaps sometimes from the Gulf.

From Indian tradition it would seem that for a
long time prior to recent years the lake bed as a rule
has been dry. Great deposits of salt occupied the
deepest portion, and, a few years ago, were being
worked on a large scale. In 1891 there occurred a
relatively small inflow from the river, creating a
shallow lake of some two hundred square miles : but
in 1905, through the weakness of levees and head-
gates of the canal system that was carrying the
Colorado River water on to the lands of the new
Imperial Valley settlement, came a greater flood
which caused serious loss and threatened a whole-
sale disaster. For over two years the water rose,
until it seemed as if it would entirely fill its old basin.
It was not till early in 1907 that the Engineer finally
conquered the River. (I say finally, but after all that

i8o CALIFORNIA DESERT TRAILS

is a word man should never use for his little victories
over physical nature.) At that time the lake was over
four hundred square miles in area, with a depth of
more than eighty feet — an imposing body of water.

That is the so-called Salton Sea. Evaporation has
somewhat reduced it, and in about twenty years,
should there be no new inflow, it will probaoly have
disappeared, perhaps forever. To-day it is still a
great expanse, which looked at over its farthest
extent appears a veritable sea, with no horizon of
land to mark its bounds.

Near the western margin of this geologically
romantic lake my road now ran to the southward.
The water, faintly blue and ideally calm, looked, in
the summer haze, like a water-color drawing, and
the mountains beyond, the Cotton woods and
Chuckwallas, might have been an "insubstantial
pageant" instead of the uncompromising reality
that I had lately experienced. The Chocolate Range,
farther to the south, was a mere dream of air tints,
quite phantasmic. On the nearer shore a white and
grisly rank of dead mesquits stood like skeletons.
They had been killed by the flooding of the basin
and had but lately emerged as the water receded.
Here and there among the branches were many
nests of pelicans, which make this inland sea, swarm-
ing with fish of one or two coarse species, their home
and breeding ground. The effect upon the mind was
of a Dead Sea, with horror veiled under a Circean
smile. Nor did the sight of the old beach line, with
its hint of vanished ages, of countless generations
long passed away, at all lessen the impression.

: MECCA TO FIGTREE JOHN i8i

The Indian patriarch of these parts is old Juan
Razon, or, as he is better known, "Figtree John."
In former times he lived, far from whites and other
Indians, at a spot a few miles to the south. It is to
be known by a few fig trees and is marked on
Government maps as Figtree John Springs. When
the Salton Sea submerged his little estate he moved
to another spot, called Agua Dulce, on somewhat
higher ground. I already had a slight acquaintance
with him, and was pleased now to meet him as he
was leading his horse to water. When I had sur-
rendered the can of tobacco with which I had come
prepared, he invited me to share a watermelon with
him at his house. I hastened to agree to this excel-
lent idea. The mellowest sandia was brought from
his little patch and bisected with a rusty hatchet,
and we sat in shade of the ramada and chatted while
the cooling hemispheres rapidly melted away. To
my regret, Mrs. John was coy and would not join
us, nor would a huge girl who gloomily watched
the melon's effacement through peepholes in the
brush partition.

From a chummy, almost fraternal, tone, John
became impressive. An old satchel was produced,
and proved to contain archives that revealed my
friend in higher roles. First was a photograph, ten-
derly wrapped, of himself en cavalier, wearing a
police uniform the feature of which, apart from a
certain roominess of fit, was its double rows of
gleaming buttons. The severity of a stove-pipe hat
gave effect to an attitude of martial rigidity which
he had thought proper on the occasion of being

i82 CALIFORNIA DESERT TRAILS

"taken." A possible defect of topheaviness was ofT-
set by bare feet which corrected any impression of
overdress. The steed, appropriate for a desert chief-
tain, was a minute donkey, whose dramatically
pointed ears betokened a deep sense of responsibility.

Next an aged document was perilously unfolded
and spread before me. In clerkly hand and formal
phrase it set forth that Cabezon, the last great chief
of the Cahuillas, did thereby name and appoint
Juanito (= Johnny, or Little John) Razon to be
capitan of the Agua Dulce Tuba village, and to
exercise authority in the name, place, and stead of
said Chief Cabezon; and called upon his people to
render respect and obedience to said Johnny in all
said Johnny's lawful commands: etc., etc.: "given
under my hand this so-and-so," and signed with a
cross in presence of a witness. Then came some
ragged maps, apparently rough drafts of surveyors.
These, he held, made him owner of all the territory
shown, running from the last low ridge of the Santa
Rosas (the ridge was named Hiawat on the map,
evidently an Indian word, though John could not
translate it into Spanish) as far as Conejo Prieto or
Black Rabbit Peak. No wonder he eyed me closely
while these valuable papers were in my grasp.

Before I left I bought of him a mecate or rope of
plaited horse-hair, of his own making. The price to
others would have been four dollars, he said, but
on grounds of friendship I should have it for half
the sum. This statement warned me that the article
was not worth the price he asked me for it, but I
was glad to carry away this souvenir of the dusky

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MECCA TO FIGTREE JOHN 183

lord of Cone jo Prieto. There is a legend, the truth
of which I may some day put to the proof, that the
rattlesnake will not cross a rope of this sort. Many
cowboys and others are convinced that this is a
fact, and John also afhrmed it stoutly. I have some-
times, in specially snake-infested districts, laid the
rope round the place where I spread my blankets,
and can assert that I have never been bitten. This
may not be thought convincing, but I doubt if any
cowboy has better evidence to offer. ^ There is, how-
ever, a reasonable theoretical basis for the belief.
Any one who has handled a hair rope knows that it
is about as uncomfortable an article to the touch
as a thistle. The arrangement of the belly scales of
the rattlesnake is such that in the act of crawling,
the prickly hairs would certainly prove annoying —
perhaps enough so to cause the snake to change his
course.

When I suggested a picture it was made plain to
me that the great do not receive but confer a favor
in being photographed. John demanded a round
sum, which in this case seemed not to be modified
on the score of friendship. When that was arranged
he took the position and expression of one who
bears intense pain with determination. Then the
great girl would be taken with her pet goat. No need
for any formula of "Look pleasant, please," with
smiling Juana. When I asked how I should address

^ I have recently made the experiment with a sidewinder, which is
a small species of the rattlesnake. It passed over my hair rope three
times without any token of discomfort. Each time, however, the
snake was moving backwards. It is possible that in forward motion
the effect might be different.

i84 CALIFORNIA DESERT TRAILS

her in sending copies of the picture, she sedately
gave her name as Mrs. So-and-so, Post-Office box
so-and-so, at Mecca; thoroughly up in the ways of
the world. No doubt her children will be little Bills
and Bobs, Sadies and "Soosies," with chewing-gum
and all modern improvements.

An hour's easy ride brought me to my camping
place for the night at Figtree John Springs, no longer
obliterated by the flood. The water is good though
tepid, and a few small palms and a cotton wood or
two make the spot attractive. The margin of the
lake is now half a mile away. I walked over to it,
and found an uninviting beach of slimy mud, the
surface baked by the sun into large curving flakes
like potsherds. A few dead trees were all that broke
the melancholy expanse, if I except the decaying
bodies of fish that added no charm to the landscape
or the breeze. From the many coyote tracks it
seemed that this sort of diet is much to the taste of
that broad-minded animal. Far out, pelicans in
groups of three or four were fishing for supper, one
of them now and then launching itself with mighty
splash upon a school of prey.

The sunset color was unusually fine, though of
extreme delicacy. One might suppose that desert
conditions would work for crudity and staring dis-
tinctness in form and color. The reverse is the fact.
The most ethereal tones in Nature are those of
desert landscapes. The mirage itself is hardly more
elusive than the reality of these plains and moun-
tains, faint, vague, mystical. And when the light
comes level, as at evening or early morning, there is

MECCA TO FIGTREE JOHN 185

a quality In the scene that makes it Ineffable, almost
subjective.

I slept beneath the palms. Overhead the stars
played hide-and-seek as a gentle wind moved the
leaves and brought low sounds from the lake, where
tiny ripples plashed on the beach. Once a deeper
sound came, as if by subterranean ways, to my ears:
a heavy train was rumbling down the valley to
Yuma. I sat up and watched the speck of light from
the engine, ten miles away across the water, and
fancied I heard the ghost of a whistle as it neared
the Salton siding. There was no doubt in the case,
however, when the coyotes began to sing grace over
their fish bones. Such a hullabaloo came from the
shore as one would think must signify some "vast
immedicable woe." But no, that is the coyote's way
of enjoying himself. As a rule I enjoy it too, but
now I wanted to sleep, so fired my revolver to see
what the effect would be. There were ten seconds of
sweetest silence: then the hubbub was redoubled
and mounted to a crisis. Well, I would have It a
smoking concert, at least, so lighted my pipe and
talked to Kaweah until the performers grew tired
and took their way homeward, their farewells coming
in touching diminuendo from some distant caiion.

CHAPTER XII

A DESERT RIDE: FIGTREE JOHN TO BOREGO SPRINGS

Travertine Rock — The desert's dead-line — A desolate region —
Fish Springs — "Fill up" the word — Tom Sawyer and Huck
Finn: an unhopeful venture — A Miltonic sunrise — Doubtful
trail — The dreary Salton — A vacant land — Mirage, ants, and
antelope — A missing spring — Economizing water — Sign-board
but no sign — Seventeen Palms — Vile water — Arabian surround-
ings — Watering Kaweah — Bad-lands — Devil's house of the
Indians — Stone curios — Difficult trail-work — Nearing the
mountains — Borego Springs, and water.

A NOTICEABLE landmark, less than a mile dis-
tant from Figtree John Springs, is an isolated
outpost of Santa Rosa Mountain that from its coat-
ing of calcium carbonate is known as Travertine
Rock. Standing ringed about by the sandy ocean,
there is a suggestion of a battleship in its turreted
shape, an idea further carried out by the strongly
marked sea line near its top, as if that were the deck
level, the gun turrets and other upper structures
contrasting in pale gray of granite with the darker
bulk of the travertine covered hull.

In the morning I walked over to examine it at
close range and climb it for a view over the Salton
Sea. Close to camp I noted a bench-mark of the
Geological Survey, giving a minus elevation of 197
feet below sea-level. (The lowest part, now of course
under water, of this depression has been found to
be 287 feet below the sea, eleven feet lower than the
bottom of Death Valley, on the Mojave, which is
dry.) But the testimony of bench-marks was dis-

FIGTREE JOHN TO BOREGO SPRINGS 187

counted by that horizontal line, still far above my
head when I reached the base of the rock, though
the ground I had walked over sloped slightly up-
ward. It was like a dead-line, warning me that I was
out of bounds, and drawing my attention to the
fact that the whole bulk of the earth's oceans was
dammed up a hundred feet or so overhead, a few
miles away. If, I thought. Nature should decide
just now to shift things round once more, and should
knock a hole in the dam, I wonder what would hap-
pen? Something startling, for certain. It would be
the Johnstown flood multiplied by billions.

In climbing among the huge boulders that He
tumbled round the foot of this ancient island, I was
surprised at the thickness of their coating of traver-
tine. In places where it had scaled off I saw blocks of
the stuff a foot and a half through. I do not remem-
ber any such thickness at the "Coral Reef" or other
points where I have found the travertine. Perhaps
the exposed position of this rock, which, standing
out in the sea-way, must have caught the full wave-
wash in times of storm, may account for this exces-
sive deposit.

A little way from the foot, on the northeast face,
I found a narrow cave, twenty yards or so from
front to rear. Fragments of pottery showed that it
had been inhabited, probably as a place of refuge.
It can hardly have been used as a regular dwelling,
for the floor was very uneven and the sides and roof
showed no traces of smoke. The rock has hardly
any plant life: only a few scraps of vegetation find
foothold where a handful of soil has lodged. About

i88 CALIFORNIA DESERT TRAILS

the base an unthrifty palo verde here and there
holds on to life, its smooth greenness, more like
paint than verdure, looking stranger than ever in
this stark spot. For animal life, one small brown
wren flitted silently among the rhomboids of this
natural pyramid.

The view proved worth the climb, though that
was a warm experience. From here the Salton looked
like a narrow bay, the head of which was near at
hand though to south no land horizon was in sight.
The few cultivated spots on the opposite side showed
black rather than green, by contrast with the pale
hue of sand or the white of patches of alkali. The
mountain barrier beyond was a mirage-like band of
neutral tone, giving no hint of the color flood that
would come when the sun passed the zenith, to cul-
minate at evening in the pageantry of sunset. Far
to south the Chocolates paled imperceptibly into
mere sky. Behind, the great mountain rose in leagues
of barren rock, tremulous with heat but unmistak-
able as to reality. The sky was pale hard blue, no
least film of vapor softening its aching glare. Out
over the water, sea-birds wavered in rhythmic
manoeuvre, like some ghostly, impossible snowstorm.

In the afternoon I moved on a few miles to Fish
Springs. The road ran near the lake margin, some-
times on land that had until recently been sub-
merged. There was little of interest in the long levels
through which we plodded. Pale drab of dried salt-
grass — the ugliest grass that grows — alternated
with stretches of alkali where Kaweah's hoofs broke
through the white crust and sank into gray slime.

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FIGTREE JOHN TO BOREGO SPRINGS 189

Rounded bushes of atriplex, repeated without vari-
ation of size, color, or outline, and shapeless clumps
of sour-smelling suaeda, followed one another with
dreary monotony. A bit of arroA\rweed or a stunted
screwbean was a boon by comparison. Ghosts of
drowned mesquits made a phantom procession by
the water's edge, and seemed, in the tremor of heat,
to be up to some weird antics, like skeletons playing
leapfrog. The vague shape of the Superstition Moun-
tains, on the southern horizon, gave the landscape
an extra touch of horror, recalling tales of men, not
a few, who have perished in attempts to reach the
treasure supposed to be hidden in that waterless
labyrinth.

Fish Springs is marked by a growth of mesquits
and small cottonwoods, spread over a few acres of
damp land close to the border of the sea. The road, or
rather track, I had been following is used occasion-
ally by travellers to the Imperial Valley. The usual
mode of travel nowadays is by automobile, which
can cover the long distances quickly and, barring
accidents, without danger from lack of water. It
was significant of the sort of country I was entering
to find beside the road a sign-board pointing to the
water, with the warning, "Fill up. Last convenient
water for 45 miles." At Fish Springs itself the water
is brackish and tepid, nevertheless quite fair water
for the desert. In the pool were numbers of tiny fish
about the size of tadpoles.

As I neared the place I was surprised to hear a
gun fired and the shot come peppering near, so I
let out a whistle; but I was more surprised when I

190 CALIFORNIA DESERT TRAILS

saw the gunners. By the edge of the pool stood two
boys, a long and a short, both about twelve years
old. On the ground were a scrap of blanket, some
bits of food, and a half -gallon can of the lard-pail
kind. The boys were poorly dressed, one shoeless,
and neither of them in the pink of condition. It was
near sundown, and if these were their preparations
for supper, bed, and breakfast (to go no further)
they seemed inadequate, especially in view of their
surroundings. The smaller boy held a long, single-
barrel gun and the carcass of a dove.

There was an air of uncertainty about the young-
sters as if they had been discussing their next move.
I asked whether they were camping there for the
night, and the half-hearted way in which they
"guessed so" seemed to show that they didn't
know what else to do. When I inquired where they
came from — " Indio," said the smaller and shoeless
boy, who seemed the captain of the enterprise. As
he glanced disconsolately this way and that I caught
sight of the stock of an old-fashioned revolver pro-
jecting from the pocket of his ragged overalls.
"How did you come?" "We walked," was the reply.
(Indio was about forty miles away.) " Is that all the
grub you have?" "No, I just got a bird" (exhibit-
ing the dove). "Well, you nearly got a man, too.
Where are you going?" " Borego Valley — I guess."
"Do you know how far that is?" "'Bout ten miles,
ain't it?" " Do you know the trail?" "No: I know
where it is though; over that way." "What do you
carry water in?" "That" — the little lard-pail.
"Do you know how far it is to the next water?"

FIGTREE JOHN TO BOREGO SPRINGS 191

"No." "I'll tell you then. It's twenty-five miles to
Seventeen Palms, and when you get there you can't
drink the water. Then it's a good twelve more to
Borego Springs, and five more to Borego Valley.
Now, do you think the two of you can make nearly
forty miles on that can of water?"

My youngster was visibly impressed as I rubbed
in the water question, and now asked what I thought
they had better do. In reply to my question of what
had started them on this wild errand he opened up
and explained that his father "knowed a feller"
who had taken up land in Borego Valley, and they
were going there to work for him. Had reached Fish
Springs last evening, camped, and in the morning
started on, carrying the pitiful little pail of water.
Got a few miles along, water half gone; met two
Mexicans, who were thirsty and drank the rest of
the water; felt tired and hot, so went down to the
lake and had a bath and drank a lot of the water.
Felt bad and guessed they'd come back to Fish
Springs to camp for the night.

"Now," I said, "there's just one thing for you
boys to do, and I want to see you start to do it. Roll
up your blanket and things and start back for home.
I'll give you a note to the people at the Oasis
Ranch, and they'll see that you have something to
eat and a place to sleep. Then get back to Indio as
soon as you can, and never do such a foolhardy
thing again. It's a thousand to one you'd have got
lost and died out there if you 'd gone on. Will you do
what I say?" They promised.

It was Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn to the

192 CALIFORNIA DESERT TRAILS

life, to see those poor little scamps as they started
up the dusty road. Over the big boy's shoulder the
long gun waved vaguely to and fro ; the little fellow-
carried the can of water, with the bit of blanket
professionally rolled and slung by a cord at his back :
the revolver-butt protruding from his flapping over-
alls in comico-pathetic fashion. As I gauged it, it
was a case of running away from home. The Mexi-
cans by drinking their water had very likely saved
their lives. There is little doubt as to what would
have been the outcome if they had gone on. They
would have used up their water in the first ten miles:
would almost certainly never have reached Seven-
teen Palms, which is not easy to find even had their
strength held out so far: and if they had reached it
they would have drunk their fill of the half-poison-
ous stuff and promptly succumbed. More likely they
would have wandered about on a hopeless search
for Seventeen Palms and would have run the usual
course of thirst, delirium, insanity, death.

To-morrow's march would be a long one, so I
turned in early. Mosquitoes were such a nuisance
about the spring that before long I had to move two
hundred yards away. Awaking after an hour or so,
I could hear Kaweah stamping restlessly, and had
to go over and rescue him also. The night was un-
usually warm and sleep unwilling to oblige. At last,
the murmur of the ripple on the shore and the rhyth-
mic chant of frogs sent me into an intermittent doze,
from which I arose by moonlight at half-past three,
not particularly refreshed.

I gave Kaweah a hearty feed from the little store

FIGTREE JOHN TO BOREGO SPRINGS 193

of barley that I had brought for helping him over
the hard spots in the near future, and before five
o'clock we were on the move. A heron rose from the
lake as we started, and flapped slowly alongside
for a hundred yards, etched Japanesquely on the
brightening saffron. In a few moments the sun rose
in his old tyrannic splendor, and our heron steered
away as if it might have been one of the "yellow-
skirted fayes" of that quaint idea of Milton's —

" So when the sun in bed,
Curtained with cloudy red,
Pillows his chin upon an orient wave,
The flocking shadows pale
Troop to the infernal jail.
Each fettered ghost slips to his several grave,
And the yellow-skirted fayes
Fly after the night-steeds, leaving their moon-loved maze."

This time his chin was pillowed on the Cotton-
wood Mountains, and his first shot at me came in
a blaze of red across the dreary waters of the
Salton.

The road (if it could be called a road) continued
southward, paralleling on one hand the sea and on
the other a long southeasterly spur of Santa Rosa.
The spur ran out at last in a tongue of yellowish rock
of the malpais kind, cut by many gullies and bar-
rancas. Round this spur, which is known as Clay
Point, my route lay. It seemed as if we should never
turn that point. The going became worse, loose
sand and gravel for hour after hour, and travel was
slow and tiresome. It was a relief to reach the place
where we must leave the road and strike westward
across unbroken desert. The only mark of this spot

194 CALIFORNIA DESERT TRAILS

was a heap of stones, and I felt a little anxiety on
seeing that no tracks came in there, lest it might
not be the turn-off for Seventeen Palms but only
some prospector's sign leading into the bad-lands
or the mountains. I had started with full canteens,
of course, but though a gallon and a half may seem
a good deal of liquid for one person for a day, any
one who has travelled the desert in summer knows
how quickly that quantity will be used. In this
parching land to be without water for a very few
hours means disaster. Hence, a mistake of direction,
requiring retracing of steps or leading one into coun-
try through which it is difficult to find one's way, is
a.thing to be dreaded (and, I may add, is dreaded
all the more as one gains in desert experience). It
was the thirtieth of July, and the summer heat at
its climax, reaching most days 115° to 120°, shade
temperature.

I stopped Kaweah and glanced back at the Salton
Sea, which I was now leaving for a time. It is at
best a rather cheerless object, beautiful in a pale,
placid way, but the beauty is like that of the mirage,
the placidity that of stagnation and death. Charm
of color it has, but none of sentiment ; mystery, but
not romance. Loneliness has its own attraction, and
it is a deep one; but this is not so much loneliness as
abandonment, not a solitude sacred but a solitude
shunned. Even the gulls that drift and flicker over
it seem to have a spectral air, like bird-ghosts ban-
ished from the wholesome ocean.

" E'en the weariest river
Winds somewhere safe to sea";

FIGTREE JOHN TO BOREGO SPRINGS 195

but for the Salton the appointed end is but a slow
sinking of its bitter, useless waters, a gradual baring of
slimy shores, until it comes once more, and probably
for the last time, to extinction in dead, hopeless desert.

My outlook ahead and to the south was changed
now that I had turned the shoulder of Santa Rosa.
Before me to the west stretched one of the most for-
bidding tracts of the desert, grayer, more dreary
than the rest. The shrubs grew smaller and more
sparse; even the greasewood seemed ready to suc-
cumb. For mile on mile one sees no animal life either
of beast, reptile, or bird, hardly of insect. Once I
noted the track of a sidewinder, but this is a creature
that moves by night: desert-dweller though it is,
the desert sun is deadly to it. Far in front was the
line of the Peninsular Sierra that runs on southward
down the long length of Lower California. On the
left, across a glistening alkaline expanse, rose the
pale uncertain shapes of the Vallecitos and other
ranges, fading into the Cocopa country beyond the
Mexican border. Close at hand on the right was the
southern face of Santa Rosa. The shells that whit-
ened the ground told that I was still on the minus
side of zero in elevation.

I looked carefully for tracks that might show I
was headed rightly for Seventeen Palms. At long
intervals I came on some faint wheel mark or doubt-
ful shape of horse-hoof, but they were disjointed
fragments, signifying little. Every rain storm brings
down fresh sheets of sand from the washes of the
mountain cafions, and every wind storm distributes
the sand afresh; so that whatever travel there may

196 CALIFORNIA DESERT TRAILS

be must break its own road. The amount of such
travel may be gauged from the reply of the store-
keeper at Mecca to my question whether he knew
of any one thereabout who had lately crossed this
piece of country and could give me directions.
"Seventeen Palms?" he said. "No, I have n't
heard of any one coming that way for six months."
The only guiding marks I saw were, once or twice,
a so-called monument — chance bits of stone which
the trained eye may know to have been placed by
man, not Nature — marking the best route across
the wider washes.

For long hours of glare and heat I pushed on, some-
times riding, sometimes leading Kaweah, who plod-
ded steadily along like the loyal comrade he has
ever shown himself to be. Once a mirage suddenly
grew before me, the common one of a sheet of water
a few yards ahead ; and once I saw a flicker of some-
thing white a mile away, which may have been a
band of antelope. About ten o'clock I found a few
scraps of blue-stem (galleta grass) and burro-weed
to eke out Kaweah's scanty barley, and we stopped
to rest and lunch. In saying that there was no insect
life in these parts I overlooked the ant. I should like
to know whether Arctic travellers do not find these
enterprising explorers always ahead of them. The
moment I sat down they converged on me. Evi-
dently the word was passed round that a fellow had
arrived and was eating hardtack over by the grease-
wood, and the speed with which every crumb was
whisked away showed that it was a notable event.

A short half -hour was as long as I could afford,

FIGTREE JOHN TO BOREGO SPRINGS 197

since Kaweah, after a nibble at the uninviting for-
age, preferred to doze. On some unofficial map I
have seen a certain "Sacaton Spring" marked as
somewhere about here. Judging from the name, it
would be marked by a growth of sacaton grass,
which could be seen for miles in this kind of country.
I searched with my field-glasses, but in vain, for
any trace of greenness. Fortunately, as I had been
unable to find anybody who knew of such a spring,
I had not counted on it. Even if it could have been
found it might have proved to be like that of the
next spring to the south, which is too strongly im-
pregnated with soda to be usable.

We took up our march. Occasionally a wandering
breeze blew for a moment, and I opened my shirt
and my heart to it, but it quickly died away, and
again the heat struck fiercely down. It was impos-
sible to maintain any interest in the view, but that
was no loss, since nothing changed, hour after hour.
The mountain profiles merged and emerged imper-
ceptibly, and that was all. It seemed a week that
I had been creeping over this unending plain. Some-
how I felt unreal, as if I were a picture of a man in
my position, and wondered vaguely whether the
man ever got anywhere. The sole distraction was in
counting the time for my periodical drinks, two
mouthfuls per half hour, the first one held for a few
seconds in the mouth before swallowing.^ The reason

^ I have since learned a good dodge from an Indian with whom I
was out for some days in dry country. A little plug of the creosote
(greasewood) bush, say three quarters of an inch long and a quarter
of an inch thick, peeled, held in the mouth, is a good palliative of
thirst, much better than the regulation pebble.

198 CALIFORNIA DESERT TRAILS

for this economy was not that I feared running
short of water, but there is always the unforeseen
to be reckoned with. I found that this small but
regular ration kept me going, and I had already
accustomed myself to drink only for necessity, not
for comfort or luxury.

The appearance of a sign-board (a fragment of
box-lid tied to a stake) raised hopes of a word as to
direction and distance. But whatever information
it may once have carried was gone as though it had
never been there. Sun had bleached and sand had
scoured till not a mark could be made out. This
sort of thing is as aggravating as a practical joke.
I was tempted to kick the thing sky high, but re-
frained when I reflected that it might be named as a
landmark to some future traveller.

At last appeared, miles away to northwest, a few
dots that showed black against the pale yellow foot-
hills. If they were palms they were my landmark. I
turned toward them: lost them and found them
again and again : but finally knew that they were my
palms; not my destination itself, but a guide to the
place. Tracks became more frequent and converged
toward a point in the clay hills that fringe Santa
Rosa's southern base. A faint trail grew out of
nothing, and led into a winding gallery of sand and
boulders, where strange wind-worn and sand-worn
cliffs showed at every turn. The palms appeared
again, now close at hand; and in half an hour I
caught sight of another group (once, I suppose,
seventeen, but now only six or eight) that marked
our halting place for the day.

FIGTREE JOHN TO BOREGO SPRINGS 199

The water at Seventeen Palms is a mere seepage,
found in two small holes. If the holes were kept
cleaned out for a day or two, probably the quality
of the liquid would improve, though at best it would
be strongly alkaline. At this time they were slimy
and ill-smelling, and the water, which was brown,
bitter, and nauseating, would have been dangerous
to drink unboiled. Kaweah, however, drank eagerly
when I had cleaned out one of the holes, though he
is a gentlemanly horse, quite fastidious about his
water. My small canteen was still full, but as it
must carry me on to Borego Springs I used this un-
pleasant stuff, carefully strained, for my cooking.
Rice boiled in it was thoroughly disgusting in color
and taste; no amount of sugar could render it more
than just bearable. The tea had a dirty gray curdle
and a flavor like bilge, and when I tried cocoa as an
alternative the mixture promptly went black.

Traces of former visitors were a rusty stove,
abandoned, I guessed, by some survey party who
' travelled de luxe with cooks and water-barrels (per-
haps the Government surveyors whose token I found
near by in the shape of a bench-mark recording
417 feet); and an assayer's card nailed on a palm.
The usual cans and bottles were in evidence, but in
no such profusion as at most of these old camping
spots. The locality does not attract prospectors,
being, I fancy, scanty of valuable minerals; there is
little to interest hunters; and the bad water, with
scarcity of forage, puts a general ban on the place.
A few small mesqults with meagre show of beans,
and a nibbling of salt-grass, helped out Kaweah's

200 CALIFORNIA DESERT TRAILS

supper. With my back to a palm I hugged the shade
till the sun went down, then climbed to smoke a
pipe on the hillside and view the surroundings.
Without having been in Egypt or Arabia, I could
easily imagine myself to be looking down on a wady
of the Red Sea region. The abrupt gullies with banks
of sun-hardened clay, the gravel-strewed sands, the
shapeless brown foothills, the sparse thorny scrub,
the solitary group of palms, made up a scene much
more suggestive of Arabia Petrsea than of any part
of the American continent. Not less so was the
Oriental splendor of a gold and crimson sunset.

A strong breeze began to blow down the cafion
about nightfall. I found a hollow in which I spread
my blankets (first despatching a warlike scorpion
that rushed out at me sparring away like a little
prizefighter) and slept excellently till daybreak. My
cold breakfast was despatched while Kaweah ate
his barley, and we bade farewell to Seventeen Palms
with almost as much satisfaction as we had felt on
arriving.

For safety's sake I filled the large canteen, though
heartily hoping I should not need to draw on it.
Kaweah refused to drink before we started, pre-
ferring to fly to ills he knew not of rather than repeat
the one he had tasted. However, to-day we had only
half of yesterday's distance to make, with prospect
of good water at the end. It was sometimes exasper-
ating to have Kaweah thus refuse water, especially
at the beginning of a long day's march. When he
thus washed his hands of the responsibility, confi-
dent that I would not get him into serious trouble,

FIGTREE JOHN TO BOREGO SPRINGS 201

I wished I could make an incision in his hide and
pump him full, willy-nilly.

I determined to-day to make a particular effort
to keep the "road." The start was plain enough, for
there was only one outlet to the canon that could
lead in my direction. It was a long ravine similar to
that by which we had come, winding among strange
shapes of clay, the dome being the most common.
Red and yellow were the prevailing colors, with
mud-hued grays and drabs for background. Ocotil-
los, always interesting in their weird way, had come
in as I entered this clay country, but they looked
starved and haggard, the shrivelled flower heads a
rusty relic of their vivid spring. There was little
other brush to be seen, and all looked at the point
of death.

This clay formation, wherever found on the desert,
is the last extreme of the barren, dreary, and danger-
ous. The vast network of gullies into which it be-
comes worn may easily become a death-trap for
the traveller. Sense of direction is quickly lost: in
the deep sand and gravel of the bottoms a trail is
almost as evanescent as if marked in water. I was
recently looking down again on this tract from the
mountain country to the west. The Indian who was
my companion pointed to the hazy yellowish patch,
twenty miles from where we stood, and said, " Chee-
chlicsh'-noo-ah, devil's house, we call that. Very
bad place. Man get in there no can get out never.
One time some of our people camp there. Night
time one get up and go for drink. He die, never come
back." A white man's chance of escape from this

202 CALIFORNIA DESERT TRAILS

"devil's house" might be, say, one twentieth of an
Indian's under equal circumstances. It is just as
well, perhaps, that there are few attractions to draw
travellers to Chee-chlicsh'-noo-ah.

Reaching more open country we entered on a
tract littered with curiously shaped objects of stone.
Dumb-bells were a common form, and accurately
circular plates and rings, balls, symmetrical ovoids,
and many more — among them grotesque figures of
men, quite as realistic as some pagan idols that one
sees in museums. The region is well above sea-level,
but probably water was the chief factor in shaping
these oddities, perhaps at the time when the oyster-
shell beds were laid down which are now a thousand
feet up on the adjacent mountain- side. Paralleling
our course a mile or two to the north ran a level
bluff of clay, colored in pale tints of rose, lavender,
green, and ochre, its face marked with vertical scor-
ings as neatly drawn as if they had been engraved
by a machine.

It was the last day of July, and seemed to me even
hotter than the day before. Again I measured my
water in half-hourly gulps. I found my thoughts
turning constantly on water, as Arctic explorers'
dwell on beef-steaks. Ride for an hour and lead for
an hour was the programme. I had kept the trail
pretty well, missing it often in crossing wide washes
where the gravelly soil held no mark of travel, but
picking it up again in softer places. To keep it at all,
one's eyes must be "peeled " every moment. For long
distances the only indication was the powdery dead
leaves of the brush, which collect in the faint depres-

FIGTREE JOHN TO BOREGO SPRINGS 203

slon. The trained eye, looking ahead, can trace this
dubious clue, though meeting it at right angles one
would see nothing and might cross it a dozen times
yet fail to recognize the trail one is seeking.

Slowly the line of the western mountains grew
higher and darker. The tint was not, however, that
mystical azure that gives to distant mountain pros-
pects the usual wistful charm, but a smoky, furnace-
like hue as if the range were built of slag. I tried to
believe that I saw the appearance of timber against
the sky. Could that be my old friend the Cuyamaca,
or the Volcan? It was cheering at least to imagine
the green-plushed firs, the singing cedars, and wise,
sober pines up there, looking down with pity, surely,
on the blanched, sun-drained desert, so old, withered,
and gray.

I felt pretty well withered myself, baked through
and through. The interminable ridge of clay danced
when I glanced over at it, as if bent on giving me
vertigo. At last we crossed a wider wash that I
guessed to be the channel of the San Felipe Creek,
one of those phantom streams that for nearly all
their course run underground, if they run at all.
Tracks began to come in from some mysterious
origin in the southeast. Then a patch of green ap-
peared a mile ahead, which I knew must mark
Borego Springs. I halted by a palo verde that had
somehow got lost out here, and recklessly drank my
remaining Fish Springs water. It was hot, of course,
and stale and flat, but to drink freely, with no
grudging of table-spoonfuls, was genuine dissipation.

It was only early afternoon when we reached the

204 CALIFORNIA DESERT TRAILS

oasis of mesquits and arrowweed. I found the spring
of good cool water, and we enjoyed ourselves for
ten minutes before unloading. On the bank above
the spring there was an old cabin and behind that
a fine mesquit. Here I off -saddled, then picketed
Kaweah among the mesquits, which were at their
best fruiting stage, and left him to a dinner of un-
limited beans, followed, if he chose, by a siesta to
match.

CHAPTER XIII

A DESERT RIDE: BOREGO SPRINGS TO LOS COYOTES

Cows and cowboys — Peg-Leg Smith and his mine — Patron saint
of prospectors — Legend or fact? — Following the gleam — And
reaching the goal — Dregs of Uncle Sam's domain — Anza's ex-
pedition of 1774 — A question of fact — In Anza's footsteps —
Hell-hole — Alkali flats — Desert cattle-range — A Borego Valley
homestead — Devon and desert — "A beautiful climate" —
Modest request for lard — Cholla cactus — Coyote Creek Canon
— Ocotillo houses — Agaves — A lost trail — Happiness in trifles.

BOREGO SPRINGS is one of the important
watering-places on the Colorado Desert. Lying
near the mountains, it is a strategic point in the
operations of cattle-men whose ranges extend over
the Santa Rosa, San Felipe, Volcan, and Cuyamaca
country, and who once in a year or two may have
occasion to drive cattle into or out of the mountains
by the desert route. These drives are often for long
distances, say from Arizona or Sonora, and in large
herds, so that only the few spots that furnish abun-
dant water are of service for resting and watering
the stock. Borego Springs makes a convenient one-
day stage before entering or leaving the mountains.
When I was camping here with some friends on
another occasion, we were disturbed in the middle
of the night by the arrival of a "bunch" ^ of cattle

1 Nicety is observed in the West as to the use of nouns of number.
Thus, it is a band of horses or of sheep, but a bunch of cattle, of steers,
of yearlings, or whatever the case may be. A concourse of hogs, those
flower-like quadrupeds, also are properly spoken of as a bouquet. So,
by the by, are fellows. Thus, the leader of a college prayer-meeting
has been known to open his petition, "We come, a bunch of fel-
lows— " etc.

206 CALIFORNIA DESERT TRAILS

that had just "pulled in," en route to Borego Valley.
In the morning, when the drove was getting under
way, we were passing the compliments at the corral
bars with two of the vaqueros. Names were ex-
changed. "And who is that young fellow?" one of
us asked, pointing to a lively young "puncher" in
red shirt and well-worn "chaps," who was rounding
up the stragglers. "That 'young fellow' is this fel-
low's wife," one of the men answered, indicating
his companion. El hahito no hace al monje (the
dress does not make the monk), says the Spanish
proverb.

The old house bore testimony to many years of
usage by cattle-men, surveyors, prospectors, and
other haunters of the open spaces. On the back door
I found an elaborate decoration, dated four months
earlier. The two men who signed it stated them-
selves to be in search of that old will-o'-the-wisp of
prospectors, the Peg- Leg Mine; and in lightness of
heart had drawn a picture representing Peg-Leg
Smith himself "looking at Borego Springs from
Gold Hill." The great man was realistically shown
mounted on a burro, pipe in mouth, pick on shoul-
der, and "peg" advanced as if hospitably greeting
the beholder.

Peg-Leg Smith, who might by courtesy be called
the patron saint of California prospectors, deserves
more than passing reference. In the course of this
journey I came on his tracks so often that at times
I felt almost haunted. To be for two hours in com-
pany with a prospector and not have Peg- Leg come
into the conversation is among the impossible things

BOREGO SPRINGS TO LOS COYOTES 207

of life. I heartily wish that some one would find that
mine, and put the old eternal anecdotes and theo-
ries to final rest. "Well, sir" (this is the sort of
thing), "Dutchy kin say whatever he's a min' ter.
I claim to know them 'ere Choc'lates purty (blank)
well, seein' I've dry-washed every (blank) gully
from Dos Palms to Carga Muchach', an' I tell you
they ain't no chanst for that (blank) formation in
the hull (blank) lay-out. Why, look a-here : ole Peg-
Leg he says — . " And off we would go once more
into the threadbare history, with changes rung on
"buttes" and "monnyments," "ledges" and "bear-
ings," till I remembered to go and water Kaweah, or
put my rice to boil, or whatever excuse came easiest
to hand.

To make a brief statement of the case, for the
benefit of any citizen of the United States who may
not have heard it: This particular Smith, Thomas L.,
conspicuous among the tribe by the circumstance of
a timber leg, was a brother of that Jedediah Smith
who ranks high among Western pioneers. Thomas L.
became the leader of one of those bands of trappers
who in the thirties and forties roved over the vast
spaces of the West in quest of furs and adventure.
(The peg-leg itself was a souvenir of the adventures,
he having amputated the natural member himself
when it was shattered by a bullet in the course of
a fight with Indians.) On one of these journeys
the party reached the Colorado River, worked down
the stream to its junction with the Gila, and crossed
into California, when they struck northwest toward
the pass, later known as "Warner's" or the "San

208 CALIFORNIA DESERT TRAILS

Felipe," which was at that time the only known ap-
proach to the southern coast.

Before reaching the mountains, some of the party
one evening climbed a low hill near camp, and no-
ticed that the dark outcropping rock was thickly
sprinkled with yellow metal. Strange to say, though
the men were interested enough to carry away speci-
mens, they seem not to have guessed that they had
found gold, until the year of 1848, with the historic
"strikes" on the Sacramento, turned all men's
thoughts to one idea. Then it was found that the
specimens brought from the desert knoll were phe-
nomenally rich in gold.

Smith was then in San Francisco along with the
rest of the world. In 1850 he got together a party to
make a search for the precious butte. Before getting
well started, the loss of some of the equipment of
the expedition put the leader out of humor with the
affair, and it was abandoned : nor did he ever renew
the attempt.

This is all ancient history, and it might seem
strange that the legend of Peg-Leg's find, rich as it
may have been, should have survived through two
generations. But from time to time there have oc-
curred seeming corroborations of the fact of such a
wondrous mine in just such circumstances of posi-
tion and "formation" as are named in the details
of the discovery. Indians figure largely in these
later evidences, and not merely to the extent of
word of mouth. There have been incidents showing
that they had access to some rich store of gold
In the region of Smith's memorable " strike," and

BOREGO SPRINGS TO LOS COYOTES 209

always the hints have been of "buttes" and the
mysterious "black formation." These accessory de-
tails have not only kept alive the belief in the mine,
but have extended the field of believers until the
Peg-Leg Mine is a household word in California.
From first to last (though the last is yet unreached)
the number of those who have gone out on this
adventure must run to hundreds, and the tale of
those who have never returned is tragically long.
Hardly a year passes without two or three parties
taking up the search, following some new theory or
clue. My predecessors at this old cabin were among
the latest additions to the list. I may say here that
a month or two later I chanced to meet a man who
had recently seen them, safe and sound, but of
course unsuccessful, well on their homeward way.

As for me, though I am not of the breed that Peg-
Leggers come of, and long ago resolved, following a
well-known example, to die a poor man, yet I feel
the fascination of the gold-hunter's game, and have
sometimes, over my camp-fire, played with the idea
of sudden freedom from impecuniary cares by stum-
bling on a mine. Here at Borego Springs I overlooked
the very ground where, if anywhere, Peg-Leg Smith's
bonanza is awaiting an owner. From all evidences
it could not be a day's march away — a little hill,
such as I walk up any day for the view, but — be-
hold! littered with nuggets that one could pick out,
like walnuts, with a pocket-knife! It was an exciting
idea, and I almost resolved to make a practice of
climbing all little hills hereafter. But there came a
soberer thought — of the poor wretches who had

210 CALIFORNIA DESERT TRAILS

fallen to the lure, "followed the gleam"; and the
gleam had led them on and on, a little farther, to the
next rise, the canon beyond, till the terrible "bad
lands" had them locked in their scorching maze,
there to wander till, crazed and raving, they stag-
gered and fell : scrambled with frantic terror to their
feet and stumbled on (the thought of gold a fright-
ful mockery now) till they fell once more and did
not rise again. If ever the Peg-Leg Mine is found, it
would not be surprising if there are seen about it
the bleaching bones of the fortunate ones who
reached the goal. Then it should be renamed "The
Death's Head," and christened with the dregs of a
canteen of Seventeen Palms water.

Kaweah and I kept Sunday very comfortably at
Borego Springs. For him there were mesquit beans
in plenty and even a picking of Bermuda grass: for
me, shade and the thought of a bad piece of country
in my rear: for us both, good, cool, abundant water.
A road-runner came round several times to make
sure his eyes were not playing him false : lizards with
iridescent head and throat crept down the roasting
boards and watched me with cunning reptilian stare :
a few finches cheeped and twittered — the friendli-
est sound I had heard for days.

A tour of the immediate neighborhood showed
the usual incidents of these old camps — cascades
of cans, scraps of rawhide, horseshoes, rock speci-
mens, and stove-in canteens. The corral-gate was
decorated with the skull of a steer, a satirical object
for the famishing cattle as they shoved their way to
the water-trough. Among the names scrawled here

BOREGO SPRINGS TO LOS COYOTES 211

and there were some that have gained a measure of
renown in the story of pioneering in the Southwest.
More recent were the autographs of a party of
Government surveyors, from Lieutenant Tripod,
Chief Engineer, down to "Pete Ortega, Chief of
Remuda," Slowly the mapping of the dregs of Uncle
Sam's domain is being completed — though it is
rash to call anything dregs, when date groves flour-
ish on what a few years ago was marked "Unknown
Desert," dry lake-beds yield priceless fertilizers, and
any day the prospector's pick may strike a blow
that will bring men stampeding in thousands to the
latest El Dorado, perhaps within rifle-shot of where
I stand.

History is always fertile in debatable points for
students to quarrel over. Even in the history of the
West, short as it has been within white men's times,
there are matters of dispute. One of these is a ques-
tion as to the route of the first Spanish expedition
by land from Mexico to the California coast. This
entrada (to use the Spanish word) was led by Cap-
tain Juan Bautista Anza, in 1774, its object being
to make overland connection with the settlements
of San Diego and Monterey, established five years
earlier by Don Caspar de Portola and Fray Junipero
Serra.

The party, starting from Tubac, in Sonora,
crossed the Colorado River on the 9th of February
(first picking up that stout old campaigner Fray
Francisco Hermenegildo Garces, who had already
been knocking about for years among the wild tribes
of the region), and made their way across the desert,

212 CALIFORNIA DESERT TRAILS

apparently at first keeping to the south of the pres-
ent Mexico-United States border. On reaching the
Cocopa Mountains they turned north and crossed
the Hne somewhere near Signal Mountain, finding
water, it is guessed, at what are now called Yuha
Springs. Travelling still north, the next camp,
March lo, was at a large cienaga where the water
and forage were so bad as to cause the loss of sev-
eral of their animals. This place, which they named
San Sebastian del Peregrino, is identified as the
Carrizo cienaga.

At this point students of the records fall into dis-
agreement. Some suppose that the expedition, keep-
ing on still north, rounded Santa Rosa Mountain
at Clay Point (where I had turned west for Seven-
teen Palms) and then turned northwest up what is
now called the Coachella Valley, entering the coast
region by San Gorgonio Pass. Given our present
knowledge of the country, that would have been the
natural route, and many of the details set down by
the explorers suggest that it was the one taken. The
other opinion is that on leaving the Carrizo camp
the party struck northwesterly up the broad arm of
desert (which I had just crossed in another direction)
that leads by way of Borego Springs into Borego
Valley and Coyote Caiion; that they made their
way, by that caiion and a branch of it now called
Horse Cafion, up to what is now known as Vande-
venter Flat. Whichever route they took they reached
high ground with good forage and water, and of the
place, wherever it was, the gallant Captain writes:
"This paraje [station] is a pass, and I named it El

BOREGO SPRINGS TO LOS COYOTES 213

Puerto Real de San Carlos. From it may be dis-
covered some very beautiful plains, green and flow-
ery, and the Sierra Nevada, with pines, oaks, and
other trees proper to cold countries. In it the waters
are divided, some running to the Gulf and others to
the Philippine Ocean."

I do not know all parts of the routes in question
well enough to venture a decided opinion, but from
what I have seen I think the southerly is likely to
have been the one followed.^ Anyhow, it was pleas-
ant to think so, for in that case I was now on the old
Anza trail, and should follow the footsteps of that
picturesque company of padres, soldados, and arrie-
ros for a good few miles. On this understanding, my
Borego Springs was probably the aguaje (watering-
place) of good quality that Anza, or the padres,
named for San Gregorio, and where the party rested
for a day. He notes the fact of an Indian rancheria
(village), and there is evidence, in the shape of frag-
ments of pottery, that Borego Springs was long the
site of an Indian settlement: but that would be sure
to be the case where good water was to be found. ^

1 My Indian friend, Lee Arenas, tells me that the Cahuilla tribes,
inhabiting country adjacent to Coyote Canon, have a tradition that
the first white men came that way, and speak of a fight that took
place in the cafion with strangers using swords. Anza mentions no
such incident. His record of the natives hereabout is that they were
expert thieves, and could pick and steal with toes as cleverly as with
fingers: further, that they made much play with their legs and feet,
on which account he named them Danzantes (dancers). Lee also says
that the Indians call the head of the canon La Puerta, but this is the
common designation of any point in the nature of a pass.

2 It was the rancheria of San Gregorio, by the by, that was thrown
into consternation, naturally enough, by the racket of the thirsty
mules of the approaching party. On the other hand, it is related of the
Cocopas that they were quite captivated by the mules of some

214 CALIFORNIA DESERT TRAILS

I turned in betimes and coyotes obliged with a
lullaby. It seemed about twenty minutes afterward
that I awoke to see the red pennon of dawn flying
on the horizon. It was inspiriting, however, to be
now close upon the mountains, with the prospect of
being for a few days among them, with genuine
trees, grass that is green, not gray, perhaps even a
brook to drink from. This variation from my desert
programme was for the purpose of getting mail and
supplies at Warner's Springs, the only postal point
I should even approach until I reached the settle-
ments of Imperial Valley.

I turned now northwesterly, following the route
taken (as I think likely) by Anza and his fellow
explorers. To my right rose an isolated dark mass
called Coyote Mountain, which Figtree John claims
as his birthplace. One could hardly imagine a more
unattractive place to call one's native spotfyet no,
I remember the slums of man's cities. It is there
one reaches the ne plus ultra of the hideous. On
the other side at a few miles' distance were the
abrupt foothills of the Peninsular Range, the high
ridge of San Ysidro overlooking them and showing
on its crest tantalizing tokens of pines.

Near here there is a place that has gained, not

pioneer of about the same period (I think it was Padre Garces: there
were not many travellers on these deserts a century and a half ago).
These natives had never seen mules before, and, astounding as it
sounds, found them charming. Moved with compassion at seeing
the animals hobbled, at night they removed the fetters and led them
tenderly away to where a banquet of soothing pumpkins was spread.
And when a jack fell into a quagmire, they "all came to his assistance,
took him in their arms, carried him to the fire, and warmed and con-
soled him." This is like the snug experiences of Nick Bottom.

BOREGO SPRINGS TO LOS COYOTES 215

without reason, the unpleasant nameof "Hell-Hole."
It is a small bit of country, but so maze-like in its
ramifications that to enter is probably to remain.
I have talked to a man who, with a companion, was
once caught in this death-trap. He narrated with
vivid details the events of days during which they
wandered about, trying gully after gully for a way
of escape, and hourly losing heart and hope. Luckily
it was winter, so thirst, the deadliest enemy, was
not to be feared ; and they had food enough for some
days. It was by mere chance that, on the fourth day,
they stumbled out into the world that they hardly
hoped to see again. There is a fascination for me in
these ill-favored bits of geography; but in August,
with a horse and but a gallon and a half of water, it
seemed best to confine myself to guessing which of
those furnace-like canon-mouths might be the re-
puted gateway to Hades.

Patches of salt-grass began to appear, mixed
among wide expanses of alkali (salitres, as the Mexi-
cans call them) for which this unwholesome grass
has a liking. The country looked as if it had been
flooded with a saturated solution of salt: in places
the very grass-blades sparkled with the salty incrus-
tation, and Kaweah's hoofs kicked the stuff before
us like snow. After a few miles I saw something
ahead which looked like a house and windmill.
This was a surprise, though I knew that within late
years land-hungry settlers had turned their atten-
tion to Borego Valley. On close approach the house
proved to be a wagon and the windmill a derrick.
Some one had made an attempt to find water, but

2i6 CALIFORNIA DESERT TRAILS

money or patience had given out, and the wagon
and tools were left to fall to pieces in the sun. I
heard afterwards that the outfit had come by the
same route that I had taken, but the men had lost
their way after passing Clay Point and had been
three days in reaching Seventeen Palms.

Skulls and ribs of cattle, sometimes with shreds
of hide upon them, gave token that I was in cattle
country. Leg bones, being easy to manipulate by
those ghouls the coyotes, are generally hauled off
to a distance, but the skull and ribs with backbone
usually stay where the poor brute perished, and
coyotes, buzzards, and skunks repair again and
again to the feast until the ultimate remnant glis-
tens in the sun, a melancholy monument. There is
something specially ghastly about the ribs with
their hollow griddle look. Perhaps it is because of
the resemblance to the human skeleton in this detail
that the staring emptiness has a horror all its own:
one realizes the fragility of one's own frame, and
thinks, with a shock. What, am I such a drum!

A speck of green that I had been watching for
half an hour revealed itself as the homestead of a
settler. Half hidden by a huge mesquit was a one-
room tent-house of fair size. It was surrounded by
half an acre or so of cultivated ground, all that was
possible with the feeble flow of water yielded by the
well. The man was away, but the barking of the dog
brought out his wife, a cheery little Devonshire
woman, who bade me be seated and "Rest, do ye
now." The first question was, "Have you brought
any mail?" and great was the disappointment when

BOREGO SPRINGS TO LOS COYOTES 217

I explained that I was bound to, not from, Warner's,
which is their mail station, forty-two miles away.
It appeared that the postmaster at Warner's was
under instructions, whenever he heard of any one
going through to Borego Valley (which might hap-
pen half a dozen times a year) to press him into serv-
ice as mail-carrier. The next request was for a news-
paper. This was another misfortune: and when I
remarked that if I had brought one it would have
been a week old, the reply was, "That's nothing.
If it was a month old it would be news to us. Never
mind, you can tell us the news, anyway." (This I
well understood meant news of the war, for Devon
is England in little, the county of Raleigh, Grenville,
and Drake.)

So we sat and chatted of combe and tor, of Tor-
ridge, Dart, and Tavy, and of the importance at-
taching to "scraps of paper." Then she must show
me her garden, the wondrous beans, radishes, and
tomatoes; above all, an incredible rose that had
borne six blossoms in the spring. "I do wish it had
one on now, so you could have it: 't would carry all
day if you 'd keep it in the shade. I do love a rose,
don't you?" she went on: "seems like I never can
get my fill of 'em. 'T was four years come Michael-
mas we took this desert claim. Yes, I 've worked
pretty hard over this garden. The jack-rabbits are
something awful, and the quail too: I suppose they
come for the water. My husband wants to fill up
the hole where the water stands, but I tell him
'twould be cruel. And doves: they don't do any
harm, though; I love to have them come. There

2i8 CALIFORNIA DESERT TRAILS

must be five hundred, maybe a thousand, come
round that little pool of an evening. It sounds like a
hundred autos when they fly. This is my second
turn at what you might call pioneering. First was
in the State of Washington; that was twenty-five
years ago. Seems like I strike mostly quiet places.
Like it here? Why, yes, I think it's pretty good, and
a beautiful climate. Why, io6 is as hot as we've
had this summer, and think of them poor folks
down in Imperial with 120, and hot nights and poor
water."

A whiff as of recent baking led to my buying a loaf
of the genuine article, together with a little sugar;
also a few feeds of barley for Kaweah. A musk-
melon and two tomatoes were added as a present.
When I urged her to take payment for these luxuries
she refused, but as I was leaving (charged with three
letters that had lain many days under the family
flat-iron) she became wistful, then said softly, "You
would n't happen to have a mite of lard that you
could spare, would you now?" She could not bear to
see me depart without asking this one boon. So we
divided my little store, and I left with a warning
that I must look out for snakes in Coyote Cafion.

For several hours we plodded up the broad gray
valley toward the point where Coyote Canon came
in. Other canons were passed, their mouths almost
choked with mixed colonies of ocotillo and cholla.
This is the most clannish of the cacti, holding the
foothill benches for miles to the exclusion of other
growths. These tracts make a strange appear-
ance, as if regiments of soldiers, in uniform of palest

BOREGO SPRINGS TO LOS COYOTES 219

gray, were Issuing from the canon and had halted
on the slope for a review.

One of these canons, on the west side of the val-
ley, is known as Palm Canon (not to be confused
with the other Palm Cafion, on the farther side of
the mountains to the north). I scanned it with the
glasses, but could see no likelihood of water, so
reluctantly passed it by. Once or twice paler patches
could be seen on the gray distance of the plain.
They were the clearings of settlers, but I saw no
token of cultivation about these places. If water is
obtained, as it may be by deep boring, a similar
miracle to that in the Coachella may follow, for the
soil seems good, or at least fair, in parts of Borego
Valley.

As we neared the head of the valley the ground
changed to coarse gravel and boulders. The ocotillo
and cholla took advantage of this congenial mixture
to make a sort of devil's garden, to which one or two
other choice spirits, like the "nigger-head" and
deer-horn cacti, were admitted. Once or twice, in
spite of our best care, Kaweah got nipped by some
imp of a cholla. Much alike as the cholla and deer-
horn are, I found that Kaweah had learned the
difference. When a bit of the latter caught him, he
dislodged it by giving a violent kick, but if it was
cholla, he came to a conspicuous halt and waited for
me to operate with pocket-knife and pliers.

At last we turned the shoulder of the mountain
and entered the narrow cafion. Anza's aguaje of
Santa Caterina may have been somewhere here-
about, for it is here that Coyote Creek becomes

220 CALIFORNIA DESERT TRAILS

visible. Below this point it takes refuge under-
ground, in the usual fashion of desert waters. At
this season the stream was a mere thread of inter-
mittent dampness, but in March, the month of
Anza's passage, it would make more of a showing.
Near the neck of the caiion I noticed a cabin built
of ocotillo canes. It consisted of one room of fair
size, seven feet high, and roofed with brush. In spite
of its chicken-house look, it would make a tolerable
dwelling for summer-time on the desert. By the
little pile of hay in a comer I guessed that it was a
cattle-man's house of call.

The ocotillo is a convenient material for such
structures, and is so used by some Indian tribes,
who plaster the walls with mud and so make a house
that answers for winter as well as summer use. This
mud and ocotillo combination has a peculiar result.
When rain comes, soaking the earth in which the
canes are embedded, the seemingly dead sticks
spring to life, put on leaves, and may even break
into blossom.

Two or three miles up the canon another inter-
esting plant appeared — the agave, a wild type of
the century-plant. Its circle of bayonet-pointed
leaves and ten-foot pole of flower-stalk make it
conspicuous among the low desert growths. Deer,
bighorn, and cattle are keen for the juicy flower-
stem, and few of the plants would fulfil their destiny
if it were not for the chevaux-de-frise that protects
the citadel. Growing usually in close colonies, the
interlocking leaves make an almost impenetrable
barrier, so that the inner members of the group

BOREGO SPRINGS TO LOS COYOTES 221

could only be attacked from the air. Thus, the wild
desert bees find the agave their best means of sup-
port.

The brush became heavier as we made our way
up the canon, until at one spot I counted, close to-
gether, ocotillo, agave, desert willow, smoke- tree,
cat-claw, and the two kinds of mesquit. We were
both on the lookout for water, and when a faint
trickle showed above ground Kaweah made for it
at once, sucking up a mixture of sand and liquid as
if it were nectar of the finest tap. I was not much
more particular, for the water in the canteen was too
hot to be pleasant.

There is said to be a trail up this caiion, but it
was beyond my skill to follow it. Evening found us
entering a jungle of arrowweed and mesquit. In this
we struggled for an hour, hoping to fight a way
through into clearer country. The last daylight left
us at an impassable place, the creek close by, but
running in a deep channel with perpendicular walls,
impossible for Kaweah to descend. We turned and
stumbled back for a mile in the darkness, Kaweah
getting badly snagged more than once on stumps
of mesquit. When we could cross the creek I turned
upstream looking for a place to camp.

Reaching a sandy opening among willows I
stopped and off-saddled, gave Kaweah a hearty
feed, and ate my bread and cheese by starlight.
Breakfast had been my last meal, sixteen hours
before. It was delicious to lie listening to the ripple
of the creek and hearing Kaweah nibble about.
These moments gain charm in proportion to their

222 CALIFORNIA DESERT TRAILS

rarity, and the desert traveller meets them seldom.
How true it is that happiness consists in trifles.
Water, a little bag of barley, a few stars, a loaf and
cheese, a tomato, and a cool night coming, that was
about all: yet even the mosquitoes could not dis-
turb my tranquillity that long evening on Coyote
Creek.

CHAPTER XIV

A DESERT RIDE: LOS COYOTES TO WARNER'S

SPRINGS

Kaweah a tyrant — Los Coyotes — A grub-staked miner — Cre-
dulity of miners — Prospector and poet — A player of many parts

— Snakes, assorted kinds — Vagaries of McSandy — A moun-
tain trail — Flowers and cactus — Indian relics — Stiff climbing

— From brush to pines — An Indian patriarch — San Ygnacio —
Supper with Mary Jane — Snakes again — An Indian alpine
village — Mountain delights — The desert's spell deepest — Ka-
weah breaks the ice — San Ysidro — Warner's Ranch — Agua
Caliente Indians.

I AWOKE to find the sun making a green-and-
gold sanctuary all about me, a cafion-wren show-
ering me with cascades of plaintive melody, doves
sympathizing from a dead branch overhead, and nu-
merous bumps on face and arms, with mosquitoes*
kind regards. Kaweah was watching for my first
movement. With little encouragement this comrade
of mine would become a tyrant. His annoyance when
I am half an hour late is not to be mistaken.

I knew the night before that I was not far from a
small bay or valley, about midway of the canon,
known as Collins Valley, or to the Indians as Los
Coyotes. This was where I had hoped to camp, and
when, after breakfast, I went prospecting for my
lost trail, I soon found that another half-mile would
have taken us there. It had an attractive look, with
a little patch of grass and tules, a palm or two, and
many mesquits and willows, even a cottonwood.
There was also an old cabin, another evidence of

224 CALIFORNIA DESERT TRAILS

being in cattle country, though one may travel for
many a day and see no cattle, to say nothing of
implied mankind.

I went back for Kaweah and my traps, and moved
to this better camp, where I resolved to stay for a
day. As I passed the cabin I heard some one exclaim,
"Well, I '11 be (so-and-so), here's a man at last! Who
are you, anyway?" I glanced in and saw a big fellow
stretched on the ramshackle bed that half filled the
place. He excused himself from rising on the score
of having "durned near worn his feet off yesterday,
clambering over these eternal mountains," but hos-
pitably told me to come in and share the casa, add-
ing, "There was a rattler around here a while ago,
but I reckon he's maybe left by now."

When I had accounted for myself, my new ac-
quaintance reciprocated with the statement that he
was Thomas McSandy (the name was not exactly
that) for the present a prospector, and that he had
been "grub-staked" by a Los Angeles friend who
was acquainted with a man whose brother (then in
an insane asylum) knew of a gem mine, the location
of which, as described to some official of the asylum,
was supposed to be somewhere hereabout. On this
hopeful quest he had been searching the surrounding
country, and his "stake" of grub being about ex-
hausted, he had given up the job and was striking
out next day for home by way of Warner's Ranch.

The gullibility of mankind with regard to lost
mines or buried treasure is staggering indeed. The
number and giddiness of these wild-goose chases
amount to a phenomenon. No story is too unlikely,

1

TO WARNER'S SPRINGS " 225

no clue too frail, to gain the belief of men in otiier
respects judicious enough. The "old Indians" who,
when dying, have spoken of some wondrous cafion
in the Humbug Range; the prospectors found at
"poison springs" who at the last gasp have babbled
of glittering ledges or placers, abandoned by them
under stress of famine ; the others who in this or that
county hospital have whispered to some attendant
the "sure thing" secret of the long-lost Blue Dog,
or Holy Smoke; to say nothing of the variegated
legends of the Peg-Leg — these must run into hun-
dreds, and their devotees into a veritable host. Mc-
Sandy was but one of a long list that I myself could
call to mind, to whose credulity no absurdity is an ob-
stacle if their will-o'-the-wisp has the glitter of gold.

But McSandy proved to have other erratic ideas.
Before we had talked half an hour he boldly an-
nounced to me that he was a poet. Nothing odd
about that, of course; in these days of vers lihre we
are all poets if we care to say so : but in sounding for
his depth I dropped the names of Wordsworth and
Byron. "Ah," said McSandy, kindling, ''they could
make poetry. Why, d' you know, I can't put up any
better stuff myself than what those fellows did,
durned if I can. No, sir."

I looked at him carefully, but, no, there was no
sign of humorous intent; candor, regret, perhaps a
touch of surprise, no more. I hastily changed the
subject, which, luckily, was easy to do, for he had
wrongs to relate and adventures to recount that
would fill fat volumes. He was amazed, even incred-
ulous, that his name and exploits as a detective in

226 CALIFORNIA DESERT TRAILS

a celebrated case were not familiar to me; was con-
vinced that the other side still thirsted for his blood,
and that emissaries of a certain famous organiza-
tion were even now on his trail. He showed the
revolver with which, while a deputy sheriff in New
Mexico, he had "got his man"; he had lived every-
where from the Argentine to Alaska, and made and
lost "scads of money " ; he was full of tales of arsenic
springs and poisoned desert waters, and of "close
calls" in Death Valley, where he guaranteed a tem-
perature of a hundred and forty-five in the shade.
Yet, oddly, with these feats to his credit McSandy
showed a total absence of that sense of location
which is all but indispensable to the desert man. He
was even hazy on the points of the compass.

McSandy preferred to sleep in the cabin, while I
spread my blankets near by outside. The night being
warm and not conducive to sleep, my friend un-
folded new leaves of his career. I learned that he
had visited Constantinople as seaman on a United
States warship: had also been a Michigan lumber-
man; and I forget how many other things. In spite
of lifelike details, his narrative was an irresponsible
farrago that kept me on the edge of an explosion.
From Turks we had come to Apaches; when, "I
think there's a snake climbing up on the bed," he
remarked in the midst of some episode. "Can hear
him creeping and creeping, durn his hide. Ain't
them rattlers the limit, though? Sure death ev'ry
time they get you. Say, d' you think I'd better
make a light and look what he's doing?" He struck
a match and, no snake being revealed, concluded

TO WARNER'S SPRINGS 227

that it was one of them blame trade-rats. But the
snake topic, once started, is ever a prolific one.
Did I know how a king-snake kills a rattler? "Well,
sir, the son-of-a-gun just naturally jumps on top of
him, yes, sir, jumps clean off the ground and lights
plum on Mr. Rattler and does him up. Say, he's
a son-of-a-gun, ain't he now? Snakes don't jump,
don't they? Well, then, how about this? Up in
Placer County I killed a rattler one day ; cut off his
head and two inches down the neck; and then that
rattler up and jumped two foot clear. Why, they're
powerful jumpers, them sons-of-guns are."

He desired my opinion as to the best course to
follow in the event of finding a rattler with one in
bed. To jump, or not to jump, that was the ques-
tion. I was strongly for jumping, but McSandy had
his doubts: he feared that the rattler would "get"
him ere he was halfway to the door, and would strike
even in mid-air — yes, sir. I brought up the hoop-
snake legend, "Why, yes, sir," McSandy responded,
"that's all right. I 've seen them fellers many a time
down in the Argentine. He puts his tail in his mouth,
and starts to roll, and roll, and — say, I 'd hate to
have one of them fellers a-hooping after me. Joint-
snake? — the feller that breaks in little bits when
you hit him and then joins up together again? No,
I ain't ever seen them do it, but I reckon it's so, all
right." Twenty feet was his estimate of the length
of red racers that had crossed his path, while as for
speed, greased lightning was a weak comparison.
He had full belief also in the deadly nature of
the tarantula's, scorpion's, and centipede's "sting,"

228 CALIFORNIA DESERT TRAILS

with vivid instances to allege in support. When at
last we had cooled off enough for sleep his mind was
still busy with snakes, and at intervals I heard him
softly murmur, "You bet," or, "Son-of-a-gun, he
is," until final silence fell.

On McSandy's invitation I had resolved to change
from my intended route to Warner's, and accom-
pany him by a much shorter trail, passing the Indian
villages of San Ygnacio and San Ysidro, places I
had long wished to visit.

I bade good-bye, then, to Anza and his band when
next day we turned westward and made for the
mountains. I had meant to visit Thousand Palm
Caiion (a second caiion of the name; the other had
been taken early in my journey) which opens two or
three miles farther up Coyote Creek; but through
the glasses it did not look inviting, showing only the
usual vast fan of gravel, boulders, and brush. I sup-
pose the palms are hidden in the upper gorge. There
were miles of tedious travel before we reached the
foot of the canon up which our trail ran, but we
passed this before the sun was high, and it was
still early when we commenced the steep ascent.
Agaves and mesquit continued with us, but soon
there appeared willows, sycamores, and occasionally
a palm or two, giving interesting variety.

After a mile or two of warm climbing we found a
spring on the hillside and stopped for a rest and the
luxury of drinking without the medium of a canteen.
The ground about the spring was ablaze with the
superb cardinal flower, Lobelia splendens, a plant
which surely represents Nature's last effort in inten-

TO WARNER'S SPRINGS 229

sity of color. Even more charming were a few wild
roses. Meeting them here, their frank, innocent look
seemed almost touching by contrast with the un-
gentle desert forms just left behind.

The trail was far too steep and rough for riding.
I was close behind McSandy, leading Kaweah,
when I saw my supposedly experienced friend stop
and draw his hand across a lobe of the common
Opuntia basilaris cactus, remarking that Burbank
was a fraud, for here was spineless cactus growing
wild. Mr. Burbank was promptly avenged: it took
half an hour to free McSandy's hand of the worst of
the hairlike prickles, and when we came to the next
water and stopped for lunch he spent an industrious
hour in finishing the job.

Though this trail is little known and not given on
any map, it is plain, from the depth to which it is
worn, that it has long been used by the Indians in
passing between their desert and mountain villages.
The rock that gave us shade was blackened with
the smoke of ancient fires, and in the earth I found
beads, scraps of pottery, and yellowed bones some
of which had a strong look of homo sapiens. Near by
were deep holes in the solid rock where generations
of squaws had ground their flour.

The trail now became yet steeper, one of the steep-
est, indeed, that I ever tackled. Kaweah was a good
deal worried, and often inquired with earnest gaze
if I knew where I was going? We made progress by
scrambles of forty or fifty yards at a time, some-
times in the bouldery creek-bed, sometimes on slip-
pery mountain-side.

230 CALIFORNIA DESERT TRAILS

The changes in vegetation as we climbed were
full of interest, though the circumstances were not
the best for noting them. In the wet creek bottom
grew masses of the same wonderful lobelia, often
six feet tall and with flowering heads a foot in length.
Sycamores and alders mingled with the willows, yet
here and there the desert-loving palms held on,
though the altitude was well over three thousand
feet. On the open mountain-side the wild plum was
common, now hung thickly with yellow fruit. The
California sumac, Rhus ovata, made blots of heavy
color on the pale background of rock. A little higher
the mountain mahogany, Cercocarpus, came in, an
attractive, individual bush, at this time silvery with
the silky seed-vessels. Then scrub-oaks appeared,
and next the ever-welcome juniper. Yuccas still
held their own on rocky ledges, looking strangely
out of place. Yet higher, masses of dull gold that
had been puzzling me proved to be groves of the
interesting Adenostoma sparsifolium or false cedar,
with bright red bark, slender foliage, and huge clus-
ters of white blossom that were now faded to golden
brown. The sturdy manzanita was another goodly
sight; but most so of all, on nearing the crest, the
pines, often sighed for, who now gave me kingly
welcome. On this high sky-line they were finely
pictorial and as much the unquestioned monarchs
as ever. I have heard that it is a custom in mountain-
ous parts of Spain to brush the face of a new-bom
child with a twig from a pine. I think something of
the kind has happened to me, for among these trees
I find that my face unconsciously takes on a smile.

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TO WARNER'S SPRINGS 231

It was nearly sunset when we struggled up the
last rise and crossed the pass at about five thousand
feet. A short descent brought us to water, but forage
was scanty, and tired as we were it was necessary
to push on. Two miles farther we climbed a second
crest, and looked down on a little green valley. This
was the home of old Santiago Segundo, the patri-
arch of the San Ygnacio Indians. At the house we
found Santiago, his son Felipe, three or four pic-
turesque squaws, and half a dozen unfriendly dogs.
The old man was a memorable figure. Tall and well
built, with features more of Egyptian than of our
Western Indian cast, and a bearing of natural dig-
nity, from sandalled feet to thick white hair he
looked the ideal Indian chief.

Our request for permission to camp by the stream
was refused (the only time I have been denied at an
Indian's, but I could not complain, for the Indian
has good reason to be suspicious of white strangers).
It was dark when we came to a larger valley en-
circled by pine-clad heights, where we found the
rancheria of San Ygnacio. It is a romantic situation,
like an eagle's eyrie on the craggy crest of the moun-
tains: on one hand is the desert, far and steep below;
on the other the long seaward slope, fifty miles as
the crow flies, to the Pacific.

Disappointment met us at the first house we
tried, which belonged to the tribal policeman; but
the next attempt brought better fortune, for smiling
Mary Jane Segundo, the very type of good-humor,
made us welcome to camp, hay, anything we wished.
This was a relief, for the day's travel, perhaps twenty

232 CALIFORNIA DESERT TRAILS

miles in distance, had been equal to forty on the
level, and I had not ridden any part of the way.
When I made bold to ask if we might share the
family supper — "Sure you may," came the reply
from the gloom where Mary Jane hovered with fork
and lantern over a crackling fire.

It was an excellent meal. Eggs fried to a charm,
frijoles at their best, wild honey fresh out of the
rocks, coffee at perfection, and such biscuit as one
seldom meets on this mortal plane. There was
tasaje too, but not for me. I have had experiences
with "jerky" that after lapse of years remain a
solemnizing memory. The household consisted of
our hostess, her mother (who carried her years so
lightly that I took her for a sister), and two cousins,
Jose and Dionysio, the latter a boy. A good deal of
laughter went with remarks, in their own language,
of which we were plainly the object. It might well
have been our appetites that were the joke.

I was able to bring Mary Jane items of news of
her relations on the desert. This made us doubly
welcome, and it was altogether a pleasant evening
that I spent in the smoky adobe. The room itself
was worth observing, festooned with ropes of chile
and tasaje, adorned with chromos of religious sub-
jects, and hallowed by a tiny shrine with candle and
crucifix.

As there seemed a prospect of rain we elected to
sleep in the barn with the rats. My companion again
attributed every disturbance to snakes, and twice
during the night made a tour of the premises with
lantern and revolver. As it happened, I killed a

TO WARNER'S SPRINGS 233

rattler a few yards away on first going out in the
morning, whereupon McSandy declared that after
this he was going to shoot whenever he heard " them
sons-of-guns snooping round."

The daylight view of San Ygnacio confirmed its at-
tractiveness. The little valley was deliciously green,
water was abundant, and the surroundings were
almost Alpine in boldness and novelty. The air was
superb, and the summer climate delightful. Eight or
ten families make up the little settlement. Perched
on the rocks beside Mary Jane's adobe was the
may'-a-nol or storage basket in which Indian house-
wives keep their stores of acorns, pifion nuts, or
other wild provision. In the house were a number of
handsome baskets for various uses; jars and ollas of
native pottery, without decoration but excellent in
form ; bows and arrows, with which Dionysio, as he
told me, was able to kill rabbits at forty or fifty
yards; throwing-sticks for the same purpose; and
much of the paraphernalia of the old Indian ways
of life. The rumor having spread that a man was
taking pictures, the children of the village assembled
for this thrilling experience. When I sent them for
their bows and arrows, with a view to a character-
istic group, some of the young warriors returned
with weapons taller than themselves.

Down a steep road that followed the windings of
San Ysidro Creek we took our way for Warner's
Springs. This wooded country of oaks, pines, and
cedars was enchanting to me. It seemed incredible
that one day's travel could so change every aspect
but that of the sky; though even that was a more

234 CALIFORNIA DESERT TRAILS

cheerful blue, no longer the pale, glary azure of the
desert. Grass waved along the roadside — what a
contrast to chollas! Late flowers brightened the
path, replacing gray burro-weed and snaky ocotillo.
Kingly oaks for dull mesquit; winey breath of cedar
instead of acrid alkaline dust; frank bird in place of
furtive reptile — it was a blessed exchange. And
yet, and yet — already I felt the magic, the mag-
netism, of the old, wonderful desert, drawing me
back: back to its dreariness, silence, and secrecy,
its cruelty of heat and thirst, its infinite expanse, its
ageless mystery and calm, its threat of death, its
passionless repose. I am no misanthrope : I love my
fellow men, indeed, I eagerly claim my right in
mortality. But there is a presence in that quietude,
a sense of wisdom and of the sadness that goes with
it, which something in me recognizes as brotherhood
too. The mountains, the ocean, the forest, go deep
in their spell, but the desert goes deepest of all.

McSandy, anxious to reach civilization and sup-
plies, had gone on ahead. Kaweah and I were well
content to idle in this elysium of roadside springs,
fresh green fodder, and beguiling sights and sounds.
Some few miles along, a neat little house appeared,
the owner sitting patriarchally under its sheltering
oaks. It proved to be Sibimoat, capitan of the Indi-
ans of San Ysidro. Half a dozen young bucks were
loafing on the porch, inert, hardly speaking, simply
enjoying the passage of time, while their saddled
ponies stood about with drooping heads. I had often
known Kaweah to act as mutual friend and breaker
of ice when we came among Indians. However far

TO WARNER'S SPRINGS 235

from home, he is spotted at once as of Indian breed,
and often recognized as having been present at
some fiesta or other foregathering. "Ah-h-ha, where
you get that pony?" "Francisco Patencio, Palm
Springs," I would answer. "Ah, si, I know: good
pony you get: how much you pay?" — and so we
were launched. Indians and Mexicans never forget
a horse, and more easily recall the rider by his horse
than the horse by his rider.

The San Ysidro Indians' farming land lies scat-
tered along the course of the creek. For miles I saw
below me little fenced scraps of bottom land planted
with beans, potatoes, com, or barley. The barley
was being harvested with the sickle, as it has been
ever since the padres taught the California tribes to
supplement Nature's roots, seeds, and game by a
little — not too much — exertion on their own part.
San Ysidro village itself is a dreary hamlet of a dozen
typical Indian houses, a tiny cemetery, and a brush
ramada for the accommodation of visitors to the
yearly fiesta.

By now we had left the pines and were travelling
through less inviting country, so I was not sorry to
approach a wide valley which I recognized as the
Valle de San Jose, or Warner's Ranch. This tract of
nearly fifty thousand acres is one of the last of the
old land grants to remain unbroken since Mexican
times. Over the valley hung the smoke of a forest
fire.

The road ran steadily down, opening a view of
the timbered Volcan Mountain far to the south.
Finding a trail that made direct for the settlement

236 CALIFORNIA DESERT TRAILS

we plunged through thickets of fragrant chamise
and glades ennobled with oaks, and at early evening
came to what was formerly the Indian village of Agua
Caliente. Some years ago the old population were
evicted and their neat cottages coolly appropriated
by the whites. The place is now known as Warner's
Springs, and has become a summer resort on a small
scale, the attraction being the hot sulphur springs
from which it took its old Spanish name.

McSandy made for his old bivouac, in the dis-
mantled Indian church. Apart from scruples on the
religious score, which McSandy thought high-flown,
I preferred the open air, so chose a spot beside the
warm creek for my camp. It is reported by some old
traveller that the Indians of Agua Caliente were in
the habit, on cold nights, of sleeping in the creek,
with the grassy bank for pillow. At this season there
was no need to adopt this simple dodge. Farther on
in my journey I found people in Imperial Valley
soaking their couches with cold water before going
to bed, for better comfort on sultry nights.

On calling at the store for mail and the news I
learned that two days after I passed Clay Point a
party of three men met disaster a few miles farther
south. One perished of thirst, the others barely
escaped with their lives. ^

1 While preparing these pages at least four cases of this kind have
come to my notice in the local newspaper. The latest, a typical one,
reports the end of a prospector who was found dying beside one of
the so-called "poison springs" on the northern part of the desert.
He had reached the place famishing for water and probably had drunk
too much. So every year the desert takes its toll.

CHAPTER XV

A DESERT RIDE: WARNER'S SPRINGS TO AGUA

CALIENTE

Don Juan Warner — The March of Progress — Desertwards again

— The cowboy at home — "A durn boulevard" — Warner's Pass
and General Kearny — A pioneer storekeeper — San Felipe In-
dians: a funeral — Voices of the Night — The deserted village —
The Ranchita Mine — Potency of a fiesta — Kaweah disgruntled

— La Puerta de San Felipe — The Mormon Battalion — Sanguine
settlers — Elysium of Indians — The Vallecito — An old stage-
station : its memories — A lucky encounter — Carrizo Creek Canon

— Forest fires — Camp at Agua Caliente Springs — Grewsome
yarns — Travellers who "stayed" — Sunrise and the Sun — An
easy day, and sunset.

THERE is not much of attraction at Warner's
Springs. A pathetic interest, however, hangs
about the row of adobe cottages, now used to house
visitors who come in summer for the medicinal baths.
I felt inclined to refuse payment for baths to the
present owners and hand over my "two bits" per
tub to the first Indian I might meet. Such of the
old houses as have not been put to use are far on
the road to the quick obliteration that awaits any
neglected building of adobe. The church was still
intact as regards walls, but cracks were starting, and
the roof was fast going to pieces. Inside, paltry tour-
ists have scratched their names, and stray prospect-
ors, like my poet, camp in comers and fry sacri-
legious flapjacks at the padre's fireplace in the tiny
vestry adjoining.^

^ Recently, a year or so after the time of ray visit, I received from
the Reverend Father Doyle, priest of the Mission of San Antonio at

238 CALIFORNIA DESERT TRAILS

The ranch takes Its name from one John or Jona-
than Warner, a native of Connecticut, to whom it
was granted by the Mexican Government a few
years before the cession of CaHfornia to the United
States. Of him Httle is remembered beyond the
legend that to his intimates he was Juan Largo
(Long John) ; to others it was ever Don Juan — a
vaguely interesting item. The original adobe ranch-
house has wholly vanished : its site was pointed out
to me by a Volcan Indian who remembers it well.
In Warner's days it formed a halfway house be-
tween Yuma and the young "Pueblo de Nuestra
Seiiora la Reina de los Angeles," and was the far-
thest outpost of civilization, and indeed of human-
ity, in this direction, being the first house met after
leaving Yuma, well over a hundred miles away.

Warner's Ranch is to-day a vast cattle range.
Leagues of sweet grass, with shade and ample water,
make it a stockman's paradise. There are wide
stretches of arable land besides, and ere long, no
doubt, the real-estate dealer will adjudge it ripe for
his little schemes. A town-site will be platted: the
truthful "folder" will cast the net: free excursions,
perhaps a barbecue, will draw the trustful "sucker"
gently in: and Warner's will proudly join the March
of Progress.

I stayed for two days, by which time I had cleared
the store of its fruits and vegetables. Then bidding

Pala, where the dispossessed Indians of Warner's now live, an invi-
tation to attend the reopening and dedication of the old church. By
the Father's energy, the building has been acquired, repaired, and
restored to the use of such few of the Indian parishioners as remain
within reach.

TO AGUA CALIENTE 239

good-bye to McSandy I again turned my face desert-
wards. The forest fire that I had seen burning on
the western edge of the ranch had been put out, but
another had started in the Laguna Mountains to
the southeast. I had meant to take that country on
my way, in order to get as much as possible of
mountain pleasures before tackling the long desert
stretches that lay ahead. This now was barred, and
I viewed the distant column of smoke with no little
disgust.

For hours I rode south and east through the great
valley, the summer-yellowed grass varied with dark-
clustering oaks or islands of aromatic brush. From
these came the shouts of those jolly pirates the
Steller jays, or the guffaws of red-headed blackbirds,
like "Laughter holding both his sides." Nearing the
eastern edge of the ranch, patches of cactus and
cat-claw met us with reminders that beyond the
next ridge stretched the thorny, dreary desert. As
I ate lunch beside a spring under a hillside oak,
thoughts of the torturing heat of coming noonday
camps would intrude, but I turned my eyes to the
pine-clad heights and revelled in draught after
draught of the cool, pure liquid tinkling by at arm's
length.

I diverged here to call on an old acquaintance
whom I had last known as a vaquero on a ranch a
few miles to the south. He had now "given hostages
to Fortune," and was established as cattleman on
his own account. I came to his place about evening
and met a hearty welcome. It was amusing to see
how the family-man had qualified the cowboy of a

240 CALIFORNIA DESERT TRAILS

year or two before, and to note the air, mingling the
old and the new, with which my friend ruled what
he termed his "outfit." The baby was addressed in
a dialect quite unlike the orthodox — more in the
Roaring Camp or Circle Bar vein. A special event
was the young lady's first appearance on horseback.
This, at the age of twelve weeks, I think beats any-
thing offered in circuses.

The cowboy's liking for unlimited range was illus-
trated by my friend's complaint that new-comers
were crowding him out. A neighbor a mile away in
one direction and another four miles off in the other
were the grounds of objection; and the road was
"getting to be a dum boulevard: there were two
fellows went by yesterday." As this is the main
route from Warner's to Borego Springs I hoped the
swelling tide of travel might brighten the lot of
that little Devonshire woman down in the lonesome
valley.

A road runs southeasterly from Warner's along
the flank of the Volcan Mountain, and by it I took
my way next day toward the desert. It is the old
Warner's Pass route between desert and coast. By
this trail came General Kearny and his dragoons
with Kit Carson in company, on his long march in
1846 for the conquest of California; and it was from
Warner's Ranch that he advanced to the battle,
not much more than a skirmish, of San Pasqual,
thirty miles to the west, where he met defeat at the
hands of the despised Californians under Andreas
Pico. Later, in the early years of American rule, this
was the route of the Butterfield Overland Stages,

TO AGUA CALIENTE 241

which carried mails and passengers between St.
Louis and San Francisco on a bi-weekly schedule,
with twenty-one days for running time.

Too soon the oaks were left behind, and with
them went the shade. The road trended steadily
down, and already the desert seemed to be sucking
my vital juices. Before us opened the San Felipe
Valley, midway between mountains and desert and
showing the characteristic features of both. The
moving specks on the gray expanse were cattle, for
it was still stockman's country, though rainfall here
is unreliable, and disaster often points the moral of
the cattleman's besetting temptation, overstocking
the range.

An old pioneer, Wilson by name, keeps a pretence
of a store on this road, about midway between
Warner's and the San Felipe. As a store it is merely
a joke, and I take its real purpose to be that of a
trap to detain the passer-by until the old fellow has
satisfied his curiosity. He is the antiquity of the
region, but unfortunately is so deaf that conversa-
tion, short of roaring, was impossible. The process of
business is simple. The customer walks about and
collects what he needs, if he can find it, from the all
but empty shelves, while the old gentleman hobbles
close behind and keeps the reckoning.

A cluster of decaying adobes at the foot of the
mountain marked the deserted village of the San
Felipe Indians. This small rancheria shared the fate
of the Agua Caliente village when the Warner
Indians were evicted, fifteen years ago. One or two
families, whose instinct for the old home was tcx)

242 CALIFORNIA DESERT TRAILS

strong to be defeated, still live about the locality.
A few miles farther on I met a little procession of
three wagons. On the seat of the first were two In-
dian women : one was driving, the other held upright
a small wooden cross. In the bed of the wagon was
a child's coffin, roughly made and unpainted. The
other wagons held Indian men, women, and chil-
dren, some of whom carried withered flowers and
greenery. It was the funeral of a San Felipe boy on
its way to the old burying-ground. The sad-eyed
women, the lonely road, the sun, the dust, the old,
universal errand, brought home to me a sense of
gratitude in our common humanity ; and as I stood
uncovered, I claimed the Indian child for flesh of
my flesh, spirit of my spirit, in no empty phrase
my little brother.

It was past noon when we came to the San Felipe
ranch-house. The old, picturesque house of adobe
which I knew twenty years before had been re-
placed by a pretentious building that was out of
keeping with its surroundings. The owner seldom
visits the place, which is left to the management of
Teodoro, the Indian vaquero, with a caretaker for
the house. I bought some hay for Kaweah, and
camped near the house. The night was enlivened by
episodes between the coyotes and the ranch dogs,
Bones, a greyhound, and Maje, a mongrel. "Bo-o-
o-o-o-o-ones!" went the coyotes in derisive chorus,
ending with howls of laughter: then " Ma-a-a-a-a-
a-aje! Ya-a-ah, Ma-a-a-a-a-a-aje!" and again fits
of maudlin glee. Out would charge Bones and the
Major with robustious challenge, but the enemy,

TO AGUA CALIENTE 243

with no stomach for close quarters, were off like the
wind. They were back like the wind, too, to break
out again the moment the dogs settled down, which
they chose to do close by my sleeping-quarters.

From the San Felipe two roads go to the desert,
one continuing down the valley, the other, which I
took, climbing the shoulder of a mountain to the
south, and making a circuit behind it. In a rincon
or elbow at the foot of the rise lay the hamlet of
Banner, a place of some repute thirty years ago,
when, with the mountain town of Julian, a few miles
to the west, it was the centre of a lively mining
region. Now, the population could be counted on
the fingers of one hand. The only inhabitant I saw
seemed to typify the place — an old, old man, bent
and silent, who crept to and fro on the veranda of
an echoing "hotel."

The trail here turned eastward, making a sharp
ascent. As usual, the change of altitude was at once
registered in the vegetation. Sizable bushes took the
place of low and scanty brush : tall yucca spears ap-
peared, their creamy candle-flames now long burned
out. Then live-oaks began to spot the pale slopes
with blots of umber. Shafts of old mines were nu-
merous, and here and there stood decrepit cabins,
long unused, surrounded with a litter of rusty
shovels, drills, and crowbars, and specimens of min-
eral.

On a shoulder of the mountain I came upon the
remains of a once notable mine, the Ranchita. The
machinery was still in place, and the ten-stamp
battery stood open-jawed as if begging one more

244 CALIFORNIA DESERT TRAILS

meal of pay rock. There was something ghostly
about the place. The engines, the complexity of
pipes, shafts, and belts, the assaying-room with its
furnace, retorts, and regiments of bottles, all had a
look of tragedy, as if some deed of horror had oc-
curred, and caused the whole crew, men and mas-
ters, to drop their business on the word and flee the
place for ever.

A spring of good water and a few old fruit trees
made an inviting halting-place. I had put Kaweah
to graze on a precious scrap of grass, and sat down
to my lunch, when a man on horseback came clatter-
ing down the trail. It is an event to meet anyone on
these scantily travelled paths, so to stop and com-
pare notes is the natural thing. This young fellow,
coatless and baggageless, had come from some lonely
mine twenty miles off and was casually going up to
Julian, ten miles away on the top of the opposite
mountain, to "take in" o. fiesta of horse- racing and
general hilarity, with a barbecue and an all-night
dance to wind up with. To-morrow morning he
would light-heartedly start for home, fully satisfied
with his little jaunt. He was a friendly chap, and
suggested my turning back and "taking it in" with
him; and to encourage me he displayed a handbill
which declared "every cowboy and cowgirl in the
universe" to be welcome. When I pointed out that
I did not fall under either head he replied that any
fellow that rides a pony was eligible. But my road
lay eastward; and with a "Well, then, adios!" and
a wave of the hand, he skittered away down the
mountain.

TO AGUA CALIENTE 245

An hour more of climbing took us to the divide.
Kaweah is never happy in this sort of country. He
reminds me of the ingenious excuse of the defeated
Syrians: "their gods were not gods of the mountains
but of the plain." It is always weary work with him
on rocky trails, and puts my temper on a strain.
So it was a discontented pair that plodded down
that interminable canon of sand and boulders, jok-
ingly termed a road. The afternoon was sultry, with
clouds to south and west portending storm, though
eastward over the desert the sun glared down as
fiercely as ever.

The canon opened at last into a brushy expanse
called Mason Valley, from the name of some old
settler. Through a narrow gateway in the mountain
wall to the north, known formerly as the Puerta de
San Felipe, the old stage-road climbed up to the
San Felipe Valley, and thence to Warner's and the
coast. The first vehicles to pass through it were
the wagon-train of the "Mormon Battalion," under
Lieutenant- Colonel Cooke, in 1847, on their long
trek from Fort Leavenworth to San Diego. The colo-
nel has given a vivid picture of the difficulties they
met at this point, where a way had to be hewed with
axes through the rocky pass before the wagons could
proceed.^

A naturalist friend who makes Mason Valley his
occasional home had made me welcome to the use
of his cabin and, much more important, his hay-
stack. About dusk we arrived at the place, but

^ The Conquest of New Mexico and California, by P. St. George
Cooke: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1878.

246 CALIFORNIA DESERT TRAILS

found he was away. Unluckily, too, his well was out
of order, so we had to go on to the next settler's for
water. A rainfall averaging two to five Inches would
not seem to offer much Inducement to the farmer;
yet here, as at Borego, three or four men have taken
up homesteads, and are holding on In hope that
some day matters will Improve, through the striking
of abundant water by deeper borings. Meanwhile
it Is mainly the jackrabblts that profit by the crops
planted by the pioneers of Mason Valley, and, in-
deed, the jacks of this region are giants of their
kind. As they bounded away with that Inimitable
grace and ease, I was almost tricked Into thinking
they were antelope.

This valley is a natural plantation of agave, and
I saw many traces of the pits in which generations
of Indians have baked a-moosh'. These Indians, like
those of Santa Rosa, were happily placed as regards
climate. Within the distance of two or three hours'
travel they had the perfect winter temperature of
the desert or Ideal summer surroundings among the
timber and running streams of the Laguna Moun-
tains. With a surplus of game, and a wide choice of
vegetable food, their life, on the physical side, was
far from being one of hardship. The canned beef
and phonographs, "wrappers" and trousers, we
have conferred, have not made them sincerely hap-
pier, and the rattle-trap houses we persuade them
to live in are but a means to consumption and pneu-
monia. It is seldom a kindness to give anything the
need of which has not come to be felt.

From Mason Valley the road passed over a divide

TO AGUA CALIENTE 247

into a larger valley called the Vallecito. Low moun-
tains bounded it on the north ; on the south rose the
higher wall of the Lagunas, with pines trimming the
edge and seeming to reproach me for the visit I had
failed to pay. This long caiion, dropping from valley
to valley, is the course of one of the desert's consid-
erable streams, the Carrizo. Only a trained hydro-
grapher would suspect it, however, for the flow is
wholly underground for nearly all of the year, and
comes to the surface only at times of unusual rain.

The heat was intense, for we were nearing desert
level, and the landscape wavered like a picture on a
screen. Ocotillos covered the valley closely and the
hillsides more scantily, a few struggling up to the
crests where their skinny arms moved in the breeze
as if signalling of some rare sight that I should come
and see.

At the lower end of the valley some arrangement
of the strata brings the moisture to the surface to
form a cienaga, with a few mesquits and much salt
grass and sacaton. Near by stood the long-deserted
stage-station, an ample, picturesque building of
what at first sight I took to be adobe bricks of the
usual kind, but found were blocks of natural sod
from the cienaga. It is the only structure of the kind
that I know, and the material appears to answer Its
purpose well, better in fact than adobe. It was Inter-
esting to note the rough but solid construction. Not
only the walls and the square pillars of the veranda,
but the roof, was built of sod, in flat bricks about
nine by eighteen by five inches. The rafters were of
natural pine, unsquared. On this, crosswise, were

248 CALIFORNIA DESERT TRAILS

mats of thin willow poles, interwoven with strips of
rawhide now brittle with age. On this, crosswise
again, was a layer of tules: then the sods, closely
fitted together, and cemented and surfaced with
adobe mud. A similar mortar was used in the walls
and pillars.

In the wide sunny silence the old house made a
charming if desolate picture. These structures made
of the very earth have preeminently that air of fit-
ness to their surroundings that is the first command-
ment of taste in building. Hence the peculiar beauty
of our California Missions. Simplicity is inherent in
the material, for elaboration is impossible in adobe.
The low round arch is its highest flight, and the
style accords with our gentle coast landscapes al-
most as if the building had grown spontaneously
from the soil. Though other fashions of architecture
are greater, statelier, or more ennobled by genius
and imagination, no other is so natural, so coherent,
so familiarly pleasing, in a word, so humane. The
old Vallecitos station, slowly rounding and crum-
bling back to its original earth, seems in the same
way suited and almost necessary to its place.

I would have given a good deal for the power of
visualizing the scenes that this old place has wit-
nessed. Seventy years is not a long term, and the
Warner's Pass stage-road has at no time seen any-
thing that could be called a tide of travel: but for
grip and interest I fancy that the life lived and the
tales told round that old fireplace would hold their
own against the best that any Wayside Inn could
show. Many of those pioneers, the very last of whom

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TO AGUA CALIENTE 249

are now close upon the final destination, came this
way, with scars of Apache arrows and notches on
rifle-butts that meant stories that would make
"movie" men bite their fingers for envy. Here
passed bands of jingling caballeros in the ante-
Gringo days of the forties, and here came Kearny's
dragoons and Cooke's nondescript "Mormon Bat-
talion," and many of those Great Plainsmen to
whom every trail from the Mississippi to the Coast
was like one's private short cut 'cross lots. Much of
the great California gold rush came this way, and a
later generation of gold-seekers found this the handi-
est route for quests into the Superstitions or C6co-
pas, Chocolates or Huachucas. Engineers, from
Lieutenant Emory's 1846 Military Reconnaissance
of the Thirty-second Parallel down to the party
whom I met near here a few years ago looking out
aeroplane landings, have found Vallecitos Springs
invaluable as a base of operations. And it may be
reckoned that many a fugitive from justice has
found this the easiest way to cheat the sheriff by the
time-honored method of "skipping across the line,"
since the Mexican border is but a few miles away.

All the morning I had seen hardly a token of ani-
mal life: a road-runner perhaps, but no other bird,
nor beast, nor even reptile. Here I found flycatchers
and a woodpecker or two gathered in a cottonwood
near the water-trough that the county authorities
have placed here for the benefit of cattle and cattle-
men. Dragon-flies were patrolling over the cienaga,
and hornets were busy at their masonic labors on
a branch overhead. It was altogether a seductive

250 CALIFORNIA DESERT TRAILS

place, and I had to resist an inclination to let the
afternoon slip away in a prolonged siesta.

At a little cabin on the farther side of the cienaga I
found a lonely settler who runs a few head of cattle
on these dry ranges. With him, as it happened, was
a prospector who for years had made this part of
the desert his beat. This meeting made my oppor-
tunity for seeing a remarkable gorge, known as Split
Mountain Cafion, which I had been warned not to
attempt to explore without a guide who knew the
intricacies of the "bad-lands" that must be crossed
to reach it. By good luck this prospector needed to
visit certain claims of his near the outlet of the
cafion. We agreed to join forces, and arranged to
meet next day at a spot a few miles farther on called
Agua Caliente — the almost inevitable name for
any place in California, or Mexico either, where
warm springs occur.

Next morning, then, I took my way again down
the Carrizo Creek Caiion. Crossing a divide, the
high country I had lately left was soon lost to view,
and on either side rose pale, ashy hills that dipped
lower and lower till they sank into the level. They
looked the very stronghold of drought, a scattering
of drab brush only serving to mark their ugliness
and hopeless aridity. The ocotillos grew few and
small, even the agaves were yellow and stunted.
When the road dropped to the dry river-bed, smoke-
trees and desert willows appeared as in duty bound,
but they had a pinched, last gasp look that intensi-
fied the misery of the landscape. The loose sand
made the hardest kind of going, and the sun dealt

TO AGUA CALIENTE 251

his fiercest stroke. Over the mountains to the south
hung the brown haze of a forest fire which had
burned intermittently for a week. The thought of
those smoking hillsides going up with crackle and
roar in league-long sheets of flame gave the final
touch to the torture of the heat. I felt as if the skin
of my face would crack and shrivel off, and wondered
if any mortal man could possibly be fighting that
fire that day at close range.

At length I saw against the gray hills a tiny spot
of green that I hailed as my landmark. Arrived there
I found my man with his two horses already in
camp. He seemed surprised to see me, and remarked
that he had not expected me to show up: had
thought that I should back out and go by the near-
est way to Imperial Valley, seeing I was so near.
Split Mountain, he considered, was a crazy place
for any one to go without better reason than I had
named.

The spot was pleasant, for a desert camp. Three
springs of good though warm water broke out on
the hillside and fed a strip of green grass, dotted
with mesquits, palms, and tufts of arrowweed. Some
mineral contained in the water has built up mounds
of a whitish deposit, giving the appearance of gey-
sers, or miniature volcanoes. As the next day would
be Sunday, and the forage would carry us over, we
agreed to postpone our start till Monday. In the
evening we had a small camp-fire — not for warmth
but for the look of it — and Wellson entertained
me with episodes in the lives of sundry Coyote
Charlies, Shoot-'em-up Smiths, and other local

252 CALIFORNIA DESERT TRAILS

celebrities. He had also grewsome tales of men who
had come by their death in the region we were about
to visit. The spot where Frenchy's boot, containing
a leg-bone and part of a cake of Navy Plug, was
found: the "monument" that Newt Dolan must
have missed in the dark and so taken the wrong
branch of the dry-wash from which he never
emerged, and other points of interest, he would
show me on Monday if he did n't forget. In most
cases, though, there was no memento: they had
merely, as he compactly put it, "gone in and
stayed."

A case in his own knowledge was a young fellow
from Syracuse, who had arranged last summer to
meet Wellson at Carrizo Springs and accompany
him through Split Mountain Canon. As he did not
arrive when expected, Wellson went on alone, leav-
ing word, in case the other came later, that he was
not to try to follow him, but wait for his return.
Next day the young man appeared at Carrizo
Springs, and, disregarding the advice, started, with
a small quantity of food and water, to follow Well-
son by his tracks. He had not been seen or heard of
since: the bad-lands engulfed him and, like many
more, he "stayed."

It was fine to lie at leisure next morning, careless
of time, and watch the coming of day. An uncertain
pallor stole into the east while the morning star was
still low in the horizon. It strengthened impercep-
tibly to a silvery light, unearthly and shy and holy.
A stain of orange came, flushing quickly to crimson ;
but the color, vivid as it was, did not escape beyond

TO AGUA CALIENTE 253

a narrow belt of horizon, and met the indigo of the
upper sky, where the stars still shone, with scarcely
a tinge of change. Then over the crimson came a
glow of gold. The stars grew pale and suddenly were
quenched, while the gold gathered into one spot of
quivering glory intolerably bright. A moment of
crisis, and — up strode The Sun and began flinging
abroad his terrible largesse. Well, Tyrant, I am but
a puny son of one of thy puny planets, but — hark:
I defy thee!

The day was helped along by occasional visits to
the largest of the springs, where a bathing-hole has
been formed, I do not know whether by Nature or
man. A tall rock made a slip of shade where we hud-
dled between times. The horses strayed from Ber-
muda grass to screw-beans and back, or lay wonder-
ing what would be the penalty to-morrow for this
unwonted ease to-day. At evening, after watching
all day the dull changes on the colorless hills, I was
once again startled by the magic of sunset. Leagues
of gray slope and plain, that had seemed thrice dead,
drained of color, were changed in a breath to hues
the most enchanting and spiritual. With no divinity
at work, could mere physics, laws of refraction and
so forth, achieve this heavenly splendor by blind,
automatic result?

CHAPTER XVI

A DESERT RIDE: AGUA CALIENTE TO "SAN FELIPE

CITY"

Prospectors' rites — En route for Split Mountain — The cavalcade

— The campomoche — Bad-lands again — Miners' Hell — Dig-
ging for water — A spectacular canon — Gloom at midday —
Nightfall in a canon — Fish Creek Mountain — Impossible water

— A "dry camp" — Kaweah in distress — Horse and master —
Tragedy again — An optimistic city — Conversational finance —
Feats of the sun — A^ depressing landscape — Approaching Su-
perstition Mountain — A warm canon — A prospector's "close
call" — A waterless region — Evening luxury.

LIKE every genuine prospector I ever met,
Wellson had three articles of faith without
observance of which no day could hopefully begin:
one was flapjacks, another bacon, the third cofifee.
(The second of them I find it wise to abjure when
there is a thirsty day's work ahead.) Thus, though
we were up at half-past four, the sun was already
hot when we started from Agua Caliente. Our horses
carried, beside our other baggage, all the water that
we had vessels to hold, viz. : three canvas water-bags
and four canteens, giving eleven gallons altogether.
At one place on our route it was possible we might
get a little water by digging, and in hope of it we
had borrowed a shovel from our Vallecitos acquaint-
ance. Failing this, we should not find any till next
day, and the horses must have water once at least
before then.

The best known entrance to Split Mountain
Caiion is from Carrizo Springs, some miles to the

TO SAN FELIPE CITY 255

east of Agua Caliente; but Wellson believed he could
find a direct route through the bad-lands that would
save us that detour. We struck directly northeast,
over a rising plain dotted with dwarfed agaves and
ocotillos. Ahead was a high divide formed by the
meeting of the flanks of Vallecitos and Fish Creek
Mountains. It is between these two mountains that
Split Mountain Canon runs, a mere rift in width,
but deep and clear-cut. To the south there gradu-
ally opened a view of Coyote Mountain (not the
peak of that name that I had passed on leaving
Borego Springs), a handsomely shaped block of
dull reddish brown, standing a few miles to the
north of the Mexican border.

Of my companion's two horses, one was generally
used as pack-horse, the other for riding. Now, how-
ever, loaded as all the animals were with bags and
canteens of water, we were both afoot. On a gravelly
bench we found galleta grass growing in tussocks
any one of which would have made a meal for a
truck-horse. It was hard to pass it by, but fortu-
nately Wellson had brought along half a sack of bar-
ley, from which I would draw rations for Kaweah.

It was here that I first identified an insect of bad
reputation, the campomoche. It belongs to the same
family as that ferocious hypocrite, the praying man-
tis, and is a gray, stick-like creature, not easily seen
amid the dry stems of the galleta where it is apt to
be found. Taken into the stomach of horses or cat-
tle, its effect is said to be that of a corrosive poison,
sometimes strong enough to cause death. I am a lit-
tle doubtful regarding this fatal quality of the cam-

256 CALIFORNIA DESERT TRAILS

pomoche, in view of the tendency to exaggeration in
such matters: but the story has come to me from
several sources.

Two hours brought us to the edge of the bad-
lands, in the form of a deep, abrupt barranca, the
first of dozens through which we must thread our
way. In we dived: and, indeed, to plunge into one of
these mazes is much like diving into unknown water:
when, where, or whether one will get out is some-
what a matter of chance. In and out, up and down,
we went for hours, scrambling up and sliddering
down. Now and then we left the horses and climbed
out to get our bearings afresh. It was not reassuring
to see that Wellson was often at fault, though it was
natural, since he was gauging landmarks from an
unfamiliar side.

We reached at length a rim from which we looked
out over a still more intricate piece of country. With
a sweep of the hand my companion remarked,
"There's the worst stretch of country I know, and
I know 'most all the bad layouts from Idaho down.
More men have got lost in that mess of stuff than
any other place I ever saw, and most of 'em are
there yet. Miner's Hell I call it, easy to get in and
the devil to get out. Well, I know where we are,
anyway. I wasn't sure before, but now there'll be
monuments, if we can find 'em, so I reckon we'll
get through."

It was a remarkable sight. Imagine a cauldron of
molten rock, miles wide, thrown by earthquake
shock into the complexity of a choppy sea and then
struck immovable. Looking down on it one would

TO SAN FELIPE CITY 257

say that not a stick or leaf of herbage was there,
still less any animal life in that sterility of vermilion,
ochre, and gray. Life there is of both kinds, but so
scant that it is merely the scientific minimum, al-
most more theory than fact.

Our eyes needed to be on the alert every moment
to get the benefit of the monuments. They were
sometimes a hundred yards, sometimes half a mile
apart, and such casual affairs that without a sort of
instinct one would not know them. However, with
one or two mistakes we worked our way through
and found ourselves in the main caiion. The name
of Split Mountain fairly describes its appearance.
The spectacular part of the defile begins some dis-
tance from the mouth, but already high walls shut
us in, and made a narrow corridor with level floor
of white sand in which a few bits of brush huddled
close to the cliffs for shelter from the blasting sun.

Before getting far into the canon we came to the
place that gave our only chance of water. On a
boulder was dimly written in English and Spanish,
"Water 100 feet West. Dig": with an arrow mark-
ing the direction. Pacing off the distance we looked
for a likely spot and went to work. The first hole
giving no encouragement, we tried another, then a
third : but after half an hour of thirsty work we con-
cluded that it was hopeless, and ceased. Earlier in
the year we might have had success: now the water-
level had sunk out of reach. Traces of others' at-
tempts could be seen, and I hoped that none of them
stood for the last struggle of some fellow mortal.

To us the failure meant pushing ahead at once

258 CALIFORNIA DESERT TRAILS

instead of exploring a certain part of Fish Creek
Mountain that Wellson wished to visit with an eye
to mineral. We found a smoke- tree and made the
most of its hypothetical shade while we ate lunch
and fed and rested the horses. Before going on we
gave them each half a bucket of water, which they
drank eagerly and asked for more; but it was im-
perative to ration the whole party more severely
than we had intended. A good deal had escaped
from the water-bags by leakage, though they had
been soaked all the previous day in the spring.^

We now entered the most striking part of the
gorge, which reminded me of Painted Canon, near
Mecca, which I described in an earlier chapter. The
cliffs here, though they have not the variety of color
of those in Painted Canon, are vertical, like them,
and equally high. The width of the floor is about
the same. There is always a feeling of gloom in these
places. Let the sun pour his blinding rays as he will,
a chill is on the mind. The walls seem to draw closer
about the traveller; the eye itself seems to feel
a sense of dread, and shrinks from realizing the
threatening height.

The gorge continued for several miles. Now and
then some side cleft opened, choked with granite,
here old, there freshly broken. The sky-line was torn
into wild forms as if by blows of a Titan's hammer.
Lean ocotillo or starving creosote stared grimly from

^ These bags, much in vogue in our desert regions, would be im-
proved by providing a heavy reenforcement, preferably of leather,
to cover the bottom and extend a few inches up the sides. Without
this, the pressure of the water in a large bag forces it through the
canvas.

TO SAN FELIPE CITY 259

the rim, or shrank back into niches of the unfriendly
wall. The only bird I saw was a raven, whose slow
wing-beats struck heavily on the well-like air and
whose croak as he flew from point to point before us
seemed to warn us back, and promise dismal conse-
quences if we followed.

Sunset found us nearing the northern outlet of
the canon. In that deep, silent place, the light as it
faded away up the vast walls seemed to be with-
drawing for the last time, clinging and lingering on
the upper heights with the dull glow of dying lava.
Close behind crept like tragedy the ashy shadow.
Now only the topmost edge held the rays, as if
clutching a last hope. For a moment they bright-
ened, and the spectral shapes looking down moved
as if in relief: but on the instant a dark hand passed
over, and chilled all color to stony gray.

I pushed on to overtake Wellson before he passed
out of the cafion, where I might be unable to follow
his tracks in the darkness. I came up with him just
as we emerged upon the sloping bajada, which is the
feature of almost every desert canon mouth. Brush
grew more thickly, and had a friendly look after
the barrenness of the gorge. Far across the valley
to the north I recognized Santa Rosa Mountain,
unmistakable, though showing a face new to me.
A dark ridge to the east I knew must be Superstition
Mountain, now not many miles away.

We picked our way round the shoulder of Fish
Creek Mountain, an imposing mass that even in
half darkness showed a metallic look, very notice-
able by daylight. I expect to Jiear some day of

26o CALIFORNIA DESERT TRAILS

fortunes coming out of that mountain, which has
hardly been touched by prospectors, on account of
the difficulty of taking in sufficient water for a stay
long enough for effective work.

Wellson was making for a "dry camp" of his on
the way to which we should pass an old mining
shaft in which a little liquid was sometimes to be
found. This, though quite impossible for human
beings, Wellson had known his animals to drink
when hard pushed.

It was long after dark when we reached the hole.
We hauled up a bucket of the stuff, the horses
crowding round for first chance. The stench was
atrocious, and it was all I could do to avoid being
violently sick. One after another the animals did
their best to drink, putting their noses to it thirstily
time after time, but it was too foul and they would
not take it. We drew bucket after bucket in hope of
getting something a degree less disgusting. At last
one of Wellson's horses reluctantly drank a little,
rolling back her lips after each mouthful to get rid
of the filthy taste and odor. Her mate, and my
Kaweah, who is unusually scrupulous, could not
bring themselves to touch it, though their eagerness
was pitiful.

We led the poor beasts to camp, which was in a
clump of mesquits near the foot of the mountain.
With barley and mesquit beans they were well fed,
at any rate. Then we scratched up a meal by the
light of a candle-end, threw our blankets on the
sand and ourselves on them, and smoked for an
hour while we radiated the day's accumulation of

TO SAN FELIPE CITY 261

heat into the scarcely cooler air of the night. We
had made a fifteen hours' march with one stop of
less than an hour at midday.

At first daylight we took the horses again to the
hole, thinking they would by now be forced to drink.
Wellson's animals both drank a little, though with
every token of repugnance; but Kaweah would
have none of it, though he snuffed eagerly at each
bucketful I brought him. Probably the water, be-
sides being alkaline and stagnant, was putrid with
dead animals — birds, snakes, possibly a coyote or
two. My gorge rises now when I think of the place.

Breakfast almost ended our own water, and the
first necessity for all concerned was to get to a new
supply. Six miles to the north a settler had sunk a
well and obtained a small flow, sufficient for house-
hold needs, though not for irrigation. We made for
this place, my poor Kaweah in distress and panting
hard as I led him.

The relations between man and horse who are
much together, especially when for long spells they
two are alone, take on a touch of sentiment, on the
man's side (and I do not doubt on the other's also),
that to some people might seem overdone. The
loyalty of the dumb beast, patiently doing his best,
accepting his master's will without thought of dis-
pute, and taking for granted that his service will
be repaid by care for the needs which he is prevented
from supplying for himself — the pathos of this
becomes better recognized in the daily sharing of
chances. And whenever, as here, my trusty com-
panion has had to suffer, I have had pangs, I don't

262 CALIFORNIA DESERT TRAILS

mind saying, that came near bringing tears. When
it comes to magnanimity, few of us can equal the
average horse or hound.

Under a greasewood bush I noticed an old shoe.
It had belonged, Wellson said, to a man who, the
year before, had gone crazy for want of water
and had here thrown away clothes, shoes, blankets,
everything — the usual line of action — and, raving
and naked, had wandered across the desert until, by
luck, he came to one of the canals of the Imperial
Valley irrigation system, some twenty miles away.
There he was found, lying in the water, out of his
senses and famishing for food, but too weak to
travel farther. In this case rescue came just in time
and the man eventually recovered.

The fact that I was again below sea-level was
registered both in the shells that sprinkled the pow-
dery plain and in the water-line at the foot of the
mountain. To the south, Signal Mountain, an iso-
lated peak beyond the Mexican line, showed near
at hand. Ahead was Santa Rosa, and a few miles to
the east the haze of the plain shaded to faint blue
where the Salton lay anaemic under the fierce
evaporation. Behind us rose the spur of the Pen-
insular Range through which we had yesterday
threaded our way.

At length appeared a derrick, and a dot or two
beside it. This was our destination. The horses
quickened their pace, and as we approached I was
relieved to hear a hail, for I had been worrying over
the possibility that the place might be deserted and
the pump out of order. In that case we should have

TO SAN FELIPE CITY 263

been in a serious fix, with less than half a gallon of
water left and the horses badly used up.

Two young fellows, a Norwegian and an Irishman
as I Tater found, who were watching our coming,
first handed us the water-bag as a natural prelim-
inary, then made us welcome to San Felipe City.
We hastened to water our anxious beasts, then
rejoined the populace, and Felipe the dog, at the
pump-house. I had heard of this thriving place
before, and was pleased to find myself within its
boundaries. Over the door of a shed which adjoined
the house was a signboard painted —

SAN FELIPE

71 FEET BELOW SEA-LEVEL

WATCH IT GROW

POPULATION 1920, 1000

It was a good example of Western optimism — gen-
erous, yet modest withal, for what California "city,"
with two citizens already secured, does not set a
higher mark than a single thousand for the end of
the decade?

Here, as in other places I have described, the hope
on the settler's horizon is that some person of
wealth, providentially going daft, may be inspired
to waste his substance in the reckless sinking of
wells which shall tap the water-bearing strata that,
as the settler is convinced, underlie his precious
claim. ^ Our San Felipe friends, though, had an eye

* There are uses to which public money is put that seem less states-
manlike than employing it in experimental borings in these localities,
provided the soil is such as to make agriculture profitable if water

264 CALIFORNIA DESERT TRAILS

also to mineral possibilities. The talk centred on
mines and prospects, claims and " jumpings," water-
holes and deaths for lack of them; and thousands,
hundreds of thousands, or millions of dollars were
freely tossed about. Easy Street is the only thorough-
fare in the city of the prospector's dreams.

The day was hot, though not specially so: 115°
was the highest point touched by the municipal
thermometer. The look of our hosts made a com-
mentary on the general temperature. Both were
naturally fair-complexioned, but had taken a pleas-
ing tint of caje au lait wherever the skin showed (and
their dress of tattered duck trousers with armless
and barely coherent shirt did not leave much in
doubt). The Irishman mentioned that, a few days
before, the iron head of a drum of water he was
hauling was blown off by the steam generated within.
He reported also that in his capacity of cook he
often found eggs which had lain outdoors partly
cooked by the sun, so that they did not fall from the
shell when broken for the frying-pan. Readers who
have had experience of the summer climate of these
regions will not be unduly critical of these stories.

One of Wellson's horses — a raw-boned animal
with a kind of pile-driver action due to a case of
spring-halt — having become tender- footed, we gave
her a day's rest at the ranch while we paid a visit to
Superstition Mountain. This low range hardly de-
serves the name of mountain, for it does not rise to

were found. Good land would be brought sooner into use, while set-
tlers would be saved the spending of years upon tracts intrinsically
worthless.

TO SAN FELIPE CITY 265

a thousand feet, and is merely a long ridge, mainly
interesting for its deadly reputation among both
Indians and whites. From this side it had a peculiar
piebald look, unlike any other range I have seen.

We rode southeasterly toward a low clay ridge
beyond which lay the Salton Sea. The ground was
a dead level of silt that rose in puffs and lingered in
the nostrils like acrid smoke. Shells glittered every-
where, almost the only thing for the eye to notice,
for the vegetation was reduced to an occasional hum-
mock of mesquit of which only the topmost twigs
showed above the mound of soil that struggled to en-
gulf them. I tried to imagine some addition or sub-
traction by which the landscape might be rendered
more depressing, but had to admit that the maxi-
mum was reached : it was wholly, conscientiously bad.

Sand and gravel succeeded to silt as we ap-
proached the ridge. Pebbles of unusual colors were
strewn about, mingled with odd-looking bits of
black baked clay, some like fragments of tile, some
in large balls or grotesque shapes such as children
make from a lump of plaster. Large flakes of mica
glittered here and there, objects of awe to the simple
Indian mind, which, I notice, takes brightness in
any form to be significant — good or bad medicine.
I looked for animal life but saw none, except, rarely,
the track of a lizard. Even flies were absent; as a
matter of fact, they almost disappear from the
desert during the hottest weeks of summer.

The black clay continued for miles, usually as a
capping to layers of red and yellow. Turning south-
ward we made direct for the mountain, picking our

266 CALIFORNIA DESERT TRAILS

way through gullies of sand and boulders bleached
almost snow-white by the terrific sun. The glare
from the ground was even more intolerable than
the direct blast, and the heat was intensified by
the scarifying dryness. The effect on the eyes was
acutely painful; Indeed, it is surprising that such a
sensitive organ can endure these conditions without
lasting damage. Aqueous humors were never meant
for this sort of thing. As we neared the mountain I
found that certain white patches that had puzzled
me were splashes of sand that had been swept far
up the slopes, as waves rush up the face of a clifT.
Along the base appeared again the curious shapes of
clay, many of them as perfect as if turned in a lathe
or cast in a mould.

By a narrow pass we turned into the heart of the
mountain. Precipitous walls, as in Split Mountain
Canon but not so high, shut us into a winding defile
where we could not ride abreast. It was midday and
the place was like a furnace, the temperature not
less, I think, than 150° in the sun. The formation
looked like red clay, but the loose rocks that strewed
the caiion were of varied kinds and colors, prevail-
ingly igneous and many with metallic lustre. I saw
that my companion occasionally added a bit of rock
to the museum he carried in his hip pocket. It is
hard to keep one's mind ofT the subject of mines
and metals in this locality where something striking
in the way of minerals appears at every turn, and
every lonely caiion looks just the place to be hiding
ledges of "the right stuff." _

We rode along looking for shade, but it was a mile

IN THK SUPERSTITIONS

i - " -•

-C LIBRARY

TO SAN FELIPE CITY 267

or two before we found it under the overhang of a
boulder, and then our feet projected annoyingly.
Into this haven we crept, after feeding the horses,
and lay for an hour gathering energy for the eating
of lunch. We had brought the materials for a billy
of tea, and agreed that it was what we needed, but
there the matter hung. Finally we tossed up, and I,
who had suggested this solution in a spirit of fair-
ness, found myself condemned to walk out into the
broiling sun and endure the added warmth of a fire.

When a strip of shade came under the cliff we
moved over, horses and men, and hugged the rock
while we waited for the temperature to pass the
crisis. Even in the shade the breeze was scorching
and the sand so hot as to be uncomfortable to sit
upon. The horses stood with half-shut eyes and
panted as if broken-winded. To pass the time agree-
ably, Wellson told stories of various Mikes and Bills
who had preceded us into these caiions, and most of
whom, apparently, had concluded to remain.

In turn I related the following incident which had
been told me at Mecca by Johnny Thomas, one of
a number of prospectors who keep a sort of rookery
among the mesquits at the rear of the railway station.

"Summer of nineteen seven," said Johnny, taking
his favorite pose, squatting on his haunches, in
the shade of a screwbean, "I was camped over at
Cottonwood. I was working on my Blue Dick claim
then. Old Blue (that was my pack-burro) was a
renegade.^ Old man Schneider bought him first from

1 A burro that runs away at every opportunity. It is a common
fault, a mark of the depravity of the tribe.

268 CALIFORNIA DESERT TRAILS

the Indians at Martinez, but he could n't ever keep
him. 'Most everybody in the valley owned him one
time and another before I had him. Dick? why, he
was my riding burro. Blue Dick, don't ye see?

"Well, one morning I wanted to go over and look
at my Black Owl claim. It was only four miles away,
so I walked, and left Blue and Dick and my other
burro, a jenny, grazing in a little side caiion that
was wired across. When I got back they were gone.
That old devil had got away and took the others
with him. It was too late to go after them that day,
but next morning I took my small canteen and
started to track them. I did n't reckon they'd gone
very far, but I used up my water before I 'd much
more than got on their trail, so I came back again
to the Springs.

"As it happened Aleck Cameron and Don Fergu-
son had just come in to Cottonwood that day.
They'd been over to Placer Canon in the Palens,
but there was n't any water in the caiion and they
came back. I borrowed one of their jacks and started
out again next morning with a gallon of water and
three or four biscuit. The burros had hit an old dim
Indian trail that goes over to Piiion. It was a trail I
did n't know about, but that old Blue devil savvied
every trail and water-hole from Chuck Warren's to
the river, dum him.

"I travelled all day, but the tracks went right on.
When night came I had about a cupful of water left.
I was only about three or four miles from Pifion, if
I 'd known, but I did n't know the country then,
and the only water I knew about was behind. So I

TO SAN FELIPE CITY 269

turned back. I left the jack tied in the brush, be-
cause I had to find my back tracks and I could n't
do that unless I walked and sort of felt my way. It
was n't what you 'd call a trail, more like a jack-
rabbit run. I could n't eat because I was too dry to
swallow without drinking, and I did n't dare to
drink. It was August, long days and hotter 'n blazes.
I durs n't use up that mite of water, so I 'd take a
mouthful, and hold it, and then spit it back in the
canteen.

" It was the dark of the moon, but I had to travel,
and I kept moving all night. I used up all my
matches, looking for my tracks. When it got day-
light my water was all used up. I was in bad shape,
faint and awful thirsty, and I had n't made more
than half the way back to the Springs. When it got
hot I would travel say two hundred yards and then
lie down in the shade of a rock or bit of brush.
Gosh ! I don't know how I kept going, except I knew
I had to keep on or I 'd die right there.

"When it came night again I took off my clothes,
all except shoes, and carried them. It was a hot
night, but the wind felt good on my skin. I don't
know how I stayed in the trail; luck, I guess: and
the only way I kept going was because I had to get
to Cottonwood that night; I knew I'd never live
through another day like I 'd just put in. It was three
in the morning when I got to Cottonwood. I went
right to the water-trough and put my head in. I had
sense enough left not to drink any at first. The boys
were there, and they gave me some weak whiskey
and then some coffee and other grub. I slept all that

270 CALIFORNIA DESERT TRAILS

day, and next morning I walked the twenty-five
miles in to Mecca. Frank Coffey came back with me
to Cottonwood with two of his burros, and then I
went back with three gallons of water and a loaf of
bread. The jack was tied where I left him. He was
pretty sick-looking and lying down. I went on and
found my burros over at Piiion, and brought them
all back to the Springs.

"That was about the closest call I've had. I
did n't ought to have started with that little can-
teen, but gosh! us fellers are all fools, else we
would n't stay with it. Well, after that I was through
with old Blue: sold him to a rancher for eight dol-
lars. Don't happen to have the makins, do you?
Gracias."

We had agreed to start back at three o'clock,
but when the hour came, our courage was wanting.
However, Wellson handsomely offered to boil an-
other billy, and when it had been despatched we
braced up and moved off. On emerging from the
cafion we took a direct line for home. It led us first
over a plain of clay thinly covered with sand and
pebbles, next into a region of dunes, discouraging
to the tired horses, and then to the edge of a depres-
sion that was curiously broken up with fissures — a
sort of miniature bad-land formation. From the
tracks of wild-cats and coyotes that threaded the
narrow gullies, it would appear that this is a kind of
preserve of theirs, though what they live on, unless
on one another, is a mystery. Tracks of sidewinders
were here too, in great profusion ; quite a nice popu-
lous neighborhood.

TO SAN FELIPE CITY 271

I was surprised to find fragments of pottery
strewn about this hopeless region. In the canon I
saw none, but so far as I can learn there has never
been any water discovered there, not even the nat-
ural tanks that almost all the desert ranges afford.
It is hard to conjecture why Indians should ever
have chosen to live in this locality, the most forbid-
ding on the whole desert : one, moreover, that super-
stition prompts them to avoid. Perhaps the attrac-
tion was the fish they may have found here when
this was the margin of the ancient sea.^

The sun did not miss the good shot we offered as
we rode westward for hours, but at last he fired his
final round for the day and sank behind friendly San
Ysidro. I hung my hat on the saddle-horn, threw
open my shirt, and basked in relative coolness. By
nightfall we were back at our quarters. Our friends,
stripped to the waist, were waiting supper for us.
In the smoky lamplight the scene reminded me of a
ship's forecastle. Afterwards it was the extreme of
luxury to lie on a blanket and send up incense to the
starry bands marching overhead, while the eternal
talk went on of leads and lodes, veins and stringers,
placers and pockets, till sleep brought silence.

1 Lee Arenas tells me of a tradition of his people (the Cahuillas)
that at one time all the fighting men of the tribe, numbering per-
haps five hundred, went on the war-path against one of the Colorado
River tribes, probably the Yumas. His story goes that the whole
party, with the exception of a score or so, perished somewhere in
these wastes. With such tales in mind, these potsherds scattered
about the desert — what tragedies may they not imply? This is the
only instance so far as I know of large bodies of Indians attempting
the crossing.

CHAPTER XVII

A DESERT RIDE: "SAN FELIPE CITY" TO IMPERIAL

VALLEY

"Adios" to San Felipe City — A metalliferous mountain — Diffi-
cult country — Another man missing — Crude landscape — A
lame horse — The desolate to perfection — Mineral novelties —
Bad travelling — Consciousness of peril — The Thirst Spectre —
Gullies on gullies — Water at last — The divinity of color — Eve-
ning hues — Silence and starlight — Coyote Wells — The Mexican
catechism — Beauties of Coyote Wells — Declined with thanks

— Bunkum, Boom, and Brag — The Mexican border — Dixieland

— 122° in the shade — The land of cotton — The miracle of
Imperial Valley — Slipshod farms — El Centro — Open desert
preferred — The morning tub — Beds al fresco — Brawley —
Imperial — The Bermuda-grass problem — Calexico: tokens of
earthquake — Mexicali, Mexico: a gambling hell — Holtville —
A desert storm.

WELLSON grumbled loudly when I roused
him at five o'clock. We had agreed on a com-
promise between my four-thirty and his eight-thirty
for our starting time, but he pretended that six-
thirty was the hour for getting up instead of for
leaving. He was comforted, though, when told that
breakfast was under way, and punished the flap-
jacks with severity.

There was a long day's march ahead of us, but
we took no water for the horses as Wellson knew of
a water-hole that we could take in our route by
going a little out of our way. Our mark was Coyote
Wells, on the road between San Diego and the
Imperial Valley, and of late also a point on the
partly built railway which is to connect San Diego
with Yuma and the East. There was no road or trail

TO IMPERIAL VALLEY 2^^

that would serve our purpose: we had simply to
make as nearly due south as the nature of the
country would allow.

The excitement of seeing any one off is rare at
San Felipe, so the population assembled for the
spectacle. Farewells were brief. Anything more than
* ' Adios " or " So long ' ' seems prolix to the Westerner.
Turning in my saddle after five minutes I saw that
our hosts still stood watching us, perhaps specu-
lating how long it might be before they had more
visitors to entertain.

Passing Fish Creek Mountain I had a better op-
portunity to note its metallic look. Patches of white,
which my companion said were beds of gypsum,
gave contrast to the purple-red of the rock. Cleft
and canon were marked by scorings of gray that
shone in the morning light like waterfalls. If I had
a fortune and an extra life to throw away I should
be tempted to turn prospector and thoroughly ex-
plore Fish Creek Mountain. On the other side, Su-
perstition Mountain showed now as total black.
Ahead rose the cone of Signal Mountain, with the
C6copas, a wash of atmospheric pink, trailing off
southward into Mexico.

A feature of desert travel whenever one is near
mountains is the liability to come abruptly upon
gullies ten or fifteen feet deep, with absolutely ver-
tical walls. These are water-courses, carved, almost
at a stroke, by the rush of water from the canons.
They are great consumers of time, often leading one
far out of one's course before a crossing can be made.
Their one good point is that a modicum of shade

274 CALIFORNIA DESERT TRAILS

may be found there under the thorny tangle of a
cat-claw or a smoke-tree — shade of the thinnest,
yet a valuable relief. While we rested in one of these
gullies, Wellson, recognizing the place, mentioned
that a year or two ago a man whom he knew, one
Walbridge, had come into this locality to look at a
claim in Fish Creek Mountain. Wellson was to meet
him on his return at Seeley, in the Imperial Valley.
"I hung around a day or two, but he did n't show
up, so I came out to see where he was. That's the
gully where I found his tracks. I followed till I lost
them up that cafion. — Find him? no, I did n't ever
find him. He'd left his blankets in the livery bam
down at Seeley, and he did n't ever call for them,
so I reckon he's in there somewhere yet."

Between Fish Creek Mountain and Coyote Moun-
tain is the caiion of Carrizo Creek, which we had left
when we turned north at Agua Caliente. It is a
wild, disorderly-looking piece of country. Hills and
ridges of strangest shape and color seem to jostle for
place. A low cone to our right appeared to be cov-
ered with black clay shards like those near Supersti-
tion Mountain. Another hill of vivid yellow was
capped with the same material. Others were of entire
red or purple. Over all, the opaque sky fitted like
a china bowl, filling every notch and curve of the
horizon with its stark, uncompromising blue. The
crudity of the landscape here surpassed anything I
had yet seen in this region of hard color effects.

Here we made an unpleasant discovery, that
Wellson's pack-mare had cast a shoe and was al-
ready quite lame. Her spring-halt action had dis-

TO IMPERIAL VALLEY 275

guised the fact till the hoof was worn to the quick.
It was a cruel necessity to keep the poor beast
moving, but there was no alternative. This raised a
question: whether to keep to the easier but longer
route, or to strike over the shoulder of Coyote
Mountain, which would save ten miles, but would
bring us into rougher territory. I asked Wellson if he
felt sure of finding his water-hole in case we took the
shorter way, and as he had no doubts we chose it.

In the midst of the wide sandy channel of Carrizo
Creek we crossed a faint track which marked the
road to Warner's. To us it was of no value, for our
way lay directly south. In winter, water might have
been found here, the stream that gladdened Colonel
Cooke in mid-January of 1847, when he arrived here
after the perilous crossing of the desert with his
ragged "Mormon Battalion." In three days and
two nights they had covered the fifty-six miles from
Alamo Mocho, without water for their animals,
which were half starved, at that. Had it been sum-
mer a wholesale tragedy might easily have occurred.

Over a region of mesas of baked clay broken by
gullies that forced us into tedious detours, we slowly
made our way. If the gaunt and desolate has a degree
of perfection, here surely it is reachM. I do not see
how Sahara, Gobi, or Arabia could improve on this
for rigid nakedness and sterility. One here sees
Mother Earth scalped, flayed, and stripped to the
skeleton. Yet there is a strange beauty in it all.
Perhaps the dormant savage in the breast, some
strain of the paleozoic, wakes up in the presence of
these chaotic, barbaric shapes. I felt a sort of excite-

276 CALIFORNIA DESERT TRAILS

ment, a half sense of recognition, as if something
nudged and whispered — "Your primal home.
Come back."

The day was of the usual midsummer heat, and
the horses were getting played out while we were
yet many miles from the expected water. The mare
was in great distress, but there was no help for it,
we must go on. Coyote Mountain was near at hand,
a sullen monster of brown. Every quarter-mile
brought some novelty to sight. In crossing a bench
of reddish clay I noticed numbers of bullets of some
heavy metallic stuff, the size of marbles and per-
fectly round. Then came a tract covered with peb-
bles, various in color, but as even in shape and di-
mension as if carefully sorted. Again, plates of clear
gypsum, as large as small window-panes and nearly
an inch thick, projected from the sides of a gully.
Next, stumbling over lumps of some brittle material,
I found that they were compact clods of oyster
shells (we were a few hundred feet above sea-level).
It was a region to charm the geologist, though not
the botanist. A few wretched creosotes and ocotillos
alone held on to life, shrivelled, leafless, and half
ossified.

Wellson now pointed out a red ridge, two miles
ahead, which was the landmark for our water-hole.
How to get to it, though, was a question. Before us
stretched a tangle of gullies and washes, braided
together like one's interlaced fingers. The two miles
might turn to twenty, and nightfall find us as far
from water as ever. We consulted, and resolved to
make a direct dash for the place. Down we went

TO IMPERIAL VALLEY 2']^

into the maze, dragging the unwilling animals down
impossible banks and hauling them up equal impos-
sibilities on the other side, where we took our bear-
ings afresh, and repeated.

Physical exhaustion comes quickly under these
circumstances. For a few moments that afternoon I
had a sharp realization of peril. A sudden falntness,
the result of exertion in that extreme heat (It was
nine hours since we had eaten), came over me, and
with it the thought of danger, the hopeless danger
that cannot be fought. Suppose something occurred
to defeat us of the expected supply of water? Was it
certain even that we had enough in our canteens to
last till we got there? Something might go wrong —
anything: what then? How long could I go without
water, if by any chance I were left without it? In
that fierce heat, and struggling with that terrible
country, a few minutes was as long as one could go
without drinking. In a flash I saw what would be
my condition in a single hour — torture : two hours
— delirium : after that raving madness, till agony
passed Into insensibility, and that into death.

Let not the reader think that I am overdrawing
here. Those who travel the desert in the middle of
summer, and on foot {which makes all the difference) y
know well enough that to be two or three hours
without water brings a man within the grasp of
death. In that terrific temperature one's bodily
moisture must be constantly renewed, for moisture
is as vital as air. One feels as if one were in the focus
of a burning-glass. The throat parches and seems to
be closing. The eye-balls bum as though facing a

278 CALIFORNIA DESERT TRAILS

scorching fire. The tongue and lips grow thick, crack,
and blacken. Every organ of the body is deranged,
for the drought is not local, but runs through every
vein. Life cannot endure for long when one of its
elements is literally drained away. The brain's bal-
ance is overthrown and panic adds its terrors to the
torment that gnaws each throbbing nerve. Then
comes madness, and, whether mercifully soon or
cruelly delayed, the end.

Meanwhile the sun shines on, showering down
carelessly his death-dealing rays. Nature is merely
the mathematician; her business is only to get the
right answer. Given the season and latitude, the
physical geography, and the constitution of the
body, the result works out to a certainty.

At last we reached a wider gully leading in the
right direction, and which Wellson thought he recog-
nized. Here and there were what might be monu-
ments, and we went on more hopefully. But the
gully turned west, then north, and we knew we
were on the wrong track. Wellson climbed a ridge to
survey the country. It seemed we might have to go
ten miles round after all, and our water was about
exhausted. He was a long time away and I began to
fear he was lost. I was on the point of signalling by
firing my revolver when he reappeared and reported
that if we could cross two more difficult gullies we
should be in the canon that led to water. There was
nothing for it but to try, though I did not think the
horses would ever do it, for they seemed not to have
another effort in them. My poor Kaweah, I wager
you remember that day.

TO IMPERIAL VALLEY 279

Pushing, hauling, shouting, we somehow got them
to scramble up a breakneck place that caved at
every step. Then two hundred yards of baked clay,
like bricks set obliquely on edge; then down into
another ravine and across its piles of sliding rubbish,
with another desperate wall to climb. Still one more
headlong descent, and one more ladder-like cliff to
surmount; next a narrow mesa littered with jagged
rocks. And then, stumbling down a last crumbling,
precipitous wall, we found ourselves in a cafion that
evidently headed at our desired point.

It was a huge relief. Three hours had been spent
over two miles of direct distance. I now once more
had a mind that could appreciate the wild features
of the region we were traversing. Cliffs, domes, and
pillars of clay in strange and vivid colors — yellow,
lilac, rose, green, dark red, ochre, light red, purple
— are the commonplaces of this locality. On all
sides something novel is constantly coming to sight.
Great flakes of clear mineral like plate-glass are
strewn among the gravel or jut from the sides of
caiions, and black pottery-like fragments mingle
with delicately tinted blocks of stratified rock that
is veined and twisted into curios. The place is like
a show. I hope some day to return there and look
my fill, but I shall not go by the same route.

Following the narrowing canon for a mile or more,
we came into a little amphitheatre. Here was our
water. A prospect shaft had been sunk by some un-
lucky miner and had yielded water instead of ore.
The horses crowded up and thrice knocked the
bucket over as they pushed their muzzles in simul-

28o CALIFORNIA DESERT TRAILS

taneously. Then we threw off packs and saddles and
fed them the last of the barley. They ate a little,
but were too dispirited to finish, and stood with
drooping heads, a picture of equine collapse. Poor
old Piledriver after a few minutes lay down and
groaned. Every step of those long, rough miles must
have been torture to her.

As for us, we lay in the shade for an hour before
gaining energy to get the meal we badly needed, and
waited for sunset before tackling the last ten miles
of the day's march. There was no forage here and
our barley was gone, so to camp for the night was
impossible. A Government survey party, with base
at Coyote Wells, had been working hereabout not
long before, and had made a sort of road that
we could follow, and luckily it was now all down
grade.

With all my weariness, I do not think I have ever
been so charmed as that evening by the sunset color-
ing. It brought real physical refreshment: one could
not feel tired and stupid with that magic before
one's eyes. It passed into the blood, and not only
soothed the mind, but energized the body like an
elixir. Before me stretched a golden plain: behind
and on either hand, hills of gold and rose: far to the
south, translucent in distance, the mountains of
Mexico: yonder, like a billow of amethyst breaking
on amber reefs, the Superstitions: overhead three
cranes flew silently across a sky of violet on their
way to the Salton. It was more than Nature, infi-
nitely more than Esthetics. Some words of the
Psalter came to my mind — "Who deckest Thyself

TO IMPERIAL VALLEY 281

with light as It were with a garment." Yes, only that
expressed it: it was the Vesture of God.

In dusk, then darkness, we marched on. The
wind was not merely warm but hot; but the dim
light gave a sensation of coolness. Our ten miles
stretched out as the last miles of a long day will do;
but it was pleasant enough to tramp in starlight
down the long slope of the mountain (falda, skirt or
apron, the Mexicans call it, with instinctive accu-
racy of phrase). Wellson was far ahead, hurrying to
reach Coyote Wells before the populace should tire
of the evening programme of loafing and go to bed.
I hung the bridle over my arm and let Kaweah set
the pace, which he fixed at a dejected shuffle.

The night silence of the desert is not like the
silence of the day. That is terrifying in its vacuity,
in its refusal of aid to the mind and its throwing of
consciousness back upon itself. But in the desert
night the stars, near and warm, give a sense of com-
panionship and understanding. They are friendly
guides, marching with you or passing with cheery sa-
lute. It is especially fascinating to watch them rise.
Mounting one by one above the plain, they seem
more significant than as we usually see them, min-
gled in bright disorder overhead. In their appear-
ance at the level of the eye (seeming even lower than
that in the vast desert perspective) there is some-
thing momentous, as if they were watch-fires kin-
dled by some signaller who looked for our reply;
and one follows their calm ascent with a kind of
pleased curiosity, perhaps also a half recognition
of an allegory hopeful to ourselves.

282 CALIFORNIA DESERT TRAILS

I was startled from my mood by a gleam of mov-
ing light to my right, then another on the left. For a
moment I was puzzled, then knew they must be
automobiles on the San Diego-Imperial road, which
here runs parallel and close to the Mexican border,
and also to the newly built railway. Half an hour
later we limped Into Coyote Wells. While I watered
Kaweah a lounging, unseen Mexican proposed the
regular trio of questions: De donde viene? Adonde va?
and Cuando sale? Where are you from? Where are
you going? and, When do you start? His reply to
my own inquiry for the direction of Wellson's quar-
ters was the eternal Quien sabe? which is their way
of dodging unnecessary syllables.

I found Wellson at his camp beyond the railroad.
A friend (or partner, as the word goes) of his had a
sort of house, where Wellson kept a little stock of
hay and barley. Our nags could now make up ar-
rears. We were all pretty well used up by the day's
work, about thirty-five miles in distance, but the
equal of fifty in labor. Yet, though the hardest, it
was also the best day of my desert travels thus far.
We ate a cold meal and lay down too tired to unroll
our blankets or even take off our boots. I don't
think I changed posture till I awoke at daybreak.

By daylight Coyote Wells took its place as the
dustiest, dismallest hamlet in my knowledge. The
items of its total ugliness are half a score of board-
and-canvas shacks and a cube of sheet-iron, the
railway building. I returned from my tour feeling
almost suicidal, and for relief ate my breakfast by a
stack of sweet-smelling pine ties, the only thing of

TO IMPERIAL VALLEY 283

charm in the place. As a stopping-place on the old
highway to San Diego it has long had a fame, not
savory, of its own. To-day indignation was high
among the Coyoteros over the arrest, the previous
evening, of the local "blind pigger." It was felt that
by this hard stroke all that made life worth living
at Coyote Wells had been done away. I only partly
shared this view, failing to see how even unlimited
bad whiskey could make the place less of a purga-
tory.

I left my companion fitting the wincing Pile-
driver with a second-hand shoe. He was westward-
bound for the mountains, after a day or two's rest,
while my route led east. He urged me to join him,
holding out the possibility of my becoming a pro-
spector myself. But I doubted my qualifications. I
always feared I was bom under "a vile sixpenny
planet," and with that belief how could one be a
prospector?

I had now reached the southern limit of my jour-
ney, for in the conditions then ruling, Mexico was a
country to be shunned. Coyote Wells lies at the
extreme southwest comer of the Colorado Desert
in the United States. My way now lay easterly,
through that part of the Imperial Valley which
borders on Mexico.

I must say I dislike these big-sounding names,
which real-estate speculators think so irresistible.
To me they savor of Martin Chuzzlewit's Eden, and
give ever fresh point to the celebrated 7not of the
late Mr. Bamum. Of a piece with the brass band and
the barbecue, these grandiloquent titles stamp the

284 CALIFORNIA DESERT TRAILS

West as still the land of Bunkum, Boom, and Brag,
and call to mind the street faker with his shiny
"topper" and cautionary gush of eloquence. In the
heraldic quarterings of California the device of a
megaphone should find a place.

I rode first toward Signal Mountain, just across
the border. When last seen it had looked like a pale
blue iceberg on the sea-like horizon of the plain:
now, close at hand, it was a volcano-like cone of
brown rising from a limitless gray of sand. To the
southeast ran the line of the Cocopas, tailing off
into the yellow murk of a sand-storm — type of
poor Mexico's everlasting muddle. Superstition
Mountain seemed from here a mere ridge of sand,
but Coyote and Fish Creek Mountains rose high and
rugged in tantalizing red and purple. I feel I have n't
done with those fellows yet.

The country through which I was passing is one
of intense dreariness, a plain of dust with a scatter-
ing of desert plants more than usually wretched and
unkempt. A few ocotillos alone broke the torrid
stillness with a skeleton dance on the quivering air.
The sun was blasting, and my canteen of water soon
became too hot for enjoyment, though I called on it
incessantly for relief.

A straight white line marked on the desert proved
to be a macadamized road which had lately been
laid for the benefit of automobilists. This gave
notice that I was approaching the settlements of
Imperial. Two or three machines passed us, for
there is a fair amount of traffic between San Diego
and the new-born towns of the valley. In due time

TO IMPERIAL VALLEY 285

I saw far ahead the buildings of the first of these, a
hamlet named Dixieland, and about midday we
arrived at a canal (or ditch, as they call it), the
farthest one in this direction of the great irrigation
system.

It was instructive to notice how the desert held
out without palliation up to the very edge of the
canal. On the other side began, equally abruptly,
telephone poles, fields of cotton and alfalfa, pastures
with cattle, horses, and hogs, green, rustling cotton-
woods, and an unbroken succession of farms.

Dixieland I found to consist of a brick store, a
small but ambitious-looking school, six or eight
little houses, and a bam. Behind this I camped in a
comer of the corral, but, for a change from my own
cookery, persuaded a weary woman who lived in
the bam to get me a meal. I regretted this when I
faced the discs of tepid paste tendered as biscuits,
and the bowl of yellow oil which passed for butter.
However, honey, watermelon, and the kindly heart
which overcame weariness and 122° Fahrenheit at
the request of a stranger, made amends for all short-
comings, even the tablecloth.

I took my way next morning toward El Centro,
the central point, as the name proudly announces,
of the valley. A main crop of the locality is cotton,
and a general Southern and cottony air prevailed,
even to the colored brothers plying the hoe. Field
beyond field of the pretty plants stretched away
southward to the border, varied with blocks of milo-
maize or squares of vivid alfalfa. Herds of cattle and
bands of glossy horses were in evidence, and every-

286 CALIFORNIA DESERT TRAILS

where ditches of red, muddy water led off, branch-
ing, dividing, and subdividing into a veritable maze.
As I sat under a eucalyptus to eat lunch, while
Kaweah ripped away at juicy Bermuda grass, it
seemed a miracle when I recalled the wanderings
of the past weeks.

And indeed it is a miracle, the transforming,
within a dozen years, of a tract of strict desert into a
farming region of the highest fertility. The materials
for the miracle were here, of course, from immemo-
rial times — an alluvial plain and, contiguous to it,
a great silt-laden river. Lower Egypt offers an exact
analogy, and early Western explorers noted and
reported the possibilities, which in fact are patent
enough. It remained for speculators to undertake
the work which Government might properly have
shouldered, and for the public to grasp the idea that
the word "desert" need not signify worthless for
agriculture, so long as water, the lack of which is at
the root of the condition, can be applied.

I shall have little to say, however, of economic
matters, which are outside my purpose and also
very largely outside my knowledge. I could compile a
chapter of sensational facts and figures easily enough,
but we Californians are not bashful about trumpet-
ing our triumphs, and I feel that the sincerest con-
tribution I can make will be by injecting, not a dis-
cordant, but a gently moderating tone into the blast.
In a word, the Imperial Valley has been and is the
scene of a remarkable agricultural success ; but let it
be realized that there are special drawbacks, in the
nature of the case, and that it is not the business of

TO IMPERIAL VALLEY 287

persons with "interests" in the valley to advertise
these.

In the two or three weeks that I spent in the farm-
ing localities I was unable to accommodate myself
to the slipshod appearance of the farm buildings,
both houses and outbuildings. While this is a weak-
ness of the Western farmer in general, here it ex-
ceeded; though perhaps it is excusable in view of
the trying climate that prevails for half the year.
There is here, naturally, a larger percentage than
usual of farmers who are unmarried, or whose
womenkind do not live, at least continuously, on
the farm: and without the woman the home can
hardly be. Anyhow, the effect is discouraging, and
suggests the idea, which is no doubt a true one in
a great proportion of cases, that Imperial farmers
as a whole are just "sticking it out," with a view to
selling as soon as they can. Neither the chance vis-
itor, nor, I would suggest, the prospective buyer, is
likely to react happily to this impression.

We passed through one or two small settlements
with stores, telephones, and post-offices, and with
bales of cotton piled awaiting shipment. Automo-
biles were common, and soon became a nuisance
with their obscene noises and the clouds of dust
they gave in return for the right of way. When a true
democracy arises one of its first jobs will be to abol-
ish the automobile as an offensive chattel of privi-
lege. By noon we were in El Centro, the county seat
of Imperial County and the metropolis of the valley.

A sharp little earthquake had occurred in this
locality some weeks before, and its work was plainly

288 CALIFORNIA DESERT TRAILS

seen in wrecked or distorted houses, cracked walls,
shattered windows, and piles of rubbish. The big
new hotel, bearing, rather absurdly, the name of a
recent "best seller" in local fiction, had hastily re-
paired its damages, but looked conscious of the con-
cealment. The stores had a prosperous look, but
many of the dwellings gave the same unpleasant
impression that I had found in the farms. Some were
quite sordid in their ugliness, even beyond the usual
measure of these products of haste and incompetence.
These ramshackle affairs, with their purlieus of
bottles and boxes, cans and baling-wire, came as a
rebuff. Almost before I had found a lodging I sighed
for the desert again, where, if beauty be scant, at
least squalor is absent. It is a truth of the widest
bearing that "only man is vile.'*

In the bathroom of my lodging I learned that
cold and hot are sometimes interchangeable terms,
or, at least, taps. The cistern being set on the roof,
by midday the "cold" water had reached a tempera-
ture higher than that from the boiler. It was only at
early morning that one could get a tolerably re-
freshing tub. Another discovery was that El Centro
in summer is practically a womanless community,
the feminine half having betaken themselves "in-
side," as the phrase goes, for the hot term: and an-
other, that Centrolians in summer are a coatless and
waistcoatless race. A loose, blouse-like garment is
the thing on street, in ofhce, at restaurant, and I
suppose at church and such social functions as may
be attempted in the absence of womankind.

It was odd, too, to see beds set out on vacant lots

o

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TO IMPERIAL VALLEY 289

in the midst of the banks and mercantile places.
Whether they were used by bank presidents and
their kind, or by the common race, I never found
out: nor whether the recent earthquake had any
bearing on the matter. With their canopies of mos-
quito netting they had the look of palanquins or
howdahs. The Oriental flavor was strengthened by
the presence of many Hindoos. I fancied there was
as much dislike as curiosity in the feelings of the
Mexicans, who turned to stare at these silent,
turbaned fellows, the latest interlopers on the pay-
roll.

The most attractive town in the valley is Brawley,
near the southern end of the Salton Sea. The first
settlers had the good sense to plant trees freely along
the streets, and the busy little place, embowered
among cottonwoods and eucalyptus, has a much
more finished and pleasing appearance than any of
the other settlements.

Midway between El Centro and Brawley is the
town of Imperial. This place formerly aspired to be-
coming the county seat, but in a sharp engagement
of "interests" it was worsted by its southern neigh-
bor. Imperial thereupon took to drink, and now
exists mainly as a pestiferous nest of saloons, a
resort, especially on Sundays, for beery parties from
the surrounding country. As a place of genuine busi-
ness it seems dead, a commentary on the often
heard argument that the saloon is a necessity for
any community that wishes to thrive.

A friend on whose farm I stayed a few days,
revelling in unlimited dairy produce, drove me over

290 CALIFORNIA DESERT TRAILS

one day to the twin towns of Calexico and Mexicali,
lying on the Califomian and Mexican sides of the
line respectively. It was a drive of ten or twelve
miles through good farming country of alfalfa, mi-
lomaize, cotton, and preeminently hogs. Here and
there were lines of tall trees, seven or eight years
old, but looking treble that age. Imperial Valley has
a distinctive smell, a rather unpleasant acrid one,
arising, I fancy, from the constant irrigation acting
on some peculiarity of the soil. We passed through
the little town of Heber, bare and blinking in sun
and dust. Everj^where were canals of chocolate-
colored water edged with vivid green of Bermuda
grass, as to which I often heard the opinion ex-
pressed that "something's got to be done about
that infernal Bermuda, or it'll take the whole val-
ley." Already a serious pest, and disseminated
everywhere by the canals, it is rapidly becoming a
first-class problem.

Calexico is situated exactly at sea-level, the other
valley settlements being all somewhat below. It is a
town of dusty streets and ugly houses, apartment
buildings, and stores. The main street runs close to
and parallel with the international boundary. The
earthquake had hit the place hard, and carpenters,
bricklayers, and plasterers were busily gathering the
dollars dropped by the ill-wind. A few people had
been killed, for unfortunately the visitation was not
confined to the gamblers of the neighboring town
across the line. The channel of the New River runs
close by, now perfectly dry. In the early summer of
1906, when the Sal ton Sea was filling, it was the

TO IMPERIAL VALLEY 291

terror of the Inhabitants, who in spite of desperate
work in the building of levees saw part of their town
carried away by the flood that rushed along this
perfidious water-way.^

Mexican, across the border, is a mere rank of
gambling-hell saloons, as offensive to the sight as
they are disreputable in every other regard. A
pimply youth with a megaphone was inviting the
public to enter the widest of these numerous gates
into the broad way to Destruction, and made me,
as a stranger, the particular object of his attentions.
" Wide open " Is a literal as well as figurative descrip-
tion of the place, for the flimsy structure was fully
open to the street. A dozen or so gambling-tables at
which you lose your money at faro, monte, roulette,
or what you please: a thriving bar: an incessant
racket of "rag-time" from a quartette of tenth-rate
musicians at the rear: three painted girls, or rather
children. In dirty pink, who now and then ceased
their crude blandishments of the men near them to
shout the words of a ribald song (this was the vaude-
ville entertainment to which I had been bidden by
Pimpleface) : and a babel of shouts and cheerless,
discordant laughter from a hundred or so loafers,
mostly Americans, but with a sprinkling of Mexi-
cans, Japanese, and I don't know what — that, six
or eight times repeated, is Mexicali. If ground is
ever sought for a declaration of war against Mexico,

* I have not learned how this stream got its name. Major-General
Cooke, in the narrative of his expedition of 1846-47, notes that a few
years after his crossing of this region, when the channel was dry,
other travellers found a stream running in it. Probably some such
party gave it its name.

292 CALIFORNIA DESERT TRAILS

I would suggest that the existence of this plague-
hole on the border at once provides it.

A couple of burly brigands with huge pistols pro-
jecting from their hip-pockets, who were lounging
over the barricade of another of the gambling-dens,
proved to be rurales, members of that peculiar but
efficient force that Mexico owes, along with much
else that is questionable but necessary, to Porfirio
Diaz. At the custom-house and post-office a trifling
amount of business was being neglected, rather than
transacted, by two irresponsible and highly unat-
tractive clerks. Half an hour was enough of this.
I managed a surreptitious photograph, to the mysti-
fication of a Cocopa "buck" with hair to his waist
and fat squaw following, and recrossed to United
States soil.

In the eastern part of the valley lies Holtville,
a small but fairly lively place on the bank of the
Alamo River, which flows, thick and sluggish, in a
deep gorge with steep red walls and a trimming of
rustling cottonwoods. Red and green, with overhead
blue of sky, make the livery of the Imperial Valley.

One day while at my friend's ranch we were visited
by a typical summer storm. The day was unusually
humid, and we sat in collapse by the hour, existing
on the momentary breezes from the Gulf. About
mid-morning a brown wall suddenly grew up on the
open desert to the east. It came rapidly nearer,
growing higher every moment, and was soon revealed
as a cloud of sand, so dense as to seem solid, and
driven at wonderful speed. Its even line was very
remarkable: it came on like a tidal wave, and not

TO IMPERIAL VALLEY 293

until it had approached to half a mile could I see
the whirling of the sand on its crest. From the mo-
ment when it was at that distance until it struck
the house cannot have been half a minute. With
shriek and swoop it fell upon us in a blast of sand
and fine gravel, with the momentum of terrific speed
and semi-solidity. For five minutes it raged and
howled in extremity of fury: then almost as sud-
denly the sand passed and there came a torrent of
rain that lashed and swirled with equal violence.
This lasted for half an hour or so, then came to an
abrupt stop; and in a few minutes the sun was at
work again, lapping up the moisture like a thirsty
dog. The rest of the day and the succeeding night
we were favored with a free-for-all Turkish bath.

This particular hurricane, bom somewhere down
in Sonora or possibly on the torrid waters of the
Gulf of California, after sweeping the desert from
southeast to northwest, jumped the mountains and
landed among the orange groves of the coast, where
it played havoc with the crop of late Valencias : then
after wrecking the boats of the San Pedro fishermen,
it finally worried itself into quiet amid the solitudes
of the Pacific.

CHAPTER XVIII

A DESERT RIDE: IMPERIAL VALLEY TO YUMA

Night farming — A night ride — The sentiment of wonder — Wind,
silence, and solitude — Camp at the Algodones — The desert's
moods — New experience for Kaweah — Sand in action — A
study in simplicity — Pilot Knob — Mirages — The Colorado
River — Kaweah and the subconscious — Yuma, a frontier town

— The river-steamers — Attractions of Yuma — Indian costumes

— A wide view — A Bret Hartean specimen — Yuma types — The
movies: "one touch of nature" — Farming country — Indian
vs. Mexican taste — The Laguna Dam — Village of Potholes —

— Mosquitoes — The saguaros — A fantastic region — The elf-owl.

THE "edge of cultivation" is as sharply marked
on the east side of Imperial Valley as on the
west. The farthest "ditch" draws the line between
green and gray. Beyond it a long dry march lay
before me, with Yuma, on the Arizona side of the
Colorado River, for my objective. In view of the
great heat, made doubly trying by a high degree of
humidity, I resolved for Kaweah's sake to cover as
much as possible of it by night.

Leaving Holtville in the afternoon I rode east-
ward a few miles to the farthest outpost of the canal
system. The district (Number Seven as it is called,
the valley being divided into numbered irrigation
units) had a more attractive look than some locali-
ties I had seen, with better houses, bigger stacks of
hay, and more frequent trees along the roads. To
south and west ran the long line of the Cocopas,
to-day showing that smoky-white hue that gives
desert mountains their most weird appearance.

IMPERIAL VALLEY TO YUMA 295

I came to the last canal about sundown and fed
Kaweah at the haystack of a friendly rancher. His
wife was away "inside," but I was made welcome
at the supper-table where he and his two men ex-
hibited their prowess at "baching." Supper over,
he and one of the hands loaded their pipes, took each
a bottle of coffee, and marched out to put in the
night at irrigating, as it was their turn to use the
water. The Imperial farmer knows not day or night:
the water schedule is his rule of life, for no water, no
crops.

I snatched a couple of hours' sleep, waiting for the
moon to rise, which it did about eleven o'clock.
Then I watered Kaweah and myself, filled my can-
teens, saddled up, and started. The half-moon gave
a pleasant light, and though the night was sultry it
was a great improvement over the travelling condi-
tions by day. I needed no sombrero, and opening
my shirt made the most of the faint airs that came
wandering over the plain that ran unbroken to the
Gulf, seventy miles away. In the uncertain light the
dunes took the semblance of creeping shapes, their
long shadows black as ink on the pallid gray of the
earth. A scant growth of creosote bush blurred the
view, and the vagueness added to the impression
of space and monotony that is inherent in these
great levels. The mountain outlines far ahead could
hardly be seen against the dimness of the sky.

Only the stars and the climbing moon kept life
and definition, and these held the mind with more
than their wonted fascination. The sentiment of
wonder, in its worthiest sensej_finds_iittle exercise in

296 CALIFORNIA DESERT TRAILS

these days. Marvels of science and invention so
crowd upon us that the faculty, kept at stretch,
loses its elasticity. It is a pity, for along with wonder
goes imagination, and even reverence. In this staling
of the mind whole tracts of life are left untouched,
with all their harvest of spiritual food. Novelty is
a spice we cannot do without, but the great things
are not novel. So night by night the motion-picture
shows are crammed, while unless a comet comes
along (and a big one too) the pageant of "this brave
o'erhanging firmament, this majestical roof fretted
with golden fire," is not thought worth a glance.
As for "jocund day standing tiptoe on the misty
mountain-top," who is going to get out of bed for
that?

Hour after hour went silently by while Kaweah
kept up his steady pace. Sometimes I checked him
while I let the silence and solitude possess me. In
the great indefinite space and under the full half-
sphere of sky glittering with stars from zenith to
horizon, I might have been the sole inhabitant of
the planet. The faint, momentary breeze seemed to
come from infinite distance ; was born perhaps in Cey-
lon, and had ranged over starlit oceans and untrod-
den Asian peaks to pass me here, then roam on, and
on, and die, maybe, among the snows of Spitzbergen.
Geography took on a vital meaning. Ahead I seemed
to look over the plains of Texas to the eastern sea-
board, the Bermudas, the Canaries, Europe with
its struggling, staggering nations. I felt the draw of
my own land, the lodestone till death of every
Briton. Behind was the vastness of the Pacific, the

IMPERIAL VALLEY TO YUMA 297

welter of awakening China. There lay the frozen
tundra, and there, under friendly Polaris, the no
longer defiant North Pole.

As it drew toward morning the breeze came cooler
and more steady, growing to a low monotonous hum
that seemed to intensify the silence. No hoot of owl
or yelp of coyote told of life and Nature's interest in
her children. But for the moon that now cast our
shadows beneath us, or some meteor rushing to its
fate, Kaweah and I seemed the only moving crea-
tures in the universe. Once or twice I missed the
track and had to dismount and search carefully for
traces of travel, hardly visible on the pavement-like
clay which we were crossing. The creosote grew
sparser and seemed on the verge of death. The
skinny arms waving in the breeze moved in ghostly
rhythm, like spectres at a danse macabre.

At length smears of cloud showed in the eastern
sky as the dawn whitened behind them. On the hori-
zon a mountain line took form. The first dull color
stole in, then quickly brightened ; and soon the sun
came rushing up, ploughing his way like a swimmer
and sending beams to the zenith, as if bragging of
his power. I went on for an hour in hope of sighting
some sizable bush for shade; but only skimpy creo-
sotes, half a dozen to the acre and almost leafless,
kept on to infinity. I stopped and gave Kaweah his
breakfast, crouching in his shadow while I ate my
own.

We started on, to take advantage of the com-
parative coolness. Miles went by in alternate sand
and clay, riding and leading, half awake and half

298 CALIFORNIA DESERT TRAILS

asleep, until a ridge of dunes in front at last broke
the interminable level. It was the great belt of sand-
hills, known as the Algodones, that stretch for forty
miles southeasterly, parallel with the Chocolate
Mountains, ending at the boundary line a few miles
west of Yuma. At the nearer base of these dunes a
well had recently been sunk by the county, and here
I hoped to find water. ^ I had ample for my own
wants, but Kaweah was drooping already, for the
heat was atrocious and the humidity killing. The
wind had dropped and heavy clouds were climbing
up from south and east. I looked anxiously for signs
of the well, and reported the good news to Kaweah
when a black speck appeared miles away with a
white dot near it signifying a tent. It was an hour
before we arrived, but then fortune smiled, for an
employe of the county road department was camped
there, and he had a little hay, of which, at sixty dol-
lars a ton, I was free to use a feed or two.

We had travelled for fifteen hours with only one
hour's stop, and I felt it was enough for the day. I
off-saddled, threw Kaweah a dollar's worth of this
princely forage, took a mouthful of chocolate, and
fell asleep before I was ready for another. I awoke
to find that a gale had sprung up and embedded me
in sand like a fossil. At dusk I awoke again to a
crash of thunder and at the same moment a torrent

^ A few days ago, and a year after I crossed this tract, I read in a
Los Angeles newspaper of a man who had just been rescued here-
about. He was going from Yuma to the Imperial, had missed the way,
and was found, crazed with thirst, and (as usual) naked, crawling on
hands and knees about the sand-dunes. This is the third case of the
kind that I have read of within the space of a month.

IMPERIAL VALLEY TO YUMA 299

of rain. These are the moods of the desert in sum-
mer. I crept under a discarded piece of canvas,
where I ate a cold supper: then watered Kaweah
and turned in.

I was up at dawn and before sunrise we were on
the march. The sand-hills, which form a barrier sev-
eral miles wide, had lately been rendered passable by
the laying of a rough plank roadway, which begins
at this point. Kaweah is conservative and this was
something new, so there was an argument with
quirt and spur before he would set foot on it. The
planks had warped and loosened, and he was kept on
a continual dance of nervousness: still they were a
great boon, for without them the five miles of shift-
ing sand would have consumed as many hours.

The scene was interesting and in a strange way
beautiful. The dunes rose in quarter-circle curves,
broken sharply away to a face of two angles, one
steep, perhaps 60°, the other low, not over 15°.
Everywhere the same form was reproduced, the
smooth arc, the sharp break at the edge, and the
long slant at the foot. Along the faces and from the
edges of fracture, a mist of sand was ever curling off
and drifting in airy waves and feathers, following
every contour of the dune. The whole mass of the
sand was enveloped in this fairy-like veil, creeping
like smoke, weaving in dainty frills and spirals. The
vapor-like action was odd to see in a solid substance.

The color was wonderful in purity and sheer
power of mass. The smooth, large outlines of
pale yellow, the water-like transparency of cobalt
shadow, and the soft brilliance of the early morning

300 CALIFORNIA DESERT TRAILS

sky — that was all. But the scale on which these
elements were drawn, the unity and rhythm of line
and color, gave it the effect of a triumph of simplic-
ity in art.

On reaching the eastern edge of the dunes I came
in sight of my next landmark. Pilot Knob. This is an
isolated peak five miles west of Yuma, and marks
the junction of the river with the Mexican bound-
ary. The usual route to Yuma here makes a circuit to
the northeast, but I knew that the railway touched
the river just east of this peak, and that a road from
Mexico came in there also. I therefore struck di-
rectly southeast for Pilot Knob (or, as it was named
by the Spanish explorers, the Cerro de San Pablo:
the present name, no doubt, dates from the days of
the fifties, when the river was navigated by flat-
bottomed steamboats, carrying the traffic of the
Arizona mines as far upstream as Ehrenberg).

There was now some variety of scenery. To the
east was the southern end of the Chocolates, a red
and purple wilderness of low but rugged mountains,
and beyond them the higher ranges of Arizona,
strongly picturesque. A few palo verde and mesquit
trees grew at the margin of the dunes, but they soon
gave way to the everlasting creosote, burro-weed,
and ocotillo, with an occasional small ironwood. To
my surprise, the ocotillos were in full leaf, the result
of recent thunder-showers. To-day another storm
was preparing, and seemed likely to catch us miles
from shelter. Several times that morning I noted a
mirage, the common one of a sheet of pale-blue
water, with dark bushes showing here and there, the

IMPERIAL VALLEY TO YUMA 301

exact appearance of a flooded expanse of wooded
country.

I stopped for an hour at noon under a bit of scrub
that ironically offered shade. Betokening approach
to the river, a butcher-bird appeared and vented
his chronic ill-temper in screeches of abuse. Three
sand-martins made better company. There is some
spiritual quality in the happiness of all birds of the
swallow tribe.

By this time Pilot Knob had become a threaten-
ing volcano under sulphurous-looking clouds, and I
resigned myself to a thumping deluge. There was a
chance that by hurrying we might escape, so we
pushed on and were soon rounding the shoulder of
the mountain. It was just twenty-five years since I
had last passed this point, entering California for
the first time. Under these circumstances the dark
pyramid, like a quarter-century milestone, sug-
gested serious reflections: but those clouds made it
seem unwise to stand about moralizing, and again
self-examination was successfully dodged.

Turning eastward I made toward the railway.
Soon there appeared an expanse of bright green, the
willow-covered flats of the Colorado River. A mile
or two brought us to the railway, and, as I expected,
to a road which took us to the river. Rain or not, I
halted for half an hour to pay my homage to one of
the great rivers of the North American continent,
and the one perhaps most endowed with geological
interest, by reason of that marvellous caiion which
may be named the greatest natural wonder of the
world.

302 CALIFORNIA DESERT TRAILS

The stream here takes a deep bend and the bank
where I stood commanded a good view. It was not a
specially imposing sight, I had to confess — a wide,
shallow flood of chocolate-hued water, bordered by
stretches of brilliant green, these rising to low red
banks over which one looked in vain for any break
in the monotony of the level. For seventy miles from
this point southward to the head of the Gulf of Cali-
fornia I doubt if there is anywhere an elevation of
forty feet above the plain. Near by were the remains
of an adobe building which was once a stamp-mill
for grinding ore. A heron fished in the shallows with
that air of magnificent calm which is so soothing to
see, and a quarter of a mile away a torpid Indian
moved about, doing something mysterious to the
few stalks of com in his little clearing.

But after all it was the Colorado River, and Ka-
weah, perhaps, caught a reflection of my own inter-
est, for he stood long in meditative pose. I wondered
if he felt stirrings of the subconscious in gazing at
this stream, on whose headwaters his forebears may
have roamed and practised those little arts which
make the Western bronco so interesting and in-
comprehensible.

At this point the road from Lower California
came in. I followed this for a couple of hours beside
a levee, through thickets of willow and arrowweed,
and by late afternoon came in sight of Yuma. The
first feature to appear was the Indian school on the
hill where the historic Fort Yuma once stood. Then
the court-house came in view, attractive in its set-
ting of green, the rest of the town, which lies lower,

IMPERIAL VALLEY TO YUMA 303

remaining unseen. That I was on the Reservation of
the Yuma Indians was brought to notice by a wagon
that met me, driven by a handsome fellow with hair
hanging to his waist in the rope-like twists that
mark the Yuma "buck," and with two squaws
dressed apparently in counterpanes of green, purple,
and yellow.

We crossed the river by the high iron bridge as
the first raindrops plumped down ; passed through a
street or two of adobe or mud-and-pole houses, and
got into a livery-stable just in time to escape a ter-
rific downpour. Here I left Kaweah In good hands
for a couple of days while I made up arrears of mail
and looked about the old frontier town.

This place may be recognized by some of my
readers in connection with certain well-worn jokes
turning on warmth of climate. The popular belief
that Yuma Is separated from the nether regions only
by a sheet of paper is probably an error, though not
a serious one. The shade temperature did not go
over 110° while I was in Yuma, but it was now Sep-
tember and the back of the summer was broken.

The town is on the Arizona side close to the junc-
tion of the Colorado and the Gila, and a few miles
east of the point where California of the United
States and Lower California of Mexico meet at the
river. It is the Puerto de la Concepclon of Padre
Garces,^ and the site of the ill-fated Mission of La

^ The name of Fray Francisco Tomas Hermenegildo Garces
should be held in honor. He was a native of Aragon, and one of the
most intrepid of those priest-explorers who early pushed their way
into the Western deserts, planting the Cross far in advance of the
flag. It was in 1 77 1 (he was then thirty-three years old) that he first

304 CALIFORNIA DESERT TRAILS

Purisima Concepcion, which was founded in 1780
and came to a tragic end in the following year along
with the neighboring Mission of San Pablo and San
Pedro, ten miles down the river. From earliest days
this was a favorite place for fording the river, and
from 1849 for many years there was a regular service
by ferry. In 1850, following the war with Mexico, a
fort, remains of which may be traced, was estab-
lished on the hill where the Indian school now
stands, and the place became known as Fort Yuma.
In 1852 the first of the river steamers, a stem-
wheeler, appeared at Fort Yuma, to the intense ex-
citement of the Indians, who, having assembled at
the report of the prodigy, beat a retreat on its ap-
proach, crying out that "the devil was coming up
the river, blowing fire out of his nose and kicking up
the water behind him with his feet." One of the old

crossed the Colorado River, but for several years before that he had
been knocking about among the Yumas, Mojaves, Apaches, gaining
their good-will by his geniality, tact, courage, and simplicity. It is
said that he would eat Indian food and appear to enjoy it as much as
his hosts — a stiff test for even the Franciscan "rule" and his native
courtesy. His influence with Palma, the Yuma chief, smoothed the
way for Anza's expedition in 1774, and he accompanied the gallant
"Captain of Tubac" for the whole distance from Sonora to the coast,
returning from San Gabriel alone.

It is sad to record that a few years later Padre Garces fell a victim
when the "bold and rebellious" Yumas rose against the whites. He,
with three more priests and practically all the other white men at
the two newly established Missions (including the military com-
mander, Captain Don Fernando Rivera y Moncada, and many sol-
diers), fell in a general massacre in the summer of 1781. The bodies
of Fray Francisco and a companion priest were found, the following
year, where they had been buried by a kindly Indian woman in a
little spot of grass and flowers in the midst of the burned area where
the Mission had stood. The record says that among the flowers was
the camomile — a pleasant touch of detail. I like the association of
that modest little blossom with brave, simple Padre Garces.

IMPERIAL VALLEY TO YUMA 305

steamers rests to-day on its laurels beside the bank
while another has been transformed into a bungalow
by an ingenious citizen. The last of their skippers,
Captain Isaac Polhamus, may still be met about the
streets of Yuma, and has vivid scraps of history to
recount, along with memories of soberer hue — for
instance, of days and nights passed in getting free of
one sand-bar only to Immediately lodge upon an-
other. Several days were often spent in making ten
or fifteen miles.

The town is interesting to any one who cares for
humble ways of life, though scorned by people de-
voted to progress. It reminded me of California's old
capital, Monterey. Here as there one finds houses of
all constructions and ages mixed : there is not yet a
"choice residential section" or "Nob Hill" (charm-
ing name), but adobe, timber, brick, and "stick-in-
the-mud"^ are pleasantly jumbled together, with
here and there a garden of old-fashioned flowers.
Date-palms wave over the sidewalks, mingling with
cottonwoods and even wildling mesquits. Half-
naked Mexican children play in the dooryards of
humble homes, and Indians use the main street as
boldly as the banker, the mayor, or even the police-
man. Altogether, Yuma comes near my idea of a
model town.

Pictorially, the Indians are the making of it. The
Yuma men are athletic-looking fellows, erect and
well-featured, the finest, I think, among the South-
western tribes; and they have ideas of dress that re-
sult in striking ensembles. One slim young man es-

1 Structures of willow poles set upright and plastered with mud.

306 CALIFORNIA DESERT TRAILS

pecially took my fancy. He wore a close-fitting lilac
tunic of knitted silk, closed at the throat with a scar-
let ribbon; his hair hung in straight ropes to his
waist and was tied with a cord of bright green; for
sash he had an orange silk bandanna. Crude as this
may sound, his lithe figure, open look, and general
air of efficiency carried it off and made a really fine
effect.

The women did not evoke my enthusiasm, though
they did my attention. They are much inferior to
the men in physique, though perhaps up to the
average of our Western Indian women. Their fea-
tures have none of the clean-cut look seen in the
men, and as for dress, gaudy is the only word. Over
the usual shapeless "wrapper," generally of blue-
and-white check, the women without exception wear
a square sheet of the strongest hues known to the
dry-goods world — purple, grass-green, flame-color,
scarlet, ultramarine, yellow. As a rule these have a
two or three inch border of some violent contrast,
such as purple on orange or green on blue. These
startling draperies are fastened at the neck and left
flowing to the breeze. The head Is usually encircled
with a banda of red, and the straight hair, which
is seldom so long as that of the men, hangs in a
shock on the shoulders. A group of Yuma women in
a lively wind would give a futurist some valuable
ideas.

A visit to the court-house revealed a rather de-
pressing state of things: a fair exterior, but, within,
a pervading carelessness and a general air of spit-
toons. However, I was repaid by two views that

IMPERIAL VALLEY TO YUMA 307

I obtained — one from the room below the dome,
a sort of dormitory furnished with a number of
highly unattractive beds, provided, I suppose, for
unfortunate jurymen. From here I could look out
on all sides — to the green-bordered river winding
in sinuous course toward the Gulf; or to range be-
yond range of mountains, of red, yellow, purple, or
of mere haze; with an extraordinary peak, the Pi-
cacho,^ standing up like an artificial obelisk twenty
miles to the north, and more to the east the equally
strange shape of Castle Dome, the Cabeza del Gi-
gante, or Giant's Head: over all an evening sky
where clouds sailed in majestic squadrons.

The other view was different but fully as impres-
sive — a human being, in fact, but of a kind that I
supposed had passed away. He entered the building
as I was leaving it, and I turned back to have an-
other look. I knew he was a judge before I saw him
go into the court-room. Long, thin, goateed, shirt-
sleeved, with cigar and wide-brimmed Stetson at
free-and-easy angle — he was the devil-may-care,
reprobate, Bret Hartean judiciary to the life, a sort of
epic. Without doubt he had a gun in his pocket,
perhaps another in the leg of his boot. I could
hardly keep from taking his photograph. I reckon
him to be the last of a species. Yuma must be careful
with him, and when he dies he should be gently pre-
served under glass in some museum of American
types. I have read of a person who was so gro-

^ It was named by Garces, Penon de la Campana, or Great Bell-
Tower Rock, a name quite expressive to one familiar with the isolated
bell-tower of Spanish architecture.

308 CALIFORNIA DESERT TRAILS

tesquely ugly that he looked as if he were walking
about doing it for fun. I had that kind of feeling
about my Yuma judge.

One who thinks life dry without frequent thrills
might find a summer evening in Yuma tedious: yet I
look back on certain after-dinner hours there as
among the most profitable of my trip. After leaning
for an hour over the rail of the bridge, hoping that I
was getting cool, I found it was a mistake and took
my way up the street to share the general fate and
lounge among the loungers. Mesmerized by the
rhythmic thump of a mechanical piano I took a post
opposite the Motion-Picture Theatre. The main
street of Yuma makes something of a motion picture
itself. Three Indians with headdresses of purple,
green, and pink, sat inert on the curb in front of me,
smoking countless cigarettes while they made hilari-
ous comments on passers-by. Men on quick-pacing
Indian ponies swung along, one now and then jerk-
ing up at the sidewalk to exchange a remark or bor-
row "the makings." Hard-featured men, and girls
bearing the terrible stamp, passed and repassed:
also Yuma's full complement of sales-ladies es-
corted by their fellows. A "For Rent" automobile
drawn up close by showed several pairs of lightly
clad legs and arms dangling over doors and seat-
backs, apparently disconnected from invisible own-
ers. A heavy-looking buck and his heavier-looking
middle-aged squaw stopped to admire the colored
posters of the play. In twos and threes the citizens
slouched in to the show, clerks in the latest shirt-
styles, with their girls, entering at the exclusive

IMPERIAL VALLEY TO YUMA 309

"two-bit" right, while the common ten-centers,
mainly Mexicans and Indians, passed in on the left.

The rattle of the music roused in me an appetite
(last satisfied years ago, I thought for ever) for
movies, and when I saw the Indian and squaw come
back down the street and enter, I walked over, paid
my dime, and followed, taking the seat next behind
them.

My attention was divided between the play and
my front neighbors. The play, already well on its
course, was the regulation kind of thing, and the
acting of the regulation stagey sort, with full meas-
ure of the clenching of hands, smiting of brows,
rolling of eyes, and heaving of chests that mark the
authentic movie drama. The story does n't matter;
there were stolen interviews, a secret marriage, a
wealthy, cruel parent, reckless expenditure on cabs
and telegrams, a baby girl, a death, the good old
landlady with asides and risky buttons, realistic
scenes of high-low-life in Rio or somewhere, a
poodle, and so forth.

But it was the "one touch of nature" that caught
us all. The baby, grown to a sunny-haired romp of
five, came dancing downstairs and threw herself on
grandpapa's neck with prattle, hugs, and kisses. It
was then that our hearts gave way. The buck's right
arm had been lying along the seat-rail behind his
squaw's broad crimson back; the other hand was in
his lap. At this point the free arm crept over and he
clasped the hand of his woman, while the arm be-
hind drew her closer. Would that I might have
reached over and wrung those dark and dirty paws!

310 CALIFORNIA DESERT TRAILS

I don't know why I did n't, unless because I am
English. Nor do I know why I should have thought
it strange for two Yuma Indians to be at a level of
sentiment that, as I was slightly ashamed to find, I
had not left behind.

When the relentings, explanations, and reconcilia-
tions were done, and child, father, and grandfather
had been seen locked in embraces (with great "busi-
ness" by landlady and poodle), we lounged out and
drifted down the street to the ice-cream and billiard
parlor, where racial barriers fell again before a com-
mon passion for nickel ice-cream sodas. And so
home to our respective beds.

That Goliath of the cacti, the saguaro, which is
such a notable feature of the Arizona deserts, exists
in small numbers at two or three points on the Cali-
fornia side of the river, a few being found about fif-
teen miles above Yuma. As a rarity in California
botany I thought it worth a side-trip to see and
photograph them.

I took the road leading to the Laguna Dam,
which was built a few years ago to bring a tract of
land to the south of Yuma under cultivation. It was
an interesting region that I passed through, consid-
ering what Nature had meant it to be. On either
side of a willow-bordered road there stretched fields
of com and hay, and pastures stocked with horses
and cattle. It seems to be also a stronghold of the
turkey tribe, for large bands of gobblers and peepers
were wading about in the tall alfalfa, a head coming
to the surface here and there like a periscope. The
houses here were more like homes and less like

IMPERIAL VALLEY TO YUMA 311

camps than those of Imperial Valley. Many of these
had little orchards, a thing one hardly ever sees in
the Imperial ; and nurseries of date seedlings were a
common feature.

Now and then a wagon passed us filled with
Indians bound for town. There was no mistaking
those tulip-like costumes at any distance. I caught
glimpses of such chic arrangements as magenta with
orange, and bottle-green with mauve. The Quakers
will never stand a chance with these people. One
rather pretty girl in flame-color and pea-green made
a fine display of gold-filled incisors as she went by, I
fancy for my benefit. The contrast of bare, dirty
feet with this show of wealth struck me as unique,
perhaps also symbolic. It is a far advance in taste
that is shown by the Mexican woman, with her
dark, plain colors and modest rebosa, or the Mexican
girl's choice of pure and simple white. The Yuma
men's favorite head-covering is a handkerchief of
some bright color, twisted into a close-fitting tur-
ban; but often, and more pleasing, one sees the
handa, a strip passing round the forehead and fas-
tened above the long ropes of hair.

The dustiness of the road was mitigated by a
green bordering of willows and alfalfa, highly ap-
proved by Kaweah. Everywhere were canals, large
and small, the cement head-gates bearing the letters
U. S. R. S. (United States Reclamation Service)
which are coming to mean so much to many regions
of the West. A dredge was lazily nosing with a
ecoop-shovel into the bank of damp red earth, en-
larging one of the smaller canals. On all sides were

312 CALIFORNIA DESERT TRAILS

tokens of improvement and, what is better, con-
tentment; though one or two men I talked with had
complaints to make on the score of their financial
burdens under the Government irrigation plan.

Half a mile after meeting the main canal, which
is forty or fifty feet in width, I came to the river and
the head-works of the great Laguna Dam.^ From
the weir that stretched across the wide stream went
up a roar of falling water. The massive head-gates
bore again the mark U. S. R. S., like the symbol of a
conqueror or the S. P. Q. R. of ancient Rome. Ad-
joining the dam on the California side is a Mexican
village on the site of a former mining-camp of some
note. It bears the pleasing name of Potholes, refer-
ring, I think, to the fact that the pay-dirt was found
here to occur in "pots" or "pockets."

It was too late for me to hunt saguaros that day.
I camped amid a confusion of old boilers and other
debris of the construction time, using for sleeping-
place the bed of a disused wagon, the only clean and
level spot I could find. Mosquitoes kept me in mis-
ery, and I was glad when the rising of an arc of wan-
ing moon told that daylight and relief were at hand.
At this spot, however, where a rocky bluff brings a
break in the almost continuous thicket that borders
the river, this pest was nothing in comparison with
what I endured in other places. Whenever I entered
the jungle of willow, cottonwood, and arrow weed, so
delicious to the eye at a distance, I became the prey

1 It is worthy of note that Captain Anza, in 1774, remarked upon
the possibilities of a dam somewhere hereabouts. The old Spanish
adventurers, both priests and soldiers, had a range of ideas much
wider than their particular province.

AN OLD SAGUARO, WITH HOLES OF THE ELF-OWL

IMPERIAL VALLEY TO YUMA 313

of myriads of these demons. The hot dank air rings
with their infernal pipings, and every moment is a
misery. If equatorial Africa is worse than this, Liv-
ingstone and Stanley were heroes indeed.

A few miles to the north I found the outposts
of the saguaros. Scarred and barren hills broke
abruptly from levels strewn with fragments of rock
of unusual hues, and the walls of every gully showed
broken veins and ledges that nmde me again ponder
turning prospector. There was no trouble in dis-
tinguishing the saguaros: they stood like tall posts
among the stunted shrubs that sprinkled the mesa,
varied only by small ironwoods, palo verdes, and
mesquits where the shallow depression of a water-
course collected the scanty rainfall. It was my first
meeting with the saguaro and I was struck with its
odd characteristics.

Its typical shape is a slender, straight column of
equal diameter from top to bottom. From this a
few stumpy arms may break out, and as these al-
most always turn upward, parallel to the main stem,
a common effect is that of a gigantic candelabrum.
Most of them, however, take original forms, each
one a study in the weird. In close examination the
plant is beautiful enough, the stem and branches
glossy dark green and regularly fluted, and bearing
in early summer white waxen blossoms which ma-
ture into edible crimson fruit. The tallest specimen
I found was a solitary, old, ragged fellow, forty feet
high, with a grotesque array of excrescences. An
Alaskan Indian would have hailed it as a wondrous
totem-pole.

314 CALIFORNIA DESERT TRAILS

Other features of the landscape gave the same
effect of abnormality. The bare red plain was broken
by distant hills of livid color and curious outline. To
north and east, eccentric shapes gave the horizon a
fantastic appearance. Of these Castle Dome was
chief, the perpendicular mass of its central column
looking as if the mountain were spouting up into the
sky. Nearer at hand were these vegetable monstrosi-
ties, some straight and stark, others running to all
sorts of bulbous curiosities. In color and shape every
object was unexpected and unaccountable.

Almost all the saguaros I saw were bored with one
or more round holes about four inches in diameter.
My totem-pole saguaro must have had twenty of
them. These are made originally by woodpeckers,
but are mostly annexed by the little elf-owl {Micro-
pallas wMtneyi), who turns out the unlucky carpin-
tero (as the Spaniards call the bird of chips), en-
larges the hole, or perhaps bullies the other bird into
doing it for him, and moves in, sometimes, no doubt,
finding a young carpenter or two all ready for the
house-warming. I searched a few of the holes in hope
of getting a sight of this midget of his tribe, but if
any were at home they had taken to the cellar.

CHAPTER XIX

A DESERT RIDE: YUMA TO BLYTHE

Autumn in the air — Northward now — Indian houses — Picacho
Peak — A tinaja — Sunset splendor — The back of the Chocolates

— Picacho Mine — Rock colors — Mineral country — Mexican
hospitality — The Colorado River: its monotony: whirlpools:
river of many names — Hoag's Landing — A taciturn hermit —
A friendlier one — Frontier life — Riverside jungles — The fas-
cination of repulsion — Mexicans preferred — Summer floods —
Palo Verde — Infant prodigies — Water required — A boom
"town" — Great expectations — "Home, Sweet Home" —
Blythe : good points and bad — No Mexicans need apply — Pumped
dry by mosquitoes — A bit of Arizona — Mojave Indians —
Puzzle: find La Paz — Buried treasure — Country of the dead

— Ehrenberg: population, i — The days of old — The missing citi-
zens — Evening on the Rio Colorado.

IT was with a light-hearted feeling that I left
Yuma. For one thing, cooler weather was at
hand. People had told me that the middle of Sep-
tember would bring a break in the heat, and this was
the 8th of the month. (The previous night, for the
first time for months except when at Warner's in
the mountains, I had found it comfortable to sleep
under a thin blanket) . For another, in leaving Yuma
I was turning northward and in a general way home-
ward. Three months of travel in this desert country,
nearly all of it alone, and with everlasting anxieties
of water and forage, had brought a feeling that
sometimes bordered on disgust.

Whether it was these considerations or some real
difference in the air, somehow I felt as if autumn had
come. I tried in vain to get at the source of the feel-
ing. It might have been a bird sitting meditatively

3i6 CALIFORNIA DESERT TRAILS

on a stalk of milo-maize ; or a cow dreamily chew-
ing; or a flock of blackbirds making jolly chorus In a
willow; anyhow it was there, and even when birds
and cows were left behind, and the desert again en-
gulfed us, I felt the vague relief.

I chose the California bank of the river. There is
a fairly good road, I am told, leading north on the
Arizona side, while on the west side roads were
problematical beyond Picacho, some twenty miles
up. But I find untravelled ways most to my liking,
and felt pretty sure I could get through, for water
would be at hand if I kept near the river, and I
heard of a ranch or two where forage might be found
before I should reach the settlements of the Palo
Verde Valley.

The first few miles led through the Indian Reser-
vation, and at one or two of the kans (houses) the
family was already breakfasting (mainly, it seemed,
on watermelon) under the ramada, or brush-roofed
shed, which is the general living-room during the
hot months. The winter-quarters of most of the
houses seemed snug enough, with good doors and
windows, though these looked odd in walls of wil-
low-poles caulked with mud. One young fellow
dashed past me on a bicycle, with a shock of hair
streaming behind him that for length, if not for tex-
ture, might be the envy of many a pale-face bru-
nette.

Passing the last irrigation ditch we entered at
once on a wide mesa with the ragged red hills of the
Chocolate Range on all sides, except where, beyond
the river, the mountains of Arizona were piled in

YUMA TO BLYTHE 317

solid masses of purple or aerial tones of blue. Ahead
rose the Picacho pinnacle, like a dark pillar of thun-
der-cloud. It would be strange if the mines on the
north flank of the mountain had escaped discovery.
Any prospector or explorer coming within sight of
that curious peak would be bound to go and see
what it meant. I saw here an unusually good mirage,
a sheet of pale blue water with slender towers like
the minarets of mosques artistically grouped be-
yond. I used to wonder whether Kaweah saw these
illusions. I cannot see why a horse should not, his
eyes being at much the same level as a man's, but he
never gave any token of noticing them. Are animals
quicker than we to detect the unreahty?

He had drunk little at starting and refused water
at the ditch, but by early afternoon he was jaded. I
searched each gully in hope of finding water left by
the storm of a few days before, and by good luck
came upon a tinaja of clear water. By lying down I
could just make the canvas bucket reach it by using
the forty-foot picket-rope. It was delicious water,
cool and sweet, and we resolved on lunch. A chuck-
walla that lived in a cranny of the gully amused me
with reptilian antics while I ate. No doubt he
thought my actions equally uncouth.

The country became rougher, with antediluvian
looking hills coming in at every fresh view. Ocotillos
were almost the only growth, and these, as brilliant
as if dipped in vivid paint, made a striking show
against the crude red of the rock. By late afternoon
we rounded the flank of the Picacho, reaching the
divide just before sunset. I shall never forget the

3i8 CALIFORNIA DESERT TRAILS

sea of color that spread before me here. But why at-
tempt to describe that which I felt it was hopeless to
try to realize myself? It was superhuman. Words
were below the trivial; even thoughts would hardly
come.

In mere geography, it was the back of the Choco-
lates that I saw, a red ocean of ridges and pinnacles
that if one could count them would run to hundreds,
or more likely thousands. The level sun threw every
detail into strongest relief, each point sharp and tense
as if in action. Across this swept the splendor of an
unearthly sunset.

The road here swung to the north of the Pica-
cho, which had become a huge perpendicular cliff
mysterious in shadow. Near by was another peak
scarcely less original in outline. A mile brought us to
the old mining-camp, a cluster of huts and sheds, all
but one or two of them dismantled, with a larger
central building occupied now by a caretaker. The
property is involved in some legal difficulties and
has long been unworked. This district has been
noted for its rich placers since the early sixties, and
it is said that when it was at its best ("in bonanza"
as the phrase goes) any miner who failed to take out
three hundred dollars per day was discharged as in-
competent. Instead of the several hundred men who
at one time made this a lively camp, I found only
two or three Mexicans making a small living by
working over the old placer-ground with dry-wash-
ers.

I persuaded the caretaker to spare Kaweah an
armful of hay from his tinystore, and ate a cold

YUMA TO BLYTHE 319

supper rather than spend time over cooking while
that wonderful afterglow filled the sky. The porch
of a disused building where I spread my blanket
proved to be the battlefield of the rats of Picacho
and the camp cat, who charged across me from time
to time.

We took our way in the morning down a pictur-
esque cafion along which a light railroad used to run
between the river and the mines. Rusty rails and
machinery were strewn about, adding their quota of
raggedness to piles of broken rock and old railway
ties. The colors of the walls were extraordinary,
splashed about in a way that suggested the upset-
ting of cauldrons of molten rock, pink, lavender,
scarlet, green, and blue. The cool gray of smoke-
trees made an excellent foil for these lively effects.

On the river-bank at the mouth of the canon were
the remains of the old town of Picacho, its popula-
tion reduced to two or three families. This region
for many miles up the river is a land of yesterday : of
mines worked out, towns and settlements dead or
dying. Yet it may revive, for mineral country can
never be safely said to be dead. Any day the grizzled
old man with pick and shovel, frying-pan and gold-
pan, may strike a blow that will bring it to life liter-
ally as if by magic. Looking at that extent of moun-
tains, all known or guessed to be mineralized, but
in great part unprospected, one feels that bonanzas
by scores might be hidden there.

The store, where I had counted on replenishing
my saddle-bags, was closed, this not being one of
the bi-weekly mail days. But at the adjoining house

320 CALIFORNIA DESERT TRAILS

I found a kindly Mexican family, and experienced
again the courtesy of these often underrated people.
While I drank my milk and talked with the dueno
in the veranda where the family life went on, the
phonograph was turned on for my pleasure. It was
odd to hear the strains of "Pagliacci" by these
lonely reaches of the Colorado. "Tipperary" did
not sound so improbable.

I now turned northward along the river. The one
difficulty I expected in making my way along the
stream was the overflowed areas likely to be left by
the yearly flooding which results from the melting
of the snows on the headwaters. But fortunately this
summer the rise had been less than normal and there
should be little trouble, though I must expect de-
tours and retracing of steps.

A hardly discernible track ran alternately along
the river margin and the gravelly mesa that
stretched from the bank to the belt of rugged hills.
This gave variety to the march, sometimes through
thickets of willow, again in open blaze of sun, while
at intervals a ravine came down from the moun-
tains, filled with ironwoods, palo verdes, smoke-
trees, and the tedious but useful mesquit. At a little
cove where firm ground allowed of Kaweah getting a
drink I stopped for lunch and a congratulatory pipe,
feeling not a little satisfaction in at last travelling
along this famous stream, which had for years at-
tracted my imagination.

The Colorado is not in its lower course a particu-
larly striking river. That kind of feature it has in
full measure farther up, where with roar of rapids or

YUMA TO BLYTHE 321

nobler quietude of motion it sweeps through the
vast chasms of the Grand Canon. Here it was a wide
red flood, majestic in its expression of power, but
with monotony for its prevailing note. This monot-
ony, however, as I soon found, comes to be itself a
feature of impressiveness. The union of silence with
motion has also its peculiar charm, and the Colorado
might well be named the Silent River. Its lack of
sound might pass without notice if it were not
brought to the attention by sudden swirls or whirl-
pools that now and again break the stillness with a
rush of rapid water, followed again by the deathlike
hush. These periodical suctions are a characteristic
of this stream, and are caused by the continual
shifting of the material of the bed. A phenomenal
quantity of silt is carried by the Colorado, and its
deposition results in constant changes of the bot-
tom, a newly formed shoal at one place being bal-
anced by a displacement at another. On the shores,
also, every flood rebuilds and tears down the banks,
which even at this time of low water I often noted
to be rapidly caving at some point where I might be
standing. This again causes changes of current in
the channel, with the result of fresh alterations of
the bed.

The river has had various names in the course of
its history. We first hear of it in 1538 under the
name Rio de las Balsas, river of the rafts, from the
Franciscans, Fray Juan de la Asunci6n and Fray
Pedro Nadal, who saw the Yumas cross the stream
on rafts. Two years later one of Coronado's officers,
Hernando de Alargon, the first to discover its mouth

322 CALIFORNIA DESERT TRAILS

and explore some distance above, named It the Rio
de Buena Guia, or river of good guidance. In the
same year Melchior Diaz called it the Rio del Tizon,
river of the firebrand, because he found the savages
carrying torches for warmth. Juan de Oiiate in 1605
christened it the Rio Grande de Esperanza, river of
hope, but in 1700 it received from Padre Eusebio
Kino the ominous name of the Rio de los Martires,
prophetic of the massacre, eighty years later, at the
infant Missions near Yuma. But the name by which
we know it, the Rio Colorado, the red river, is em-
phatically its own, stamped upon it by Nature. Red
it is, both water and shores, approaching actual
vermilion, and the hue is accentuated by the com-
plementary green of the bordering vegetation.^ I
should like to view it again in late fall, when cotton-
wood and willow had changed to that tint of au-
tumn gold which gives such depth and brilliance to
the blue of the sky.

, I whiled away an hour with the shades of the old
padres and conquistadores, not forgetting the mod-
em conqueror. Major John Wesley Powell, whose
exploration in 1869 has lately been commemorated
iin a monument built on a point above the wonderful
'.canon. All the afternoon we moved slowly along,
(flanked ever by barren red mountains, these in Cali-
fornia, those in Arizona. Reach after reach of the

^ In an old map, printed in Paris in the sixteenth century, and
showing California as an island, the Gulf is set down as Mar Bermejo,
the Vermilion Sea, the name probably deriving from one of the "re-
ports and narrations" from which the map was avowedly drawn,
traceable to some early explorer, perhaps Alargon, or Ulloa (one year
earlier) who may have observed the discoloration of the Gulf water
by that of the river, near its mouth.

YUMA TO BLYTHE 323

river yielded little variety. Now and then a platoon
of ducks flew up or down stream, or a heron or crane
rose and flapped slowly off to a new fishing-ground,
and often a covey of quail, caught unaware, scram-
bled with anxious chatter into the nearest thicket.

A smoke-stack, like a steamer's funnel, on the
nearer bank, with nothing else of man's handiwork
in sight, marked Hoag's Landing, where a ferry is
supposed to ply, carrying an occasional passenger. I
saw neither boat nor boatman, and wonder to this
hour how long one might wait there for passage.

A mile or two farther on we came to a discouraged
looking house and, after some search, a settler of
similar mien who leaned on the rickety bars of a
pasture that was occupied by a pair of burros. His
niggardly words and lack-lustre eye were not en-
gaging, and when I learned that there was another
settler six miles above, I forebore to suggest our re-
maining for the night, and we pursued our way. Be-
fore we reached the other place sunset had come. It
is surely by design of Providence that the refreshing
color-flood comes over the earth just at the hour
when otherwise man's spirit would tend to grovel. I
reined up and gazed my fill over the solitary scene,
now suddenly humanized by the magic of the eve-
ning light. The Colorado was no longer common-
place.

Just above where a rocky island, known as Light-
house Rock, stood midway in the stream, I found
the ranch and a hearty welcome from the rancher.
He had lived in this isolated spot for many years,
usually quite alone, only at long intervals visited by

324 CALIFORNIA DESERT TRAILS

some wandering prospector. To my Inquiry how often
he got his mall, he replied "Oh, every few weeks,"
in a tone Implying that this was not half bad.

My host had a small but substantial house, with
plenty of good land and many of the makings of a
comfortable home. On the river bank he had rigged
up, single-handed, an engine and pump, which were
all but ready to lift the water upon his fields. But
the loneliness and the disheartening fight were too
much for him, and he declared that he must quit un-
less he could find a partner. There are few people
nowadays, I fear, who would be attracted by this
frontier life, where one's own resources must provide
almost every item that enters into success and com-
fort. If lumber is needed, you row up stream, fell
and hew your timbers, and raft them down to your
landing. If cement, or nails, your supply is forty
miles away. If flour, or candles, or coffee, they are
only to be had at the trouble of a day's journey. So-
ciety one must dispense with: and if you need a doc-
tor — but one had better not get sick. Even the
luxury of a diet of wild burro (which is the only
fresh meat available) might not be thought to offset
the other deprivations.

Kaweah met here an old acquaintance in the form
of barley hay, which he munched with reminiscent
air. After supper my host and I sat smoking and
chatting for hours while he unburdened himself of
hopes and fears, relieved with yams of cougar and
bighorn, treacherous river and waterless trail, while
coyotes yelped and yelled In cheerful rivalry, Cali-
fornia versus Arizona.

YUMA TO BLYTHE 325

A long day's march was laid out for next day. I
bade good-bye early to the friendly hermit, and we
took our way again northward. At each approach
to the river, bands of waterfowl flew quacking and
clattering across the shining water. The track was
dim, and was cut away in places by the summer
flood, causing us many detours. The thickets be-
came more jungle-like and difficult, and often the
axe came into play. There were vistas in these wil-
low woodlands where one might have thought him-
self in a wintry forest, every twig and leaf being
coated with white wool from the seed vessels. Where
the sun lighted these glades the resemblance to
snow was exact, but the steamy heat and the mos-
quitoes forbade such delusion as to the time of
year.

There was more of interest when the trail took to
the mesa. Then the mountains were in view, and,
forbidding as they were in their look of eternal
drought and their uniformity of hue, their shapes
were always stimulating. The mere geographical
feeling, so to speak, that is excited by mountains is a
luxury to any one fond of geography ; and these des-
ert ranges, with their look of geologic austerity, have
a quality that amounts to fascination — the fasci-
nation of repulsion or something near that, a morbid
and dangerous thing in general, but which some-
how I find invigorating In a chain of blighted, be-
witched mountains. One group of hills that I passed
is named the Barren Mountains, as if In contrast
with the other ranges hereabout, but it is hard to
imagine what the difference can be.

326 CALIFORNIA DESERT TRAILS

On the Arizona side of the river about opposite to
where I now was, a few settlers have taken up land.
The locality is known as the Cibola Valley, taking
the name from those Seven Cities that excited the
old Spaniards so needlessly.

I recognized a relic of the mining era in the form
of some cement vats on the bench above the river.
No shaft or tunnel could be seen, so probably the
pay-dirt was brought from a distance, this being the
nearest water available for washing. In the bottom
of one of the vats was a good-sized rattlesnake. I
descended and did battle, Kaweah looking down
like an old Roman watching a combat in the arena.
He shares my dislike for these creatures, and gets as
excited as I at the familiar rattle. As an instance of
protective coloring, this specimen had taken on a
dark red color that closely matched the ground.^

After a dozen miles or so we came to a clearing
where Mexicans had cultivated their little patches
of maize, milpitas, as they call them. The white set-
tler who had lately ousted them was living in the
stick-in-the-mud house. As it was noon I inquired of
the wife whether I might purchase a meal and take
it with them, which after some demur was granted.
The man did not leave his reclining posture, on a
dirty quilt in the shade of a ramada, during the hour
and a half I stayed, except for a hurried visit to the
table to gulp down his beans and cofifee. With apolo-
gies to the kindly woman, I could not help wishing
that the "damned greasers," as he termed the late

1 I once, in grass country, killed a rattlesnake that was quite green
in hue. Both the green and the red were regulation "diamond-backs."

YUMA TO BLYTHE 327

occupiers, might have been my hosts. Anglo-Saxon
superiority has sometimes to be taken for granted.

A wide wash, the Arroyo Seco, comes in here.
There was no sign of recent rain having fallen here-
about, but the wash, dry as it now was, showed signs
that a flood had swept down from the Chocolates
within two or three weeks at most. I had seen the
storm that I raced to Yuma, ten days before, break-
ing over this locality, and now congratulated myself
that it had not overtaken me in the open, for fresh
drift was lodged four or five feet high all over the
wide channel. To be caught in one of these arroyos
(which are tempting camping-places on account of
firewood and shelter from wind), when a thunder-
storm bursts on the mountains, would be much like
being under a reservoir when the dam breaks.

Evening found us still far from Palo Verde, but a
few hours' cool travelling was not a bad prospect.
Before the young moon had set we had come into a
well-marked road that comes up from Glamis, forty
miles to the southwest, and along this we marched
comfortably enjoying the grateful dusk. At length
came fences, and then a light. We stumbled into a
few sloughs that variegated the road, ran into a
barbed-wire fence or two, and pulled up at an adobe
store-building where a trio of teamsters were camp-
ing on the porch. Opposite was a corral and hay-
stack, pleasing sights for Kaweah. The proprietor
was routed out and we wound up a long day in very
tolerable quarters.

Morning revealed Palo Verde as a hamlet — I
choose the smallest term, but it is too much — con-

328 CALIFORNIA DESERT TRAILS

sisting of a store and half a dozen scattered build-
ings, mostly old or of the modem kind that does not
need years to make them disreputable. The popula-
tion might number a score when all should have re-
turned from "inside." A backwater of the Colorado
gives the place some attraction, and it appeared to
be well stocked with fish and waterfowl. Not only
the youth but the infants of Palo Verde find their
pleasure in this lagoon. A proud father pointed out
to me his boy, aged three, who he assured me was an
expert swimmer, while his next younger, a baby-
girl, was in training and showing promise.

As for farming, the district seemed not to have
made a beginning. A few untidy fields could be seen,
but not one instance of thrifty cultivation came to
my notice. This settlement lies at the southern end
of the Palo Verde Valley, the upper part of which, as
the next day's travel proved, tells a very different
tale. No doubt the tide of prosperity, which means
the flow of water in the irrigation canals, is on its
way and will break on Palo Verde itself in due time.

Through a pale, unpleasant land we took our way
again northward. There was not now much comfort
to be had from the mountains, for they were farther
away and almost lost in summer haze ; and the river
had dropped out of sight. The vegetation was of the
dismal kind usual on these silt levels, hummocks of
atriplex varied with an occasional mesquit. The
ground was cracked and gaping with heat, and the
so-called ranches added the last touch of depression
with their gunny-sacking and baling-wire make-
shifts. Here and there an attempt at cultivation had

YUMA TO BLYTHE 329

been made, but abandoned. The bitter dust rose
listlessly from the road and hung about like an an-
noying companion. A team crept along half hidden
in its own gray cloud. As we passed I noticed that
the load was burlap, for baling the cotton-crop of
the northern end of the valley.

A new, vacant store-building with one house ad-
joining proved to be a "town" named Rannells.
The law of supply and demand cannot be the simple
thing many of us suppose, for here was a man who
thought, apparently, that a store automatically
produces customers. But the mind of the land-
boomer is one of the last puzzles that philosophy
will solve. Meanwhile one shakes the head and
passes by.

Gradually the look of things improved. The
patches of cotton seemed less hopelessly starved,
and here and there a decent house appeared. At a
little homestead I noticed half a dozen thrifty
young date-palms bearing a good crop. As I stood
admiring, an old woman smoking a clay pipe came
out of the shack and invited me to inspect her treas-
ures at close range. Did I ever see such dates as
them? No, she'd bet half a dollar I never did. Them
was reel Deglets and raised by hand. Laws, I
would n't believe the water they took, them six!
and did I notice them offshoots, five of 'em? That
would make near double the number when she set
'em out; and in three or four years they 'd double
again, and keep a-doin' it till, laws! In like no time
she and her old man would have a date place folks
*d come from Los Angeles in their autos to look at.

330 CALIFORNIA DESERT TRAILS

And so on, puffing and chatting away, friendly,
garrulous, admirably hopeful.

At the next settlement, called Neighbors, really
good farms began, with cheerful horses and men,
big haystacks, and a general air of something going
on. The well-fenced fields showed excellent crops of
alfalfa, cotton, and milo-maize. The difference be-
tween this locality and the one I had just left turns
wholly on the question of water, the very blood of
life to desert soil. Teams became more numerous,
then occasional buggies with women and children.
Passing a prosperous looking ranch I caught the
sound of a harmonium. Some one was playing
"Home, Sweet Home."

We were soon entering the town of Blythe,
which I found to consist of a dozen good stores, a
neat little bank, hotel, moving-picture theatre, and
so forth, and a few score of modest dwellings. But
again I rebelled at the slovenliness that makes our
new Western cities so deplorable. One picks out the
redeeming features eagerly enough, every tasteful
building, every bit of lawn, every decent job of
fencing: but these only give contrast to the general
vileness. One would think effort had been made,
real ingenuity called in, to achieve this hideous re-
sult.

Blythe has no livery-stable, but I found make-
shift quarters for Kaweah at a corral surrounded by
dirty tents and mud-and-pole hovels, and put up
for a day or two while I attended to matters of busi-
ness. The opening of a new pool-room was to be cel-
ebrated that night and the next, with a dance given

YUMA TO BLYTHE 331

on the first night by the Mexicans, who are a strong
element in the town, and on the second by the
Americans. As I stood at dusk talking with the sad-
dler and watching the Mexicans trooping to the
haile in chattering family groups, all the femininity
in snowiest array, I noticed a few American youths
and girls passing in with them, and remarked that it
was good to see the two elements so friendly. "Huh ! "
said my companion, "those store-clerks would go
anywhere there's a show for a dance." "But," I
said, "don't the Mexicans invite them?" "Sure."
"And then of course the Mexicans are invited when
you get up a dance." "What! invite the greasers!
Well, I just reckon we don't."

A map published in 191 5 by some California con-
cern for the benefit of autoists shows the towns of
Ehrenberg and La Paz, on the Arizona side of the
river almost opposite Blythe. They were noted
places in their time and should be worth a visit even
in decline. I took the road eastward, at first among
farms, then through the jungle of the bottom-land.
A few autumnal lavender asters had already ap-
peared, a hundred-fold delightful after the long ab-
sence of such charmers of the way. Wild hemp {Ses-
bania macrocarpa) was plentiful in places and still in
blossom, but its spindling growth and formal leaves
had made it tedious from first acquaintance.

It would have been a pleasant woodland lane
through the willows but for mosquitoes, which here
were at their worst. Kaweah stopped once or twice
and looked round at me with a questioning eye, but
I was no better off than he except for my smaller

332 CALIFORNIA DESERT TRAILS

area. I tried tobacco, but this they seemed to find an
interesting novelty. When I put Kaweah to a gallop
I only got more bites in less time and barked my
shins against the close-growing trees. The mosqui-
toes here were of the large mottled kind that leave
a mark like an old-fashioned legal wafer.

A cable ferry plies at this point, which in the early
days of the West was a main crossing place for Cal-
ifornia travel. In answer to my hail a grizzled old
fellow came out of a cabin on the farther side, and
in the leisurely manner of ferrymen the world over,
brought his boat across. This was a new experience
for Kaweah, and I expected him to balk when I rode
him on board; but the Egyptians were behind, and
the river, he knew, was our Red Sea of safety. When
I asked the ferryman how he endured the mosqui-
toes, "Why," he replied, "there's no more blood in
me, you see. They got the last out of me about nine-
teen ten, so they've quit coming around."

I found a road following the stream, and turned
northward over a clay mesa bearing the usual assort-
ment of plants but with a few saguaros added to give
the characteristic of Arizona. A mile or two along I
found a house of the familiar stick-in-the-mud type,
where a young rancher had taken up an abandoned
piece of bottom-land. He was no exception to the
rule of friendliness, and indeed urged me to stop
with him more or less Indefinitely. The house had
been built by Mojave Indians, whose tribal territory
begins hereabout, and it still bore marks of their re-
gime such as ollas and metates, and on the walls
crude drawings of trains, city buildings, and so

YUMA TO BLYTHE 333

forth. Probably some much-travelled Mojave buck
had been illustrating to his household circle the
wondrous things he had seen on a visit to Needles,
perchance even to Phoenix, the State capital.

A few other houses of the same kind were passed,
but all were deserted. In the rear of one, which ap-
peared to have been a store, there were the remains
of an arrastra, the primitive contrivance for grind-
ing ore by crushing it with rocks in a circular pit by
means of a capstan operated by horse, burro, or
ox power. One is constantly meeting these remind-
ers of "the days of old, the days of gold," in all sorts
of unlikely comers about the desert, and comes to
have the feeling of being in a region of the dead.

The young rancher had warned me that La Paz
was not now much of a place, but had told me
how to find it. Five miles farther on I glimpsed his
landmark, a cone-shaped cement monument visible
from the road on the right. On making my way to it
I understood the point of his remark that I must be
careful or I might miss the place. The monument, he
told me, stood at the head of the principal street. I
gazed all around. I was in a waste of mesquit scrub
and arrowweed : perhaps the houses were hidden by
the brush. I searched for houses, then for any token
showing where houses had stood. There was nothing,
not so much as a scrap of foundation, or adobe wall,
or of lumber, or even debris. Apart from the monu-
ment and a few mud bricks close thereby not a sign
remained of the city of La Paz, which forty or fifty
years ago was a place of five thousand or more peo-
ple, the county seat, and hopeful of becoming the

334 CALIFORNIA DESERT TRAILS

capital city of the Territory. Some one has recently
written about these defunct mining towns, which he
calls the ghost cities of the West. La Paz is not even
a ghost, merely a legend.

The top of the monument had been knocked off
and a hole broken in the side. I was told later that
it marked the grave of the wife of an Italian citizen,
saloon-keeper, merchant, and man of wealth of old
La Paz. He had lavished diamonds on his lady in
her lifetime, and rumor said that the jewels had
been buried with her. Some ghoul felt that he must
put that to the proof, and did so with crowbar or
dynamite. Whether they discovered diamonds, or
only proved that rumor had lied once more, I could
not learn.

East of the town there is a spot once known as
Friar's or Fryer's Gulch, from which, it is said, mil-
lions were taken out. Fifteen feet square was allowed
to each man, and fights to the death no doubt took
place over these narrow boundaries. Ghosts there
well might be about the old cemetery of La Paz, if
ghosts could find it, which is more than I could
do.

I climbed the bluff to see if from higher ground
any indication of the former town could be traced.
The wider outlook did but emphasize the vacancy
and desolation, to which the ruined grave gave a
touch of the definitely uncanny. Opposite, across the
silent river, rose the brick-hued Maria Mountains,
with range behind range in paling distance beyond.
In all directions it was the same: everything spoke
of the dreary or savage, and over all was an eternal

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YUMA TO BLYTHE 335

note of weariness, as of a land long since drained of
life, and left wan, blasted, and forsaken.

It was near sundown when we returned to the
ferry. Hard by is the old town of Ehrenberg, whose
founder one might fancy to have foretold by his
lonely and tragic death the fate of the place that
took his name. Here, however, there was at least a
skeleton left — a dozen or so adobe houses, all but
one or two wrecked and deserted, gaping open to
the sky. In the largest habitable building Ehren-
berg's one and only citizen solemnly keeps store all
by himself. Until a year or so ago, two saloon-keepers
competed with him for the business of the place, or
rather, of the rare passing traveller and the festal
topers of Blythe who were driven by county prohibi-
tion laws to cross the river for their harmless little
lagers and cocktails. Then the incredible happened:
Arizona itself "went dry," and the priests of the
flowing bowl and dirty apron sadly closed their
temples and fared forth into a world suddenly be-
come virtuous and unprofitable.

Ehrenberg is probably the only case extant of a
town with but a single inhabitant; almost certainly
the only instance of such a place keeping a store go-
ing. We have read of that doubtful island where the
people "eked out a precarious livelihood by taking
in one another's washing." Here, though, is an au-
thentic case of a person making a living off himself.
This I judge to be unique, and would suggest that
some political economist go and interview him and
find out how it is done.

I would have done this myself, but at the moment

336 CALIFORNIA DESERT TRAILS

I arrived he was just closing up town to go over to
Blythe for the evening. Thus the twilight hour was
my own, to wander and muse. I wish I had skill to
do justice to this Deserted Village of the West. Bret
Harte would have drawn it to the life. As I prowled,
an owl flapped from the gate-post of the old corral,
and a bevy of quail, in the act of going to roost in
the mesquits that had invaded the main street,
scurried back with reproachful murmurs into the
arrowweed thicket by the river. One handsome date-
palm waved in melancholy grace over a little enclo-
sure rank with weeds. The schoolhouse, to be known
by a fragment of blackboard on the wall of its single
room, is said to have housed the second school es-
tablished in the old Territory. The confessions of
early passion which certain young Felipes and Jose-
fas, Enriques and Marias, were impelled to publish
on the walls of their Alma Mater are still in evidence
against them.

In days when flat-bottomed steamers came up
from Yuma with freight for the hustling frontier
towns and mining-camps of Arizona, Ehrenberg was
a port of size. The rate for hauling goods from here
to Prescott is said to have been eight cents per
pound, or in the case of breakable or perishable
stuff, twenty-five cents per pound. A small army of
freighters and an imposing one of mules were con-
tinually on the road to and from the camps of the
Harquahalas, the Hualpais, and the Agua Fria. One
man alone owned fifteen teams, of eighteen mules to
the team. Those were spacious days in the West,
when no smaller coin passed than the contemptible

YUMA TO BLYTHE 337

"two-bits" ("do' reales"), a sum so mean that the
very term became a reproach, and so remains even in
these penurious times.

I found a number of Ehrenberg's missing citizens
up on the mesa, a quarter mile out of town. Here, in
the most thoroughly dismal cemetery I ever beheld,
were some sixty or seventy graves, mere shapeless
piles of gravel and boulders, with one, more ambi-
tious, a yellow hump of adobe. There was no sign of
its ever having been fenced : it lay open to coyotes,
cattle, and burros, whose tracks went in and out
everywhere. I suppose shallow graves were dug, but
it looks more as if bodies had been dropped uncof-
fined on any vacant space and stones and gravel
thrown hastily upon them. Each grave was a burrow
of ground-squirrels. Few had any pretence of cross
or mark of identification, and on still fewer could
one make out a date or name. The place seemed to
put a stamp on the record of bygone Ehrenberg as a
community unlovely in life, brutal in death. Yet,
Heaven forgive me for saying so, when many, or
most, of these dreary mounds may mark the end of a
life which, though cast in harsher setting, may have
held more of usefulness, kindliness, and genuine
worth than ours who gather easy "impressions," and
write books, or sell stocks, or sugar, and are marked
in Evergreen Cemetery with tasteful marbles and
non-committal texts.

The Colorado looked poetic enough as I rode
down to the ferry. I was not sorry when in answer to
my call the ferryman shouted from his cabin door
that he was "a-cookin' supper right now" and I

338 CALIFORNIA DESERT TRAILS

must wait. The sun had long set, but a carmine stain
still lingered, merging into clear beryl green, and
that shading to tender purple in which a half moon
stood vertical and the stars were taking station.
Three cranes rose with sudden clatter and flew
slowly down stream, their shadows flickering on
the calm water which swept past in a broad sheet of
palest green streaked with crimson. I was glad to
have time for this to stamp itself upon my mind as
my parting impression of the Rio Colorado.

The odors of bean-frying and biscuit-baking that
came with our ferryman were well calculated to re-
place sentimentality with thoughts of supper. We
crossed, I waved adieu to Arizona, and watched
the boat slip mystically away into the gloom. A
five-mile gallop through moonlight and mosquitoes
brought us again to Blythe, which had suddenly
burst into bunting in readiness for Mexico's Inde-
pendence Day on the morrow.

CHAPTER XX

A DESERT RIDE: BLYTHE TO COACHELLA VALLEY

Viva Mexico I — Homeward bound — A hard choice — A dirty trick

— A sunrise vision — The Ironwood Mountains — Desert pave-
ment — Palens and Cockscombs — Lack of the humane element

— Entering the Chuckwallas — Trail troubles — Moonlight and
mystery — Corn Springs — Picture-writings — Hotel de Corn
Springs — More trail problems — The heart of the Chuckwallas

— The desert and music — Quite at sea — Lost : The Red Cloud
Mine — More guessing — At last a road — A long night march —

— Kaweah discouraged but game — Night company — Faint
yet pursuing — Eureka! a sign-post — Dawn: peace and war —
Shafer's Well: rest and water — Mecca and civilization — The
desert in review — Still the Sphinx — The riddle unread.

IN reaching Blythe three sides of my proposed
circuit had been completed, and I now turned
westward toward the Coachella Valley where it be-
gan. There was no difficulty about waking early,
this sixteenth of September, for the Mexican half of
Blythe was up at dawn and making no secret of its
patriotic fervor. However, we had only a short
march before us for the day, so made a late start,
spending the morning in a round of gaiety and gun-
powder, and joining whole-heartedly in the shouts
of Viva Mexico ! that all but drowned the strains of
the Mexican National Hymn — a fine stirring air
even when screeched on a broken- winded phono-
graph.

A very few miles took us beyond the limit of the
cultivated land : then at a slight rise we were again
on the characteristic wide mesa broken by isolated
mountain ranges. Far in the south the pinnacles of

340 CALIFORNIA DESERT TRAILS

El PIcacho were unmistakable, though mere ghosts
of hazy blue. Near at hand to the north rose the
purple ridge of the Marias, shading into the dimmer
Ironwoods, and those into the long wavering chain
of the Chuckwallas, around or through which I was
to find a way. A glance behind showed a wilderness
of uneasy outlines that stood for Arizona.

Ten miles out I found the ranch of a solitary set-
tler who had sunk a well and obtained a flow of
water, small indeed, but enough to make a promising
experiment with dates, spineless cactus, and other
likely novelties. Here I put up for the night, but
gained the unwelcome news that water was not to be
had at Ford's Well, some twenty miles out, where I
had meant to make my next camp. This threw me
on a waterless stretch of about forty miles, either to
Gruendike's Well or Com Springs. As an alterna-
tive, I could strike across to Wiley's Well, and then
by an old road along the southern base of the Chuck-
wallas. The latter plan involved two thirty-mile
stretches between water, but seemed preferable on
Kaweah's account. I resolved on the shorter spans.

As I was saddling up next morning a prospector
chanced along. He was driving a buckboard with
two small mules, and was bound for Blythe, having
come by way of Wiley's Well. Was I going that way?
he asked. I told him, Yes. "How long rope have you
got?" he inquired. "Forty feet," I said, indicating
Kaweah's picket- rope. "That won't do you no
good," he remarked. " It's sixty foot down to water.
If I had n't had them two long tie-ropes I 'd have
starved when I got there yesterday. Some

BLYTHE TO COACHELLA VALLEY 341

son of (et caetera) has stolen the rope off the

windlass. I hope he'll die raving mad for a drop of
water right where he can see it, like I might have
done. Roping up's too good for that kind of dirt."

Perfectly true, for a more scoundrelly trick can
hardly be imagined, as cold-blooded as if a sailor
should cut the life-line that has just been his salva-
tion. It illustrates the chances that lie in wait for the
desert traveller, and keep him anxious from the time
he leaves one water-hole till he reaches the next. So
far as we were concerned, we could have returned
to this ranch ; but in the case of a man arriving at
that well in bad straits for water, perhaps having
used his last supply freely in expectation of surely
renewing it here, death would be a not unlikely
outcome.

I changed my plan perforce, but stayed over for
the day so as to make an earlier start the next morn-
ing. My accommodating rancher had a fair store of
hay, purchasable at a price, and I had brought a few
feeds of barley from Blythe, so Kaweah passed the
time profitably, while I indulged myself with such
ancient magazine literature as the house afforded.

By daybreak we were on the march. The air was
cool and Kaweah seemed to know that he was
headed for home, though home was well over a hun-
dred miles away. We had knocked off a few miles be-
fore the sun came up, and when it rose I wheeled
and sat enjoying, as I don't often find possible, the
magnificence of the desert sunrise. I felt I could af-
ford to do Sol justice now that a few days would
bring the end of my journey. Moreover, the equinox

342 CALIFORNIA DESERT TRAILS

was at hand and I could almost pity the bully now
that his power was waning.

So it was fine to watch each rift or ridge of moun-
tain flush to full life as it was overtaken by the
tide of light: to note the kindling of beacon be-
yond beacon, and, in fancy, to see it carried on from
Cockscombs to Cottonwoods, then to Santa Rosa,
San Jacinto, and San Gorgonio, and thence along
the great Sierra wall where snowfield, glacier, and
many an icy lake I knew would start to a sudden
glory of rose or sapphire. I saw the forests stir in the
wind of dawn, the deer go down to the brook, the
cyclamens and gentle lavender daisies awake and
smile as when we awoke and smiled together. Sud-
denly I asked myself, Why, what am I doing here,
raking among the bones of the earth? I have wasted
a precious summer, and, what is worse, gone back on
my friends. A bad, bad mistake. . . . Well, at least
I know one more corner of my inheritance.

Rounding a spur of the Ironwood Mountains
(sometimes called the McCoys, after one out of sev-
eral worthies of that name who figure in the epic of
the West) we travelled for some miles through what
might be termed, for the desert, a forest of iron-
woods. Many of the trees were twenty feet high and
some of them nearly two feet in diameter of trunk.
Kaweah had a fancy for the young twigs, so I gave
him ten minutes to browse as there was no prospect
of hay until we reached Mecca.

Wide spaces of this mesa were covered with the
black pebbles I had noted in other localities. They
formed a sort of pavement, and had the look of actu-

BLYTHE TO COACHELLA VALLEY 343

ally being burned black by the sun. On breaking
some of the pieces the inside color was always light
red. These stretches are one of the peculiar features
of desert geology, by reason of the uniformity of the
fragments in size and color, and the impression they
give of having been rolled into place. Their polish
also suggests friction under enormous weight, as if
red clay had been vitrified to a kind of flint by heat
due to compression.

Long before the Ironwoods were left behind, the
sun had warmed to his work and taken his old place
in my regard. Next the Palen Range slowly came
into view. The travelling became bad, then worse,
finally heartbreaking. Each wash outdid the last in
muscle-demand, and Kaweah parted early with his
morning gaiety. A few miles of this sort of thing has
greater effectiveness in reducing mental excitement
than any medical sedative I know. At last the Cocks-
combs opened up in the northwest, their serrated
crags remarkable as ever though robbed of their
realistic red by the haze of heat and distance. Our
objective, the Chuckwallas, flickered in long forbid-
ding rank on the southern horizon, seemingly unap-
proachable. Hours of laborious travel wrought no
visible change in their obstinate contours.

Half an hour was all I could allow at noon for rest
and lunch. The trees had long been passed, and
without a square foot of shade there was no induce-
ment to lose time. I found languid interest in watch-
ing the play of light on distant ranges, and in won-
dering what legend might have been framed by the
old Greeks that could give glamour to this profound

344 CALIFORNIA DESERT TRAILS

monotony. When at last deeper tones of color began
to outline the canons, imagination came feebly to
life, but I felt, as ever, that the sole human attribute
suggested by the desert is hopeless, prosaic endur-
ance, never anything of the dramatic or stimulat-
ing. All is tedious, explicit, bald. A poet here would
soon be gasping for want of air.

All the afternoon we marched steadily, and at
sundown came to a point where a track branched
southwesterly toward the Chuckwallas.^ Before
turning into it I let Kaweah graze a few minutes on
such scanty galleta grass as he might find, while I
lay motionless hoping to radiate off a little of the
heat I had been absorbing, particularly the last two
hours, when I had offered a frontal mark to the sun.
Although there is little slackening of the heat until
the moment of sunset, thereafter the air cools rap-
idly, so by the time we were ready to move there
was a decent temperature; while the mingled twi-
light and moonlight made a kind of bath of dusk, in
which my jaded frame was gently massaged with
soothing psychologic touches.

The track dwindled fainter and fainter. Some
storm had lately broken over the Chuckw^allas and
spread a sheet of sand and gravel over the whole
northern slope of the mountain. Before long we were
wandering in a chaos of washes. I dismounted and
led Kaweah, picking every foot of the way with ut-
most care, yet often going far astray. Luckily there

* The name comes from a species of lizard, Sauromalus ater, com-
mon in many parts of the desert but especially in this range. It is
harmless, but ugly, with much the look of a miniature alligator.

BLYTHE TO COACHELLA VALLEY 345

was a bright moon, in its second quarter, but at best
it was guesswork half the time. Often I tied Kaweah
and prospected far ahead before I could pick up the
trail.

So much time was being lost in this fashion that
I determined to cut loose and trust to luck. The
mountain wall loomed shadowy, the caiions uncer-
tainly marked by darker massing of gloom. The
route I had in mind followed a caiion that led
straight through the mountains, crossing by a pass
at the head of which is a water-hole known as Gom
Springs. Scanning the dark wall before me I made
out a black slash that by its bearings should be the
caiion I wanted. It was doubtful, yet probable, and
I resolved to take the chance.

Where we spent the next hour or two I am not
clear, except that in a general way we were on the
flanks of the Chuckwallas. Occasionally I got sight
anew of my landmark, which I identified by a notch
on the skyline: otherwise I guided by the stars. We
pulled up at last in the bottom of a deep gully
choked with a thicket of smoke-trees. Out of this
there was no way, except by going back, unless I
could get Kaweah up a thirty foot cliff. I felt sure
that once on the farther side we should have easy
going, though it was still doubtful whether the
canon we were heading for was the right one.

Kaweah was dead tired, but game. Picking out
the best looking place I threw the bridle over the
horn and led by the picket-rope. The bank was
loose gravel and much too steep for any chance of
stopping midway. It must be made in one rush or not

346 CALIFORNIA DESERT TRAILS

at all, and failure meant a bad, perhaps serious, fall
for the horse. I clambered a little way up, gave him
plenty of rope, and then shouted to him, at the same
time scrambling ahead. The good little fellow came
up with a run as if hand over hand, sending an ava-
lanche of stuff to the bottom. I kept cheering and
hauling him on, and in a few moments we were on the
top. There, almost at the edge, was a well-marked
track, heading for the cafion. (I take it to be a cross-
cut between Com Springs and Gruendike's Well.)
I now had leisure for the scenic features of my
surroundings, which indeed were sufficiently weird.
To the right was a mesa of the curious mosaic-like
character that I have described elsewhere: to the
left was the deep barranca on the brink of which ran
the track. The moon shone clearly down on the
gleaming black floor, which might have been the
pavement of some ruined city of antiquity. At in-
tervals stood great ocotillos whose gaunt arms
waved aloft in sinister contortions, while here and
there a dead one lay bleached to the hue of bone.
Looking down into the ravine I could make out dark
forms of palo verde and iron wood, or gray smoke-
trees, like ghosts, outlined on the pallid sand of the
bottom. The only sound was that of Kaweah's hoofs
hoarsely rattling the gravel of the track. Close
ahead rose the black wall of the Chuckwallas, with
here and there some bolt of rock taking questionable
shape under the eerie touches of the moon. The
total impression was freakish and unearthly: it was

"A place nor uninformed with phantasy
And looks that threaten the profane."

BLYTHE TO COACHELLA VALLEY 347

At last we passed into the canon, and black cliffs
rose high on either hand. The ground was again of
sand, and in the moonlight every track of bird,
snake, coyote, or bighorn showed sharp and clear.
Small trees leaned out from crannies to which they
clung by knotty roots, and from a cave came a
stream of shadowy bats with click of tiny teeth and
soundless flicker of wing.

Somewhere near the mouth of the canon is a
tinaja known as Granite Tanks, but it was unlikely
that I could find it without daylight. We kept on
therefore for two or three miles, coming an hour be-
fore midnight to a group of small palms and mes-
quits which gave notice of water. Among them was
an old cabin, and near by it a spring. We both drank
deeply. It was eighteen hours since Kaweah had had
water, and the day had been hot, with unusually
heavy travelling. I dealt him a good feed of barley
and picketed him on the half-dry grass: then ate a
few cold mouthfuls, threw down my blankets, and
almost literally fell asleep.

Next day being Sunday, and forage sufficing, we
took it easy in camp, revelling in shade of palm and
willow and the proximity of plentiful water. In a
walk down the canon I noticed near the spring a fine
exhibition of Indian picture-writings. The figures
were scratched in firm outline on the faces of smooth
slabs of rock, and stood out white against the red of
the granite as clearly as if done but a year or two
ago. The canon by daylight was picturesque, the
high walls enclosing a gully-like passageway in
which grew the usual assortment of mountain

348 CALIFORNIA DESERT TRAILS

plants. Unlovely as these mainly are, one finds them
interesting in proportion to their rarity, and stops
to enjoy a twelve-foot smoke-tree or some weak out-
break of originality in an ocotillo as if they were the
gnarly heroes of a forest.

The presence of the house was explained by my
coming upon an abandoned mine. The place has
evidently long been the haunt of prospectors. On the
door was roughly painted the invitation: "Come in
and Camp: Wood and Water Free": and above the
fireplace was a square of pasteboard with "Hotel de
Com Springs" set out in an attempt at the sign-
painter's art, with further flights of fancy scrawled
by departed guests. One wall did duty as a register,
showing the names of visitors for several years past.
It appeared that the patronage of this select hos-
telry runs to a score or two per annum, though this
is only through the frequent recurrence of one or
two regulars on whose prospecting beat it lies.

I was in no hurry to start next morning, as I in-
tended to make only a dozen miles or so, to the Red
Cloud Mine, at the other base of the mountains. We
left about eight o'clock, finding a doubtful looking
track leading west. A mile brought us to the divide,
and to the end of anything that could be called a
trail. Looking across to the south I could see what
seemed to be a well-marked road climbing the moun-
tain-side. Here was another of those conundrums
that plague the traveller in unmapped and little-
known country. Was it a new route to Dos Palmas,
the point I was making for, or did it merely lead to
some mine of which I had not heard? I had been

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BLYTHE TO COACHELLA VALLEY 349

told that my trail followed the main canon, yet there
was no sign of travel that way. This business of
guessing, when a mistake may spell disaster, gradu-
ally gets on one's nerves, knocks out the fun, and
finally puts one out of humor with desert travel.

I tied Kaweah and prospected ahead, picking up
at last what seemed to be a continuation of the trail,
though so broken and casual that it could only be
followed by using extreme care. The storm that
had washed over the northern slope of the moun-
tains had obliterated the track here also. Another
mile, and the trail, such as it was, turned into a side
caiion toward the south. Disgusted, I resolved to
trust my sense of direction and keep on westward.
At the worst I could return to Corn Springs, and
to-morrow try the other route.

One has little mind for scenery under these cir-
cumstances, yet I could not fail to be struck by the
intense desolation of the country we were travers-
ing. I was in the heart of one of those scorched and
scarified ranges that even viewed through the ameli-
orating veil of distance seem the last word of the
gaunt and hopeless in physical Nature. Rock,
gravel, sand, and sky, all alike repressive and re-
pellent, make up the total, but for a few lean
shrubs that clutch the blistering slabs of the moun-
tain wall, and the cacti that crouch among the boul-
ders and reward every careless step with torture.
For all of sentient life a raven flies heavily by, or
some snake glides away or waits coiled and threat-
ening in your path; and if you overturn a scrap
of stone, centipede or scorpion will resent your

350 CALIFORNIA DESERT TRAILS

violation of its solitude with instant menace of
poison.

I sometimes wonder what kind of interpretation
music might give of these landscapes. No doubt
something unique might be achieved by the mod-
ernists, some crude depiction of the obvious and sen-
sational: but what I mean is, the impression that
the desert would make on the mind of a master.
What the expression would be we are not likely to
know; for music seems to have lost self-control, and
cannot wait to comprehend its theme before it is
ready with some noisy but futile demonstration.

After awhile my fading hope that we were on the
right track was strengthened by coming on marks of
another old mine. There was a puddle of water at the
bottom of a prospect hole, but it was foul with de-
caying rats and lizards, and quite unusable. We
made our slow way down the gradually widening
cafion, now and then on a sort of phantom trail but
usually picking a trackless way by guesswork and
probabilities. It was the most worrying job of its
kind that I met on the whole journey, and the water
problem kept nudging at me like a pestering fiend.

Noon came, and we should be nearing the Red
Cloud Mine. There we should find water, and prob-
ably a caretaker, though the mine was not being
worked. The caiion had opened into a delta of inter-
lacing gullies, all rocky, choked with boulders, and
crossed at short intervals by abrupt, slippery ledges
which bothered Kaweah considerably. My fear was
that we might come to some impassable place and
be obliged to turn back. I had noted the landmarks

BLYTHE TO COACHELLA VALLEY 351

carefully, but felt no certainty of being able to find
the way through this wilderness to our last camp.

Suddenly I spotted two tents in a side gully. We
made for them hopefully, but there was no sign of
recent habitation, nor any indication of water. It
was the camp of some prospector who came once or
twice a year, at times when the tanks would yield a
supply. A trail led up the mountain-side at the rear
of the tents. This looked Inviting, and we followed it
cheerfully for two steep miles. Then it turned di-
rectly north and I saw it was useless to go on, so
with the loss of an hour of valuable daylight we
turned to our problem.

Evening was coming on. I climbed a ridge and
scanned the country. There was plenty of It, and all
alike. The mine was no doubt somewhere within the
scope of view, but I could not guess even whether
it lay to north or south. To hunt for it in twenty
square miles of wash and gully offered slight chance
of success.

I sat down and figured things over. We were now
clear of the Chuckwallas. To the south was a ridge
of hills that, as I reckoned, shut me off from sight of
the Sal ton Sea. Ahead a wide valley opened, running
due west for many miles. If I could make southwest
across country I ought to come out Into the Dos
Palmas road; but It was nearly dark, the country
was a labyrinth of barrancas — the worst of all
country to get lost In — the last traces of any trail
had been left behind hours ago, and the spectre of
thirst was keeping me ever closer company. Even if
I could find Com Springs again my problem would

352 CALIFORNIA DESERT TRAILS

not be finally solved. On the whole, the open valley
ahead was the best prospect. It led in the Cotton-
wood Springs direction and ought to bring me into
the road by which, two months before, I had come
from Dale. We would go ahead and see what hap-
pened.

We had not eaten for twelve hours, for I had been
too much preoccupied to think of food. Kaweah had
not drunk either, but I relied on the coolness of the
night to refresh him. I gave him the last feed of bar-
ley, ate a scratch meal myself, and with an encour-
aging word to my anxious companion we started on.

Daylight had gone but the moon was well up and
afforded aid and comfort. Except for the discomfort
of doubt I could have revelled in the charm of the
scene. The uncouth Chuckwallas rose dark behind
and to my right. Moonlight whitened here and there
the angle of some buttress, touching with charm of
fancy the leagues of shadowy mountain. Our shad-
ows marched before us, mingling with filmy pattern
of creosote or skeleton of cactus or ocotillo. To the
left the horizon line was a procession of dusky-
shapes, shifting and vanishing like monsters seen in
a nightmare.

We had gone for a few miles in a sort of dogged
muddle, when wagon tracks appeared without warn-
ing, crosswise of our line of march. Whither they
might lead in either direction I had no idea, but
they came as a vast relief. I made a rapid guess and
chose the right-hand track. Another mile and we
ran into an unmistakable road and were heading
westerly into the long valley. It was now only a

BLYTHE TO COACHELLA VALLEY 353

question of Kaweah's holding out. He was certainly
very tired and necessarily very thirsty, while by my
reckoning we were about twenty-five miles from
water, whether we reached it at Cottonwood Springs
or Shafer's Well. But the coolness of night would
help us out, and Kaweah, blessings on his tough
little carcass, is pure Indian and would go till he
dropped. As for myself, though I was muscle-weary
to the limit (for I had been on foot all day) I felt I
could travel forever in that refreshing temperature,
and I still had a quart or so of water.

All night we toiled along. Played out as Kaweah
was, whenever I stopped him he was anxious to go
on, though with dragging step and muzzle almost
touching his knees. I tried to buck him up with
promises of the bully times we would have the
coming winter — We'll chuck this everlasting clut-
ter of saddle-bags, blankets, and canteens, and just
knock about and enjoy ourselves, eh, pony boy?
And it was clear how all-in he was when he failed
to respond to my fraternal slap with humorous show
of ill-temper such as flattened ears or playful pre-
tence of a bite. Stars rose, stars set: the moon
overtook, passed us, and sailed ahead as if rallying
us on our despicable pace. I was drowsy, but well
content so long as the track kept on westward, for I
knew it must bring us into some road that ran down
to Mecca. So I whistled, dozed, and plodded on,
cheering my plucky little nag, and counting off the
miles by the hours we travelled. Rabbits played
about in the road, careless of our approach until we
almost kicked them away. Now and again a senti-

354 CALIFORNIA DESERT TRAILS

mental coyote, maudlin with moonlight, vented his
blighted affections in hysterical yawpings, and once
half-a-dozen wild cattle rose suddenly out of the
brush and gathered in a knot as if to stampede us.
The sight of a man on foot is so strange to these
roamers of the ranges that they are apt to be danger-
ous to such a person. The cowboy who looks them
up twice or thrice a year must be thought a kind of
centaur, while a pedestrian must seem a fragment
or monstrosity.

Slowly we neared the western opening, and new
shapes appeared on the skyline. I tried to recall
their outHnes; were those the Eagles? those the
Pintos? those the Cotton woods? Could I have been
mistaken in my impression of the lay of the land,
and would the road after all turn north and lead us
into some new pickle? ^

One o'clock; two o'clock. By my reckoning we
should be nearing the cross-road. The moon was
nearly down. Poor Kaweah plodded along, "faint
yet pursuing," his spirit as fiat as his ears. Three
o'clock, and no hopeful sign. Then at last some-
thing showed ahead beside the road. Could it be a
sign-post? It could, and it was, one of those enduring
metal posts that the good county of Riverside has
placed at some of these main cross-roads, and that
every county whose territory runs into the desert
should be compelled to provide on all routes of

^ I learned afterwards that during the night I had passed, without
knowing it, close to one place where I could have got water. This is a
spot humorously known as the Hayfields, where a thin growth of
grass is used by cattle-men for pasturage, and water has been piped
to a trough.

BLYTHE TO COACHELLA VALLEY 355

desert travel. I struck a match and eagerly ex-
amined the sign. Good luck! I had figured rightly.
Five miles to the southwest was Shafer's Well.

Before turning the shoulder of the mountain I
stopped and looked back to the east. Down a long
gallery whose walls rose dark and high on either
hand, a splendid planet, Jupiter himself

"... with new-spangled ore

Flamed in the forehead of the morning sky."

The firmament about him was silvering to the dawn.
Toward me stretched a purple ribbon of sky glitter-
ing with a myriad points of gold. The dawn wind
came as cool and pure as if it were the first breath
of Creation. The stillness was superb, the silence so
absolute as to be startling. Could the central calm
of the universe be holier, more inviolable, than this?
The thought of war, with its ruin, chaos, and fury,
was an impossibility, one could not realize so vile a
blasphemy against the vast peace of Nature. But
the wild forms of the mountains showed that here
too war had been waged against the old forces
of repression, forever too stupid to know that to
oppose freedom is to be blown sky-high.

As I turned to move on, the moon was sinking
behind the western mountain. I watched the soft
light leave the plain, then pass up the shadowy
wall like the rising of a silver mist. In these great
silent actions of Nature, never so impressive as in
desert solitude, one feels both the majesty and the
beneficence of natural law, and realizes by such
tranquillity how trustworthy the universe must be.

356 CALIFORNIA DESERT TRAILS

It was yet five miles to water, but the knowledge
that it was at hand made them short. Kaweah
recognized his surroundings, and livened up so
much that I suddenly found myself desperately
footsore, so got into the saddle and rode. Daylight
came, the stars one by one went out, and cactus and
ocotillo lost their wizard look and became again
objects of commonplace dislike or cool botanical
interest. A coyote, hailing us from across the valley,
sounded like a friendly halloo. By the time we
reached the entrance to the canon its white cliffs
were cheerfully trimmed with rose, and before the
sun was up we were at Shafer's Well.

I seized the pump-handle and worked it up and
down affectionately. I think I never shook hands
with such hearty feelings for any one as I felt
for Shafer. As for Kaweah, it would have been
happiness to pump for him for hours, as indeed it
seemed to me I did. Then I threw off saddle-bags
and saddle, washed him down, and began a hunt
for forage. By the best of fortune some freighter had
lately fed his team and had left enough hay on the
ground to make a very fair meal for a thrifty Indian
pony. My companion fell to work at this, while I
threw down my blanket roll, followed it myself, and
fell asleep in the action. It was twenty-one hours
since we left Com Springs, and we had travelled
practically without a stop.

In the afternoon we made the remaining twelve
miles down to Mecca. It seemed a foretaste of
Elysium to get among artesian wells and patches of
emerald alfalfa. To make water run by turning a

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BLYTHE TO COACHELLA VALLEY 357

tap was a miracle; not less so the watermelon I cap-
tured at the store. Dates in massive clusters of
crimson and yellow were ripening to super-Arabian
excellence at the Government Experiment Station,
and ranchers' wives who had been "inside" to
escape the heat were drifting back to spend the
glorious winter of the desert in darning their men's
summer arrears of hose.

We took our way leisurely up the valley, culling
here a lettuce, there cucumber or tomato, and every-
where the juiciest of the Coachella's alfalfa. It was
the last day of September when we reached Palm
Springs, which we had left at the beginning of June.
The four months of heat and dryness had left a
psychological drouth in my bones that I feared
might be permanent and drive me into regrettable
courses. Like Teufelsdrockh, "after so much roast-
ing I was what you might name calcined." However,
the desert itself had the remedy up Its sleeve, and
produced It a few weeks later, when I found myself
flooded out of winter camp and subjected to a mon-
umental sousing that brought me within measurable
distance of drowning.

A normal balance of constitution being thus re-
stored, I could review fairly the summer's experi-
ence. Unpleasant details, once in the rear, soon
became only amusing incidents In the general Im-
pression: and these, after all, even while in prospect,
had made a part of the attraction. There remained
the satisfaction of having accomplished an old per-
sistent project; yet the satisfaction was not un-
qualified. I had wished to see the desert. Well, I had

358 CALIFORNIA DESERT TRAILS

seen it. But my ambition had not been merely to
view it as a new and interesting tract of geography.
I wanted to know it more intrinsically than that: I
hoped, by living with it night and day, to learn
something (though it could be little at best) of its
lonely heart, its subtle, uncomprehended spirit, its
repellent yet enthralling beauty, its agelessness,
changelessness, and weariness, its implacability,
solemnity, and terror.

The objective part of my plan I felt to be fairly
accomplished. Not so the deeper side, however: the
subjectivity of the desert is of too rare a sort, its
effect upon the mind is too strange and complex, to
take fonn in any clear conception. Yet, since in-
evitably one strives to realize one's experiences, I
ask myself again, into what single impression does
the desert render itself? What one sensation remains
most strongly on the mind? The mountains, the sea,
even the vast and changeful sky, have each some
predominant genius for those who love the fair fea-
tures of our earth. What sentiment does the desert
yield by which it may be linked with human emo-
tions? What analogy exists by which we may come
into touch with it?

The answer must be, There is none. At every
point the desert meets us with a negative. Like the
Sphinx, there is no answer to its riddle. It is in the
fascination of the unknowable, in the challenge of
some old unbroken secret, that the charm of the
desert consists. And the charm is undying, for the
secret is — Secrecy.

APPENDIX A
HINTS ON DESERT TRAVELLING

(Extracts from Water-Supply Paper 224 of the United
States Geological Survey, entitled "Some Desert Water-
ing-Places in Southeastern California and Southwestern
Nevada," by Walter C. Mendenhall ; reprinted here by
kind permission of the Survey.)

[Author's Note: Some of the suggestions that follow may carry
less weight now than when they were compiled (1909), through
the recent improvement of the main desert roads, with, as conse-
quences, the advent of the automobile and an increased amount
of travel, and through the beginning that has lately been made at
bettering water facilities and installing direction-posts. Never-
theless, the characteristics of the desert remain, prudence is never
obsolete, and these hints may prove to well repay some traveller's
attention.]

Where teams are used, animals accustomed to the desert
should be procured, if possible, for horses or mules that
are unused to desert conditions fret on the sandy roads
and rapidly weaken from drinking the saline waters.
They are also in danger of pneumonia from the cold of
winter nights and the wide extremes of temperature.
During winter journeys blankets should be provided to
protect the animals at night.

Travel in the desert far from the railroads and from
food-supplies is, of course, more expensive than in other
regions. A party leaving a supply station to go one hun-
dred miles or more into an uninhabited part of the desert
must take along everything needed, even to the most
minute detail. This means that if the trip is to last for two
weeks, enough hay and grain for each animal and enough
provisions to last each man that length of time must be

36o APPENDIX

taken. For four horses, drawing a wagon that carries four
persons and their bedding, provisions, and tools, another
team of four horses must also be taken to haul sufficient
hay and grain to feed the eight horses for two weeks.
There are but few places in the desert, away from the
railroads, where hay or grain of any kind can be procured.
As the teams are rarely able to travel faster than a walk,
heavy horses that are good walkers should be selected.
The tires should be as wide as can be procured. Desirable
widths of tires for freight wagons are six to nine inches;
for light wagons, three inches.

Travellers will often find springs choked by debris
washed in by rain-storms, or contaminated by the bodies
of desert animals that have fallen in and drowned. It is
therefore necessary to provide a pick, shovel, bucket, and
rope for cleaning the wells.

At all times except in midsummer — when the desert
should be avoided — the traveller must be provided with
clothing suitable for both extreme heat and extreme cold.
His route over a part of the journey may extend through
heated valleys that lie near sea-level, or he may have to
camp in the mountains, at elevations of three thousand
to six thousand feet, where the temperature may fall
nearly to the freezing-point before morning. For protec-
tion during the early morning hours he must therefore
have warm, heavy blankets, and a heavy overcoat or its
equivalent. Many cases of pneumonia and "mountain
fever " have been caused by extremes of temperature for
which no adequate provision had been made. In winter
the temperature in this region may reach 85° or 95° dur-
ing the day and fall to the freezing-point before midnight.
The traveller should be provided with a canvas sheet that
is long enough to lay under his bedding and fold back
over it, as well as to cover his head in case of sand-storms.

The outer clothing should be of a color that will reflect
as much heat as possible — that is, white, gray, or yellow

APPENDIX 361

— and the underclothing should be of wool. The hat
should have a wide brim and be thick enough to exclude
all rays of the sun. The proper headgear is a broad-
brimmed gray felt, or, for summer wear, a big opaque
helmet of white or khaki color, the bigger the better. The
hair should not be cut very short, as it is a natural means
of protection.

Travellers with their own outfits and a minimum
means of transportation will find that they must walk
much of the time, for teams with heavy loads can crawl
through the sands at the rate of only two to three miles
an hour. Sand and sharp flints will wear out the soles of
shoes and boots very rapidly. Hence stout, hobnailed
footwear should be worn.

Owing to the intense heat of the desert there is a rapid
and abundant growth of minute forms of animal and
vegetable life in waters that are not too saline. All water
should therefore be boiled before drinking. Filters form a
part of the more elaborate outfits. There are now on the
market several small, compact filters from which the
traveller may select such as he may think desirable. It is
not practicable to distil water except for mining camps
or for large parties.

It is advisable to drink heartily in the morning and at
night and as little as possible during the day. The prac-
tice of drinking water in excess of the amount necessary
to relieve thirst may easily become a habit and should be
avoided. At best it places an unnecessary tax on the sys-
tem, and, when alkaline waters are used, may easily
result in illness that could have been prevented by the
exercise of greater foresight and self-control. It has been
recommended that raw oatmeal be placed in the canteens,
and some travellers even add to this a small quantity of
chocolate and sugar. Condensed cream counteracts in
great measure the irritation produced in the digestive
tract by the alkaline desert waters, and is therefore es-

362 APPENDIX

pecially desirable. When the water becomes tepid, addi-
tions of this kind make it more palatable to some, and
there is less temptation to drink too much. It is well, also,
during periods of extreme heat to wrap a wet cloth around
the wrists and to put a water-soaked handkerchief in the
hat. These are old-fashioned but effective devices. Each
person in a party should be supplied with a large canteen,
and extra ones should be taken along in the wagons to
provide for leaks and accidents. An ample supply of
water barrels and kegs should also be carried for use at
dry camps and during prospecting trips, the number
depending on the amount of stock taken and the route
followed.

"Poison springs," said to contain arsenic, have been
reported from many parts of the desert. The writer has
examined the water from several of these, but has failed
to find any arsenic or similar poison, though he has found
large quantities of sulphate of soda (Glaubers salt) and
some sulphate of magnesia (Epsom salts). Salt Spring, in
South Death Valley, is of this character, and prospectors
are known to have perished there, so that the spring is
called "poison" by many, but it contains only sodium
and magnesium salts, and no arsenic or copper.

The intense heat of the summer, the exhausted condi-
tion of the famished prospector, and the abundance of
these harmful salts in the waters are sufficient explana-
tion of the deaths that have occurred. Such waters are
dangerous to a hearty, healthy man who uses them with
the greatest moderation, and they may be quickly fatal
to the thirst-tormented sufferer who drinks them without
restraint.

The traveller who is unacquainted with the route over
which he is journeying should stop at places where the
ground has been cleared of brush and where there is other
ample evidence of the presence of many visitors, and sat-
isfy himself as to the nature of the camp. It may be a

APPENDIX 363

"dry camp," such as are made on long stretches between
springs, or there may be a spring or well in the vicinity,
which is covered over to keep out animals, and is hidden
by drifting sand. Experienced men will have no difficulty
in quickly determining the nature of the camp. An inex-
perienced traveller should not enter the desert alone. If he
cannot find an experienced companion, he should proceed
with the greatest caution, gathering all possible informa-
tion about his route in advance, keeping himself abun-
dantly supplied with water and food, and never leaving
one water station without a definite idea as to the location
of the next.

A traveller can rarely see exactly where water is to be
found, except by going over the camp-ground and look-
ing carefully for wells. Many of the wells are mere shafts,
twenty to forty feet deep, rectangular in shape and cov-
ered with a few boards, which may in turn be covered by
drifting sand. Only a few wells are equipped with a wind-
lass or pump. These conveniences, even if originally sup-
plied, quickly disappear as fuel for some traveller in need
on a cold winter night. He uses them to maintain his
camp-fire, justifying himself in the belief that self-preser-
vation is the first law.

Fuel is scarce on the desert, especially in the vicinity
of the better-known springs, where it has been entirely
cleared away. The traveller, therefore, usually finds it
necessary to begin gathering brush and mesquit roots
long before he reaches the spring, so as to provide fuel
for cooking. Camp-fires are luxuries that can be indulged
in only among heavy mesquit and cottonwood timber, or
off the beaten lines of travel.

One unacquainted with the desert should accustom
himself to its clear air and the resulting exaggerated de-
tail, which makes distant objects look near. No walks
without water or provisions to what appears to be a near-
by hill should be undertaken without definite knowledge

364 APPENDIX

of its distance. Landmarks should be studied, so that
they will be recognized from any point of view, that they
may be known when they are reached again. Before he
begins a journey that does not follow a beaten and un-
mistakable track, the traveller should determine his gen-
eral direction by compass or map or inquiry, and should
adhere to that direction. The inexperienced traveller
often gets at once into a panic on losing his way, and
wastes his remaining energy in frantic rushes in one direc-
tion and another. This tendency to become panic-stricken
should be controlled, if possible. Sit down, get out your
map and compass — if you are provided with them, as
you should be — and study the situation carefully before
acting. At least, rest a little and think it over. If it is hot
and you are far from camp, get your head into the shade
of a bush or rock, and wait till night. Thirst will be less
intolerable then and endurance greater. If you have camp
companions who are likely to look for you, start a signal
fire by night or a smoke by day from some little emi-
nence, and then stay by it until help comes. If you must
depend upon your own exertions, think carefully over all
the possibilities and adopt a plan of action and adhere to
it. Remember the proneness of the lost person to exag-
gerate the distance he has travelled. It is well to count
paces and to remember that about two thousand make a
mile. You will thus have a good check on the distance
that you go, and at the same time will keep your mind
occupied. Keep your direction true by travelling toward
or from some selected landmark, or by the sun during the
day or a star at night, or by keeping with or against or in
some fixed direction in relation to the wind. If you think
these things out and have studied the country before-
hand, so that you know the relation of a road, or a ranch,
or a spring, or a river to a given landmark or to the points
of the compass, you should have no difficulty in finding
your way again. With some persons, however, the faculty
of getting lost amounts to genius. They are able to ac-
complish it wherever they are. The only suitable advice

APPENDIX 365

for them is to keep out of the desert. There are safer
places in which to exercise their talent. Still others have a
geographic instinct and a power of geographic observa-
tion which defies time and place. They cannot be lost any-
where. For such these lines are not written.

APPENDIX B

NOTICEABLE PLANTS OF THE
DESERT

Botanists must kindly overlook the lack of exactitude
in these descriptions, which are necessarily brief and
in which technical terms have purposely been wholly
avoided.

It should be borne in mind that a number of plants
may be met on the desert, especially about settlements or
cultivated areas, that are not native there. A few of these,
such as are most likely to come under observation, are
included below. If there seem to be omissions in the fol-
lowing list, the explanation may be that the plants in
question do not properly come under desert classification.

Abronia aurita. Sand Verbena (not really a verbena, but some-
what like that plant in its flowering). A low, trailing, sticky,
soft-stemmed plant, bearing close clusters of fragrant, rosy-
purple flowers. Blooms in mid-spring.

Acacia greggii. Cat-claw: Span., Una de Gato. A bush up to lo
feet high, crowded with small sharp thorns, common in canons
and on hillsides; often mistaken for a small mesquit, the leaves
being like those of that tree but smaller. Flower a yellowish
"spike" (resembling a pussy-willow catkin); fruit a pod, often
curiously twisted. Blooms in early summer.

Adenostoma sparsifoHum. Red-shank, Bastard cedar: Span.,
Chamiso, Verba del pasmo. A tall, fragrant bush with red,
shreddy bark and fine, stringy foliage. Found in the moun-
tains bordering the desert, not widely distributed. Flowers
small, white, profuse. Blooms in late spring.

Agave deserti. Wild Century-plant: Span., Maguey, Mescal.
Leaves blue-gray, very large, succulent, with strong prickles on
edges and a thorn at apex, starting from the ground. Flower-
stalk 8 or 10 feet high, bearing many sets of clustered, yellow,

APPENDIX 367

bell-shaped flowers. Common in parts of the desert mountains.
Blooms in mid-spring.

Amsinckia spectabilis. Fiddle-head: Span., Zacate gordo. A very
common, small, hairy, slender-stemmed plant, with narrow
leaves and small orange flowers on stalks that curl at the tip.
Blooms in early and mid-spring.

Anemopsis californica. Span., Yerba mansa. A low, rank-growing
plant found only in damp places. Leaves large and coarse: flow-
ers large, white, with protruding conical centre. Blooms in
mid-spring.

Aphyllon cooperi. Cancer-root. A low, succulent plant, somewhat
like a stalk of asparagus, bearing a number of small, purplish
flowers. The plant is a parasite, growing on the roots of other
plants. Not common. Blooms in late summer.

Argemone hispida. Thistle poppy: Span., Cardo, Chicalote. A
prickly, gray or bluish leafed, thistly looking plant, i or 2 feet
high, with large, fragile flowers, white with yellow centre.
Blooms in mid- and late summer.

Aster orcuttii. A hardy looking plant of the driest desert canons,
I to 2 feet high ; rather rare. Leaves stiff' and paper-like, with
prickly-toothed edges : flowers large and handsome, of lavender
rays with yellow centre. Blooms in early summer.

Astragalus coccineus. A low plant with almost white stem and
leaves and handsome cardinal-red flowers. Found in the desert
mountains, but rare. Blooms in mid-spring.

Atriplex canescens. Salt-bush, Shad-scale. A good-sized roundish
bush with small, grayish leaves, inconspicuous flowers, and
tassels of striking, bright green seed-vessels. Bloorns in early
summer.

Atriplex hymenelytra. Desert holly. A stiff, shrubby plant I or 2
feet high, with whitish, holly-like leaves and inconspicuous
flowers. Found in alkaline soil in dry canons or on open desert.
Blooms in mid-spring.

Atriplex lentiformis. Quail-bush. A large gray bush very common
on silt or alkaline soil, up to 15 feet high, and usually of smooth,
dome-shaped outline. Flowers inconspicuous. Blooms in mid-
spring.

Baileya pauciradiata. Cotton-plant. A small, loosely growing
plant with pale gray-green stems, narrow woolly leaves, and
small, lemon-yellow flowers. Blooms in mid- and late summer.

Bebbia juncea. A roundish, dark green bush a foot or two high,

368 APPENDIX

with many slender, almost leafless stems and numerous small,
yellow, fragrant flowers. Blooms throughout summer.
Beloperone californica. Span., Chuparosa. A good-sized bush, al-
most leafless, with purplish green, downy stems and handsome,
dark red, tubular flowers. One of the earliest blooming desert
plants, continuing all spring.

Cacti —

Cereus engelmanni. Hedgehog cactus. A cluster of spiny short
stems about the size and shape of cucumbers. Flowers very
handsome, large, cup-shaped, bright rose-purple with plumy
green stigma. Blooms in mid-spring.

Cereus giganteus. Span., Saguaro, Pitahaya. The giant cactus,
common on the Arizona desert hills and found sparingly in
California adjacent to the Colorado River. It is usually a
tall, fluted column up to 60 feet high, with similar vertical
ofi^sets for branches. Flowers large, white: fruit crimson, edi-
ble. Blooms in mid-spring.

Echinocactus cylindraceus. Barrel cactus, Nigger-head: Span.,
Biznaga (or Viznaga). A large, cylindrical, ribbed cactus up
to 6 feet high (globular when young) covered with long curv-
ing spines. Flowers greenish yellow, cup-shaped, in a circle on
the top. Blooms in mid-spring.

Mamillaria tetrancistrus. Pincushion, Strawberry, or Fish-
hook cactus: Span., Chilito. A small, round cactus, usually I
or 2 inches in height and diameter, with a fuzz of fine white
spines and a longer sharply hooked black one in the centre of
each tuft. Flowers fleshy, lily-like, of rich claret color: fruit
scarlet, finger-shaped, edible. Blooms in late spring.

Mamillaria sp. Like a larger growth of the foregoing, but some-
what irregular in shape and with waxy-white flowers.
Blooms in late spring.

Opuntia basilaris. A flat-lobed, grayish cactus, velvety-look-
ing, without noticeable spines but set with myriads of minute
prickles. Flowers very handsome, large, cup-shaped, cerise,
set in a row on edge of lobe. Blooms in mid-spring.

Opuntia bigelovii. Span., Cholla. A plant up to 6 feet tall,
branching in stumpy arms, the whole plant densely clad with
greenish white spines. The older parts turn almost black.
The joints detach very easily and litter the ground. Flowers
greenish white. Blooms in mid- and late spring.

Opuntia chlorotica. Prickly pear, Indian fig: Span., Nopal.

APPENDIX 369

The common flat-lobed cactus of the coast, found also on the
desert mountains. Flowers pale yellow, sometimes with red-
dish tinge, set in a row on edge of lobe: fruit dark red, edible,
but covered with fine prickles. Blooms in mid-spring.

Opuntia echinocarpa. Deer-horn cactus. A very branching cac-
tus up to 5 feet high, the joints pale green, very spiny
though less so than O. bigelovii. Flowers greenish with bronzed
look outside. Blooms in mid-spring.

Opuntia ramosissima. Similar in habit to O. echinocarpa, but
with much slenderer stems and fewer but stronger spines.
Flowers small, brown. Blooms in late spring.

Cassia armata. A low bushy plant with handsome yellow flowers,
found in the desert mountains, but rare. Blooms in mid-
spring.

Centaurea melitensis. Star thistle: Span., Jocalote. A small, usu-
ally single-stemmed plant a foot or so high, with narrow gray-
green leaves. Flowers small, yellow: flower-heads very prickly.
Blooms in mid-spring and summer.

Cercidium torreyanum. Span., Palo verde, Lluvia de oro. A tree
up to 30 feet high, noticeable for the smooth green bark of the
entire tree. Foliage small, scanty, and short-lived, so that the
tree is usually bare: the twigs bear short thorns. Flowers pro-
fuse, bright yellow: fruit a pod. Blooms in mid-spring.

Chilopsis linearis. Desert willow ( not properly a willow, but be-
longing to the Bignonia family). A small, willow-like tree, up
to 20 feet high, usually found in washes. Leaves narrow: flowers
handsome and plentiful, white marked with lilac and yellow,
fragrant: fruit a pod, very long and narrow, remaining on the
tree after the seeds have fallen. Blooms from mid-spring to
autumn.

Chorizanthe brevicornu. A small, leafless, yellow-green plant, re-
sembling the dry yellow moss sometimes found on pine trees.
Flowers inconspicuous.

Coldenia plicata. A hardy looking, mat-like plant with small,
deeply-veined, dark-green leaves and tiny white flowers.
Blooms in mid-spring.

Croton californica. One of the commonest desert plants. A thin
bush 2 or 3 feet high, with many slender straight stems and few
light-gray oval leaves. The plant gathers into a goblet-shaped
tuft as it dries. Flowers small, yellowish. Blooms from late
spring to late summer.

370 APPENDIX

Dalea: — the genus has been re-named Parosela, q. v.

Datura meteloides. Jimson weed: Span., Tolguache (or Tolu-
ache). A rank-growing plant 2 or 3 feet high, common on both
coast and desert, with large, coarse, dark-green leaves and very
large, white or pale lilac, trumpet-shaped flowers that open in
the evening. Blooms from spring to autumn.

Dithyrea californica. A small coarse-leafed plant found in sandy
soil usually about bushes. Flowers small, fragrant, of four white
petals. Blooms in early spring.

Encelia californica. A stiff, bushy plant with dark-green leaves
and brittle, woody stems, common on and near the base of des-
ert mountains. Flowers bright yellow, on straight stalks that
project well above the rest of the plant. Blooms in mid-spring.

Encelia farinosa. Incense bush. White brittle bush: Span., Yerba
de incienso. One of the commonest of desert plants in the neigh-
borhood of mountains, in form a compact rounded bush 2 to 3
feet high. Leaves silver-gray, firm in texture: flowers like those
of E. californica. The plant exudes drops of amber-colored
gum. Blooms in mid-spring.

Ephedra californica. Desert tea: Span., Canutillo. A shrub 2 to 3
feet high, entirely composed of straight, smooth, dark-green
stems without leaves. Flowers inconspicuous.

Eremiastrum bellioides. Desert star. A small prostrate plant,
hardly noticeable except for its pretty, daisy-like flowers,
borne on radiating horizontal stems. Blooms in mid-spring.

Eremocarya micrantha. A small, slender herb with small linear
leaves and tiny white flowers. It dries to a whitish, woolly-
looking little plant that is greedily eaten by horses. The root
yields a bright madder stain. Blooms in early spring.

Eriodictyon tomentosum. Span., Yerba santa. A bush 5 or 6 feet
high, found in canons, with narrowish, gray-green, woolly
leaves and clusters of lavender funnel-shaped flowers. (It is the
coast species, E. glutinosum, or E. californicum, with smooth,
dark-green, sticky leaves, that was so highly valued for its
medicinal properties by the Spanish Californians.) Blooms in
late spring.

Eriogonum inflatum. Bottle plant. Desert trumpet. A plant up to
3 feet high, with a few slender, straight, straggling stems that
end in elongated swellings. Leaves heart-shaped, growing only
at base: flowers small, yellowish. Blooms in mid-spring.

Eulobus californicus. A slender, straight, spindling plant, a foot

APPENDIX 371

or so high, with small yellow flowers and very narrow straight
seed-vessels. Blooms in late spring.
Euphorbia polycarpa. Rattlesnake weed: Span., Golondrina. A
flat-growing, mat-like plant with radiating reddish stems and
small, roundish, bronze-green, white-edged leaves. Flowers
very small, white or pinkish. Blooms in late spring.

Fagonia californica. A low, open-growing plant found on rocky
desert hillsides, with hardly noticeable leaves but many pretty,
star-shaped, pale magenta flowers. Blooms in mid-spring.
Ferns : These are naturally rare in desert regions, and are found
only along the bases of the mountains, where falls the greater
part of the little rain that occurs in this arid territory. Be-
sides those named there are a few others which are very
rarely found.
Cheilanthes viscida. Lip fern. Fronds elongated, dark green,
very much dissected, and covered with a sticky secretion.
Found usually in crevices of the rocks in canons.
Notholaena cretacea. Cloak fern. Fronds triangular in outline,
moderately divided, and thickly coated with a white pow-
der. When dry they roll up into brittle balls, but when rain
comes they unroll and resume life. This and the species next
named usually grow under the edges of rocks and boulders on
hillsides, or on the sides of canons.
Notholaena parryi. Cloak fern. Fronds elongated, rather nar-
row, pinnately divided, the upper surface densely clothed
with whitish hairs, the lower brown and woolly.
Fouquieria splendens. Candle-wood: Span., Ocotillo. A unique
plant composed of a number of long gray thorny canes diverg-
ing at the ground: usually 6 or 8 feet high but sometimes dou-
ble as much or over. Leaves small, dark green, and short-lived:
flowers scarlet, tubular, in a long spike at ends of canes. Blooms
in early spring, or at any time when sufficient rain has fallen.
Franseria dumosa. Burro-weed. A stiff, brittle, rounded, gray
bush, common on and near the base of desert mountains.
Leaves small, gray-green: flowers yellowish, in close spikes.
The plant has a strong, somewhat turpentiny smell. Blooms in
mid-spring.

Grasses —

Cynodon dactylon. Bermuda grass. Not properly a desert
grass, but has become established in the irrigated areas,

372 APPENDIX

where it is now a pest, being almost impossible to eradicate
wherever it gains foothold. It is bright green and close-
growing, with small, pointed leaves. It makes good emer-
gency forage.

Distichlis spicata. Salt grass. A low-growing, pale green or gray
grass, the leaves arranged in double rank, herring-bone
style. It is very common, forming a close sod on moist, and
especially on alkaline, soils. Its forage-value is low, but ani-
mals will eat it when hard pressed.

Epicampes rigens. Basket grass: Span., Zacaton. A tall, rigid,
slender-stemmed, pale green grass forming large tussocks
from 2 to 4 feet high. It grows among rocks near streams,
and on dry hills, and though of little use as fodder it is much
valued by Indian women for basketry purposes.

Oryzopsis membranacea. Sand grass. A small, tussocky grass
with slender stems from 6 to 12 inches long, leaves bright
green. It is found in sandy soil and is a useful forage plant,
being also valuable to the Indians for its abundant crop of
edible seeds.

Panicum urvilleanum. A strong, coarse grass with rather stifT,
pale green leaves a foot or more long. It grows in loose dry
sand, and has little, if any, forage value.

Pleuraphis rigida. Blue-stem: Span., Galleta. A coarse-, almost
woody-stemmed, stiff grass growing in large dense clumps to
a height of from 2 to 4 feet, and in the driest of soils. The
stems appear dry and dead except at the tips, which are pale
bluish green. It is an excellent forage-plant and of the great-
est value to desert travellers.

Sporobolus airoides. Span., Zacaton. A coarse, stiff bunch-
grass 2 or 3 feet high, flowering in loose, spreading panicles.
It grows usually in alkaline soil and makes fairly good forage.

Tridens pulchella. A low, tufted grass from 2 to 6 inches high,
common on dry hills and mesas, often among rocks, and no-
ticeable for its small dense panicles of blossom, in which the
tips of the glumes (flower-bracts) are tinged with purple. It
has practically no forage value.

Hesperocallis undulatus. Desert lily: Span., Ajo. A true lily, with
narrow, ribbony, crinkle-edged leaves lying flat at the base of
the straight flower-stem, which is about 2 feet high. Flowers 3
or 4 inches in diameter, fragrant, vJ^hite with green veining on
back of petals, several to a stem. Blooms in mid-spring.

APPENDIX 373

Hibiscus denudatus. A shrub i or 2 feet high, with scanty gray-
green leaves and large, handsome flowers, white with dark
purple "eye." Blooms in late spring.

Hoffmanseggia microphylla. A tall, loosely growing plant found
in dry desert caiions. Usually a number of the slender cane-like
stems grow in a clump together. Leaves twice compound, of
numerous minute leaflets: flowers yellow, in an open elongated
cluster.

Hofmeisteria pluriseta. A small bushy plant growing in the crev-
ices of rocky cliffs, the stems slender but woody, and the leaf-
blades like a flattened tip on the leaf-stems. Flowers in small
heads, abundant but not showy.

Hymenoclea salsola. Salt bush. A common, large, grayish bush
with small, narrow leaves. Flowers very small, greenish, in
profuse clusters at end of twigs. Blooms in late spring.

Hyptis emoryi. Lippia. A tall bush of the lower mountain slopes,
up to 10 feet high, with rather straight stems usually branch-
ing from the ground. Leaves gray-green: flowers small, numer-
ous, lavender colored, in loose spikes. The leaves and blossoms
have a lavender-like smell. Blooms from mid-spring to au-
tumn.

Isocoma acradenia. A small shrub with narrow, dark-green leaves
and small, yellow flowers; common and widely distributed.
Blooms in early spring.

Isomeris arborea. Bladder-pod. A vigorous, ill-smelling shrub 4
to 8 feet high, with light-green, triply-divided leaves and clus-
ters of showy, yellow flowers. The seed-vessel is a large pale
green pod. Blooms from earliest to late spring.

Krameria parvifolia. A common bush of the lower mountain
slopes, 2 feet or so high, with few, inconspicuous leaves and
purplish gray, much-interlaced stems and twigs. Flowers deep
claret color: seed-vessels small, round, prickly. Blooms in mid-
and late spring.

Larrea glandulosa. Creosote bush. Greasewood: Span., Hedion-
dia. The commonest and most widely distributed shrub of the
desert, growing up to 12 feet high, in strong, somewhat brittle
stems diverging from the ground. The branches and twigs are
regularly marked with rings. Leaves small, glossy, bright dark
green, sticky, with strong tarry odor: flowers profuse, bright

374 APPENDIX

yellow, maturing to small, round, woolly seed-vessels. Blooms
from mid-spring to midsummer.
Lycium andersonii. A strong bush usually 4 or 5 feet high, but in
open desert a low patch of stiff intertangled stems. Leaves
small, gray: flowers few and small, tubular, pale lilac: fruit a
small, transparent, edible (but insipid) red berry. Blooms in
mid-spring.

Malvastrum rotundifolium. Five-spot. A small, upstanding,
hairy plant, often branching, with roundish leaves and hand-
some cup- or globe-shaped flowers of pale lilac with a carmine
spot at base of each of the five petals. Blooms in late spring.

Martynia proboscidea. Elephant's trunk. Devil's claw. A rank,
weedy plant, not common, with large, roundish leaves and a
few handsome flowers, white with yellow and purple markings.
The seed-vessels are disproportionately large, from 6 to 10
inches long, curved and tapering, splitting as they dry into two
long, springy horns connected at base. Blooms in summer and
into autumn.

Mentzelia involucrata. A plant of the open desert, a foot or more
high, with thistly-looking, gray leaves and very handsome,
large, satiny flowers, white or creamy with fine vermilion pen-
cilling. Blooms in mid-spring.

Mirabilis aspera. A small, bushy plant with slender branching
stems and grayish leaves, found near the base of mountains.
Flowers white, primrose-like, opening at evening. Blooms in
late spring.

Mohavea viscida. A small, hairy plant with straight, usually
single stem and narrow leaves. Flowers large, deep cup-shaped,
satiny, greenish-creamy with small purple dots: petals saw-
edged. Blooms in mid -spring.

Nama demissum. A pretty little mat-like plant, sending out
spoke-like arms at ends of which are small carmine flowers.
Blooms in mid-spring.

Navarretia virgata. A small, dried-out-looking plant of the open
desert. Leaves inconspicuous: flowers numerous, pale bright
blue. The last of the noticeable spring flowers, continuing into
early summer.

Nicotiana bigelovii. Coyote tobacco. A many-stemmed plant, i
to 2 feet high, with dark-green leaves and white, narrow-tubu-
lar flowers. Blooms midsummer to autumn.

APPENDIX 375

NoHna parryi. A yucca-like plant of dry mountain-sides, not
common. Leaves long, narrow, spiky, bluish green: flowers
whitish, in a compact elongated cluster 2 or 3 feet long, on a
tall stem rising from the centre of the sheaf of leaves. Blooms
in mid-spring.

CEnothera gauraeflora. A small plant with straight, stiff, usually
single stem bearing a cluster of small pinkish flowers. The bark
is white and shreddy and the seed-vessels tongue-like and
curved. Blooms in late spring.

CEnothera pallida. Sun-cups. A slender-stemmed plant with
rather narrow, pointed and toothed leaves. Flowers bright yel-
low: seed-vessels curly with double twist. Blooms in mid- and
late spring.

CEnothera scapoidea. A small plant with single stem 6 to 8 inches
high, and a cluster of little pinkish flowers. One of the earliest
spring flowers but blooms on into early summer.

CEnothera trichocalyx. Evening primrose: Span., Yerba salada.
A low, strong, rather spreading plant with large, rather narrow,
grayish green leaves and very large fragrant flowers, white
(pink when faded) with sulphur-yellow centres, opening at
night. Blooms in mid- and late spring.

Olneya tesota. Ironwood: Span., Palo fierro (or hierro). A trim
tree, up to 20 feet high, with thorny twigs and grayish green
leaves composed of many leaflets. Flowers dull blue, like small
pea-blossoms: fruit a pod. Blooms in early summer.

Palafoxia linearis. A common, straggling plant of many slender
stems up to 3 feet high. Leaves few, narrow, dark gray-green:
flowers lavender or pinkish, tubular, with long calyx. Blooms
almost all the year.

Parosela (formerly Dalea) californica. A stiff, woody bush, up to
3 feet high, with clear, yellowish bark. Leaves small, gray, nar-
rowly divided: flowers plentiful, resembling pea-blossoms, dark
bright blue. Blooms in mid-spring.

Parosela (formerly Dalea) emoryi. Dye-weed. A gray, weedy
bush 2 or 3 feet high, easily identified by the orange satin
which the flower-heads leave on hands or clothing. Leaves
small, composed of several leaflets: flowers tiny, purple, in
small close clusters. Blooms mid-spring to late summer.

Parosela (formerly Dalea) mollis. A small, grayish plant with
much-divided leaves and tiny, rosy-purple flowers in woolly-
looking clusters. Blooms in late spring and early summer.

376 APPENDIX

Parosela (formerly Dalea) schottii. A large, rather thorny bush,
up to 6 feet high. Leaves very narrow, dark bright green: flow-
ers resembling pea-blossoms, dark brilliant blue. Blooms in
mid-spring.

Parosela (formerly Dalea) spinosa. Smoke-tree, Indigo-bush. A
small tree, up to 15 feet high, common in washes. Practically
leafless, the tree is a mass of whitish spiny twigs. Flowers small
but very abundant, resembling pea-blossoms, dark brilliant
blue. Blooms in early summer.

Pectis papposa. Chinch weed. A low, small, rounded plant, viv-
idly green, with bright yellow flowers. It has a strong, rather
unpleasant smell. Blooms throughout summer.

Perityle emoryi. A small plant found growing among rocks.
Flowers white, daisy-like. Blooms in mid-spring.

Petalonyx thurberi. Sandpaper plant. A low, rounded, whitish
bush with a peculiar roughness to the touch. Leaves small,
light-green, scaly: flowers profuse, light-yellowish green.
Blooms in late spring.

Phacelia campanularia. Canterbury bell. A small, usually single-
stemmed plant, with roundish, rather hairy leaves, and large,
deep-purple, bell-shaped flowers. Found (on the desert) only in
canons or near water. Blooms in mid-spring.

Phacelia sp. Wild heliotrope: Span., Vervenia. A straggling, soft-
stemmed, rather hairy plant, up to 4 feet high, with small,
compound leaves and profuse, heliotrope-blue flowers in curl-
ing clusters. Blooms early to late spring.

Philibertia linearis. Twining milkweed. A strong creeper found on
willows or other strong supporting plants, growing up to 6 or 8
feet high. Leaves few and grayish: flowers pale lavender, in a
close rosette. Blooms in mid-spring.

Phoradendron calif ornicum. Mistletoe. A parasite very common
on the mesquit and other leguminous desert trees. It is leafless,
but has numerous small pink or white berries.

Phragmites communis. Span., Carrizo. A reed-like grass or cane,
up to 10 feet high, with long, narrow leaves, found in damp
places on the open desert.

Pluchea sericea. Arrowweed: Span., Cachanilla. A straight-grow-
ing, cane-like plant, up to 10 feet high, abundant in damp
places both in caiions and on open desert. Leaves gray, narrow,
willow-shaped: flowers small, clustered, dull pinkish purple.
Blooms in midsummer.

Prosopis glandulosa. Mesquit: Span., Mezquite. A wide-branch-

APPENDIX 377

ing, thorny tree, up to 20 feet high, found singly or in thickets.
Leaves of many leaflets, resembling small leaves of the pepper-
tree: flowers yellowish "spikes " (like pussy-willows) ; fruit long,
narrow pods, in clusters. Blooms in late spring.

Prosopis pubescens. Screwbean mesquit: Span., Tornillo. A
smaller and slenderer tree than the foregoing, favoring alkaline
soil. Leaves and flowers similar to the above, but somewhat
smaller: fruit twisted pods, like screws, in clusters. Blooms in
late spring.

Prunus eriogyna. Wild apricot. A large, branching, thorny bush,
up to 8 feet high, found in some desert canons. Leaves small,
bright light green; flowers numerous, white, like small plum
blossoms: fruit reddish yellow when ripe, with a small quantity
of sweetish pulp. Blooms in early spring.

Psathyrotes ramosissima. A low, compact, rounded plant with
light-gray leaves and small, yellow flowers. Blooms in late
spring.

Purshia tridentata. Bitter-brush. A strong, woody bush 5 or 6
feet high, with a casual resemblance to the common creosote
bush (Larrea) but rare. Flowers bright yellow. Blooms in late
spring.

Rhus ovata. Sumac: Span., Mangla. A large, compact, roundish
bush or small tree, native to coast regions, but sometimes
found in or near desert cafions. Leaves dark bright green,
glossy, suggesting those of the laurel: flowers white or pink,
profuse, in very close clusters: fruit a reddish sticky berry.
Blooms in late spring,

Salazaria mexicana. Bladder bush. A roundish bush, up to 3 feet
high, rather rare. Leaves few and small, gray: flowers showy,
white and purple; the calyces become inflated and look like
little round bladders. Blooms in early summer.

Salvia carduacea. Thistle sage. A thistly-looking plant a foot or
so high, with large prickly grayish leaves and handsome light
purple flowers in round-headed clusters. Blooms in late spring.

Salvia columbarieae. Span., Chia. A small plant a foot or so high,
usually with a single stiff stem rising from a few deeply-cut
leaves and bearing one or more clusters of small purple flowers
closely grouped in rings. Blooms in mid-spring.

Sesbania macrocarpa. Wild hemp. A straight, slender, spindling
plant, up to 8 feet high, found in damp ground in Imperial

378 APPENDIX

Valley and near the Colorado River. Flowers yellow, pea-like.
Blooms in mid- and late summer.

Simmondsia californica. Goat-nut, Quinine plant. A strong
shrub, up to 6 feet high, with gray-green leaves somewhat like
those of the manzanita. Flowers whitish, inconspicuous: fruit a
small, brown, edible nut with smooth, pointed husk. Blooms in
mid-spring.

Sphaeralcea ambigua. Wild hollyhock. A loose-growing plant, up
to 3 feet high, with grayish stems and leaves. Flowers numerous
and striking, of a peculiar light vermilion color. Blooms in mid-
spring and early summer.

Stephanomeria exigua. A low, slender-stemmed plant bearing a
white starry flower something like that of the single pink.
Blooms in mid-spring.

Stillingia annua. A very small but hardy-looking plant with stiflF,
saw-edged, light-green, upright leaves. Flowers inconspicuous.

Suaeda ramosissima. A common, loose-growing bush of the open
desert, 3 or 4 feet high, with very slender, bright-green, juicy
stems that give a pink stain on being crushed. Leaves and flow-
ers inconspicuous.

Trichoptilium incisum. A small, almost white plant, very woolly,
with small, composite, yellow flowers. Blooms in early summer.

Washingtonia filifera. Fan-palm. The native palm of the desert,
found in many canons and occasionally in the open desert,
though never in dry soil. Up to 70 feet high. Fronds light-green,
with stringy filaments: flowers small, creamy, in long, droop-
ing clusters: fruit a small hard berry, black and sweet when
ripe. Blooms in early summer.

Yucca brevifolia. Joshua tree, Yucca palm. A tree-yucca, up to
30 feet high, with stiff', strong arms and tufts of blade-like
leaves, found in certain mountain and high mesa localities.
Flowers whitish, bell-shaped, in large clusters, rather ill-
smelling: fruit a short, thick pod which remains closed when
mature and dry. Blooms in early spring.

Yucca mohavensis. A small tree-yucca, somewhat branching,
with tufts of very long, dagger-like leaves, found in similar lo-
calities to those inhabited by the foregoing. Flowers also simi-
lar: fruit a large blunt pod which becomes soft and edible when
ripe. Blooms in late spring.

APPENDIX 379

Yucca whipplei. Spanish bayonet: Span., Quijote. The common
yucca of the coast mountains, with a very large spike of creamy,
bell-shaped flowers on a tall, straight stalk rising from a sheaf
of long, stiff, spiky leaves. Fruit becomes hard and splits open
when ripe. Blooms in late spring.

INDEX

A bronia aurita, see Desert verbena.
Acacia greggii, see Cat -claw.
Adenostoma sparsifolium, see

Chamiso.
Agave deserti, see Mescal.
Agricultural Experiment Station,

123, 357-
Agua Caliente Springs, 250.
Agua Caliente village, 236.
Agua Dulce, 181.
Alamo Bonito village, 176.
Alamo River, 292.
Alargon, Hernando de, 32:.
Algodones, 298.
Alkali in soil, 188, 215,
Alkali lake-beds, 148, 157.
Alkaline water, 94, 107, 361.
Andreas Caiion, 20, 37.
Anemopsis californica, 82.
Anza, Capt. Juan Bautista, 211,

304, 312.

Arabia compared, 105, 112, 200.

Arbol de fierro, see Ironwood.

Arctostaphylos, see Manzanita.

Arrastra, 163, 333.

Arrowweed, Pluchea sericea, 34,
60, 76.

Arsenic springs, 138, 362.

Artesian wells, 168.

Asclepias eriocarpa, 83.

Aster orcuttii, 171.

Asuncion, Fray Juan de la, 321.

Atriplex canescens, 61.

A triplex hymenelytra, see Desert
holly.

Atriplex lentiformis, see Quail-
bush.

Bad -lands, 193, 201, 256.
Banner, village, 243.

Barrel cactus, Echinocactus cyliri'

draceus, 54, 76, 128.
Barren Mountains, 325.
Beach-line, ancient, 16, 127, 173,

180, 187.
Bees, 41, 115, 136.
Beloperone californica, 66.
Bermuda grass, 290.
Bighorn, 22, 28, 31, 32, 62, 173.
Birds, 96, 105, 107, 153, 239, 249,

301, 323-
Biznaga, 54, 76, 128,
Blastophaga wasp, 123.
Blythe, town, 330.
Borego Springs, 203.
Borego Valley, 62, 215.
Brawley, town, 289.
Bullion Mountains, 151.
Burro-weed, Franseria dumosa,

48, lOI.
Butterfield stage-line, 240.

Cacti, 53 et seq. ; also Appendix B.

Cactus wren, 14, 31, 57.

Calabazilla, 72.

Calexico, town, 290.

Canon wren, 22, 164, 171.

Campomoche, 255.

Cardinal flower. Lobelia splen-

dens, 228.
Carrizo, Phragmites communis, 76.
Carrizo Creek, 247, 274.
Carson, Kit, 240.
Castle Dome, 307, 314.
Cat -claw. Acacia greggii, 48, 79.
Cattle, 26, 38, 56, 154, 205, 216,

224, 241, 354.
Caves, 20, 22, 187.
Cercidium torreyanum, see Palo

verde.

382

INDEX

Cereus giganleus, see Saguaro.

Cercocarpus, 230.

Cereus engelmanni, 57.

Chamiso, Adenostoma spar si-
folium, 76, 82, 230.

Chia, 77.

Chilopsis linearis, see Desert
willow.

Chino Canon, 17, lOO.

Chipmunks, 166.

Chocolate Mountains, 180, 188,
298, 300, 316, 318.

Cholla cactus, Opuntia higelovii,
55, 79, 218.

Chuckwalla, 317.

Chuckwalla Mountains, 180, 340,

343-
Cibola Valley, 326.
Cicada, 41, 121, 127.
Clay Point, 193, 212, 236.
Cliffs, 21, 27, 28, 31, 170.
Clouds, II, 102.
Coachella, town, 120, 124.
Coachella Valley, 115, 357.
Cockscomb Mountains, 153, 159,

343.
Cocopa Mountains, 212, 273, 284,

294.
Collins Valley, 223.
Color, 4, 6, 8, 9, II, 13, 46, 67, 88,

90, 92, 106, 170, 184, 279, 299,

319.
Colorado River, 52, 178, 301, 320,

337.
Colorado River steamers, 304.
Conejo Prieto, 182.
Contours, 7, 104, 114, 165, 299.
"Coral Reef," 126.
Corn Springs, 347.
Cottonwood Mountains, 160, 180.
Cottonwood Springs, 147, 162.
Cougar, 28.
Coyote, 31, 95, 185, 242, 324, 354,

356.
Coyote Canon, 218.
Coyote legend, 70.

Coyote Mountain, 214, 255, 276,

284.
Coyote Wells, 281.
Creosote bush, Larrea glandulosa,

59 et seq.
Crotalus cerastes, see Sidewinder.

Dale, mining camp, 155.
Date-growing, 80, 188, 122, 172,

329, 357.
Datura meteloides, 71.
Dead Man's Point, 135,
Death from thirst, 135, 161, 252,

277.
Death Valley, 186.
Deep Canon, 30, 45, 65.
Deer-horn cactus, Opuntia echino-

carpa, 56.
Desert glaze, 7.
Desert holly, Atriplex hymenely-

tra, 61, HI, 133.
Desert lily, Hesperocallis undu-

latus, 64.
Desert Queen Mine, 146.
"Desert rats," 99.
Desert refrigerator, 117.
Desert tea. Ephedra californica,

75-
Desert verbena, Abronia aurita,

67.
Desert willow, Chilopsis linearis,

47, 89.
Devil's Garden, 55.
Dewey Mine, 141.
Diaz, Melchior, 322.
Dixieland, settlement, 285.
Dos Palmas, 348.
Doubtful trail, 106, 146, 202, 344,

348, 364r-
Dress, 124, 360.
Dunes, see Sand-dunes.
Dye- weed, Parosela emoryi, 67, 89.

Eagle, 31, 118, 171.
Eagle Canon, 37.
Eagle Mountains, 160.

INDEX

383

Earthquake, 287, 290.
Echinocactus cylindraceus, 54, 76,

128.
Edom, 112.
Egypt compared, i, 6, iii, 128,

286.
Ehrenberg, town, 335.
El Centro, 285.
Elf-owl, Micro pallas whiineyi, 52,

314.
Encelia californica, 65.
Enceliafarinosa, see Incense-bush.
Ephedra californica, 75.
Eremiastrum bellioides, 33, 89.
Eriodictyon, 82.
Eriogonum jasciculatum, 82.
Erosion, 118, 131, 133, 166, 169,

172.
Eschscholtzia, 32, 75.
Evaporation, 102, 119.
Evening primrose, (Enothera tri-

chocalyx, 64, 89.

Fagonia californica, 32.
Farming, 97, 115, 121, 286, 295,

328, 330-
Ferns, 4; also Appendix B.
Figtree John, Indian, 181, 214.
Figtree John Springs, 181, 184.
Fish Creek Mountain, 255, 259,

273, 284.
Fish-hook cactus, 59.
Fish Springs, 188.
Fish-traps, 175.
Flor de chuparosa, 66.,
Forest fire, 239, 251.
Fort Yuma, 302, 304.
Fouquieria splendens, see Ocotillo.

Galleta grass, 48, loi, 255.
Garces, Fray Francisco, 43, 211,

303-
Grand Canon of the Colorado,

321.
Greasewood, see Creosote-bush.
Gulf of California, 11, 178, 302.

Heat, see Temperature.
Heber, town, 290.
Hediondia, see Creosote-bush.
Hell-Hole, 215.
Heron, 193, 302.
Hesperocallis uftdulatus, 64.
Hindoos, 289.
Hoag's Landing, 323.
Hollyhock, wild, Sphoeralcea am-

bigua, 66.
Holtville, town, 292.
Hot springs, 17, 19, 35.
Humming-birds, 66.

Imperial, town, 289.

Imperial Valley, 179, 283.

Incense-bush, Encelia farinosa,
65, 75, 82, 89.

Indians; Agua Caliente, 17, 36;
Andreas, 20; arts, 20, 71, 74, 83;
at ocean, 74; basketry, 75, 76,
78, 79, 81, 233; Cabezon, 182;
Cahuilla, 26, 72, 81, 86, 172,
176, 181, 213, 229, 271 ; Cheme-
huevi, 149; Chino, 17; Cocopa,
292; Diegueno, 70; dress, 305,
311; Figtree John, 181, 214;
fire-making, 73; food-plants, 42,
45- 51. 52, 58, 62, 74, 76, 77, 79;
hunters, 33, 78; Jake Razon,
176; Jim Pine, 152; Joe Pete,
172; Juan Razon, 181; Luiseno,
82; Mary Jane Segundo, 231;
medicines, 71, 74, 75, 82; "med-
icine," 72; Mojave, 332; myths
and legends, 19, 69; Papago, 71,
80; picture-writings, 20, 347;
pottery, 29, 40, 79, 81, 99, 233,
271; relics, 20, 29; San Felipe,
241; Santiago Segundo, 231;
San Ygnacio, 231; San Ysidro,
234; weapons, 60, 76, 233;
wells, 73, 174; Yuma, 303, 305,
309,311,316.

Indian Wells, 30.

Indio, town, I20.

384

INDEX

Ironwood, Olneya tesota, 47, 165,

342.
Ironwood Mountains, 48, 340,

342-
Isocoma acradenia, 75.

Jack-rabbit, 78, 246.

Johnson, Mr. Fred, 122.

Joshua tree, Yucca brevifolia, 49,

140, 145.
Juniper, 140.

Kangaroo-mice, 22.
Kaweah, horse, 20 et seq.
Kearny, Gen'l., 240, 249.
King, Clarence, 85.
Kino, Padre Eusebio, 322.

Laguna Dam, 310.

Laguna Mountains, 239, 246, 247.

Lake Cahuilla, 178.

La Paz, town, 333.

Larrea glandulosa, see Creosote-
bush.

Light, intensity of, 106, 132, 159,
167, 266.

Lizard, 39, 89, 160, 210, 317.

Lluvia de Oro, 44.

Lobelia splendens, 228.

Los Coyotes, 223.

Lost Horse Mine, 145.

Lynx, 22.

Lyon's Well, 154.

Magnesia Spring Caiion, 27.
Malpais, see Bad-lands.
Malvastrum rotundifolium, 32.
Mamillaria tetrancistrus, 58.
Manzanita, Arctostaphylos, 81,

230.
Maria Mountains, 334, 340.
Martinez, village, 174.
Martynia proboscidea, 79.
Mason Valley, 245.
McCoy Mountains, 48, 342.
Mecca, village, 168, 356.

Mentzelia involucrata, 64.
Mescal, Agave deserti, 31, 61, 77,

80, 220, 246.
Mesquit, burro, 17, 30, 84, 86.
Mesquit, Prosopis glandulosa, 39,

76,77.83.119,121. ,|
Mesquit, Prosopis pubescens, 39,

43,76.
Mexicali, town, 291.
Mexicans, 122, 130, 172, 282, 305,

311, 320, 326, 331, 339.
Micropallas whitneyi, 52, 314.
Mirage, 196, 300, 317.
Mission architecture, 248.
Mission La Purisima Concepcion,

304-
Mission San Pablo y San Pedro,

304-
Mistletoe, Phoradendron calif or-

nicum, 44, 49.
Mojave Desert, 49, 142, 148.
Moonlight, 28, 35, 108, 295, 346,

352, 355-
Mormon Battalion, 245, 249, 275.
Mosquitoes, 192, 312, 331.
Mountain-lion, see Cougar.
Mountain-sheep, see Bighorn.
Mud-hills, 131, 166.
Murray Canon, 37.
Music an analogy, 6, 350.

Nadal, Fray Pedro, 321.

Navarretia virgata, 68, 89.

Neighbors, settlement, 330.

New River, 290.

Nicotiana atlenuata, 75.

" Nigger- head " cactus, see Barrel

cactus.
Night, 21, 108, 222, 281, 295, 345.
Nolina parryi, 161.

Oasis Ranch, 177.

Ocotillo, Fouquieria splendens, 30,

50, 77, 81, 165, 201, 220, 247,

284, 317, 346.
(Enothera trichocalyx, 64, 89.

INDEX

385

Olla, 29, 73, 82, 100, 174, 233.
Olneya tesota, 47, 165, 342.
Onate, Juan de, 322.
Opuntia basilaris, 58, 229.
Opuntia bigelovii, 55, 79, 218.
Opuntia echinocarpa, 56.
Opuntia ramosissima, 57.
Oriole, 86.
Owl, 52, 314.

Painted Canon, 169, 258.

Palen Mountains, 343.

Palm Caiion, 36, 219.

Palm Springs village, 17, 27, 35,
80, 357.

Palms, 15, 18, 21, 28, 32, 33, 34,
35, 36, 38, 79, 93, 96, 98, loi,
102, 107, no, 117, 198, 230,

347.
Palo fierro, 47, 165, 342.
Palo verde, Cercidium torreya-

num, 43, 79.
Palo Verde, settlement, 327.
Palo Verde Valley, 328.
Palomar Mountain, 70.
Parosela emoryi, 67, 89.
Parosela spinosa, see Smoke-tree.
Peg-Leg Mine, 206.
Peg-Leg Smith, 206.
Pelicans, 180, 184.
Petalonyx thurberi, 67.
Phacelia, 66.
Phainopepla, 31, 39.
Phoradendron californicum, see

Mistletoe.
Phragmites communis, 76.
Picacho Mine, 318.
Picacho Peak, 307, 317, 340.
Pilot Knob, 300.
Pincushion cactus, 59.
Pines, 7, 12, 100, 203, 230, 247.
Pinon, 140.
Piiion-jay, 31.
Pinon Well, 142.
Pinto Mountains, 147, 153, 160.
Plant shapes, 18, 60, 62, 89, 91.

Pluchea sericea, see Arrowweeds.

Poison springs, 138, 362.

Polhamus, Capt. Isaac, 305.

Potholes, village, 312.

Powell, Major J. W., 322.

Prosopis glandulosa, see Mesquit.

Prosopis pubescens, see Screw-
bean.

Prospectors, 16, 99, 138, 150, 206,
224, 250, 254, 340.

Prunus eriogyna, 80, 230.

Puerta de San Felipe, 245.

Puerto de la Concepcion, 303.

Quail, 22, 42, 119, 145, 323, 336.
Quail-bush, 60, 74.

Rabbits, 40.
Ranchita Mine, 243.
Rannells, "town," 329.
Rattlesnake, 33, 133, 183, 326.
Raven, 31, 72, 113, 259.
Red Cloud Mine, 348.
Rhus ovata, 81, 82, 230.
Roadrunner, 153, 210.
Rock-color, 7, 9.
Rock-mosaic, 10, 153, 342, 346.

Sacaton Spring, 197.

Saguaro, Cereus giganteus, 51, 76,

79, 310, 313-
Sahara compared, 11.
Salt-bush, Atriplex canescens, 61.
Salton Sea, 16, 64, 118, 167, 178,

186, 194, 261, 351.
Salvia carduacea, 77.
Salvia columbarice, 77.
San Bernardino Mountain, 8, 100.
San Felipe City, 263.
San Felipe Creek, 203.
San Felipe Ranch, 242.
San Felipe Valley, 241, 245.
San Gorgonio Mountain, 34, 72,

102, 118, 126, 142, 166, 168,
San Gorgonio Pass, 5, 17, 90, 100,

120.

386

INDEX

San Jacinto Mountain, 8, 12, 17,
27, 34. 70, 71, 100, 102, 113,
118, 126, 142, 165, 168.

San Ygnacio village, 231.

San Ysidro Mountain, 214, 271.

San Ysidro village, 81, 235.

Sand-blast, 90, 92.

Sand-dunes, 5, 86, 89, 113, 298.

Sandpaper plant, Petalonyx thur-
beri, 67.

Santa Rosa Mountain, 12, 30,
102, 118, 165, 167, 172, 175,
186, 195, 259.

Scorpion, 33, III, 200.

Screwbean, Prosopis pubescens,

39, 43, 76.

Serra, Fray Junipero, 140, 211.

Sesbania macrocarpa, 331.

Settlers, 34, 93, 97, 98, 99, 103,
112, 115, 121, 216, 246, 263,
295, 323, 326, 329, 332, 340.

Seven Palms, 34, 40, 55, 93, 99.

Seventeen Palms, 199.

Shad-scale, A triplex canescens, 61.

Shafer's Well, 166, 356.

Sheephole Mountains, 151, 157.

Shells, 114 e^ seq.

Sidewinder, 64, 133, 195.

Signal Mountain, 212, 261, 273,
284.

Sign-posts, 147, 161, 198, 354.

Silence, 14, 171, 281, 355.

Simmondsia californica, 83.

Skunk, 22.

Sky -color, 11, 13.

Sleep, 123.

Smoke-tree, Parosela spinosa, 45,
112, 115, 160.

Snakes, 105, 226; see also Rattle-
snake, Sidewinder.

Snow Creek Caiion, 16.

Solitude, 10, 14, 29, 52, 59, 151,
171, 234, 296.

Sphceralcea ambigua, 66.

Sphinx, symbol of desert, I, 143,
358.

Split Mountain Canon, 250, 255.

Spring, 10.

Squaw Tanks, 145.

Stars, 10 1, 281, 296, 355.

Stirrup Tanks, 147.

Storms, 12, 19, 22, 92, 102, 103,

177, 292, 298.
Strawberry cactus, 59.
Suada ramosissima, 74, 189.
Sun an enemy, 13, 84, 109, 124..

150, 253.

Sunrise, 130, 150, 252, 342.
Sunset, 6, 12, 52, 101, 107, 120,

151, 252, 280, 323, 338.
Superstition Mountain, 167, 189,

259, 264, 273.

Tahquitz, demon, 19, 27, 69.

Tahquitz Canon, 27.

Tahquitz Peak, 27.

Tarantula, 22, 33, III.

Temescal, 83.

Temperature, 33, 39, 56, 10 1, 107,
111,119,151,167,169,171,174,
194, 218, 264, 266, 285, 303.

Thermal, town, 172.

Thirst, death from, 135, 161, 252,

277.
Thousand Palm Canon, 33, 107,

no, 228.
Tinaja, 145, 317.
Toluache, 71.
Tornillo, see Screwbean.
Toro village, 173.
Trade-rats, 29.
Travertine, 128, 179, 187.
Travertine Rock, 186.
"Twelve Apostles, The," 34.
Twenty-nine Palms, 146, 149.
Two-Bunch Palms, 35, 96, 98.

Vallecito, 247.

Vallecito Mountain, 255.

Van Dyke, Prof. John C, quoted,

4-
Vegetation, color of, 60, 61.

INDEX

387

Verbena fields, 67.
Virginia Dale, 154.
Volcan Mountain, 235, 240.

Warner, Don Juan, 238.
Warner's Pass, 240.
Warner's Ranch, 235, 240.
Warner's Springs, 235.
Washingtonia filifera, see Palms.
Water, badness of, 94, 107, 139,

145, 199, 260, 361.
Water, developing, 112.
Water from cactus, 54, 76.
Water, necessity of, 132, 377.
Water, scarcity of, 16, 54, 97, 98,

103, 162, 189, 258.
Waterfall, 27.

White Tanks,' 147.

Whitewater, 55.

Wild-cat, 31, 270.

Wiley's Well, 340.

Wind, 5, 10, 30, 34. 90, 94. "9-

Yerba de incienso, 65.

Yerba del pasmo, 82.

Yerba del vaso, 82.

Yerba mansa, 82.

Yerba santa, 82.

Yucca arborescens, 49.

Yucca brevifolia, see Joshua-tree.

Yucca mohavensis, 77.

Yucca whipplei, 77.

Yuha Springs, 212.

Yuma, town, 300, 302.

CAMBRIDGE . MASSACHUSETTS
U . S . A

».-. u O