region to the eastward of the Mojave River | occasionally in pools, and finally loses itself

the warfare-a perfect day. All vegetation | geles to Bakersfield skirts the hills of the cowers away from this wind, just as in the extreme western arm, before crossing the Antilles it shrinks in one-sided deformity be- Sierra adown the pleasant Cañada de las fore the constant trade-wind. Almost daily, Uvas, amid the grand old oaks of which Fort pillars of sand whirl in fantastic pas seul Tejon stands a fast crumbling monument to across the plain; occasionally, during the governmental extravagance. On the road dry season, sand-storms, such as sweep Sa- which leads northward to the mining region hara, but fortunately of only a few hours' about Owen's Lake, the huge "prairieduration, render travel impossible. When schooners" of the Cerro Gordo Freighting the south-east wind covers the sky with Company, each ponderous train of threeclouds, then, as all along our coast, the rain linked wagons, drawn by eighteen or twenty follows; but frequently the tops of either mules, ply slowly to and fro. A cloud of range will be black with the rain-clouds; and dust streams in the wake of one of these then one familiar with the desert does not desert ships, floating along in the air like need the telegraph to inform him that in smoke from the funnel of a steamer. ComLos Angeles, or in the Tulare Plains, the ing northward from the Cajon Pass, a wellwelcome drops have gladdened the heart of traveled road runs along Mojave's side; and the farmer. roads branch from the main trunk to Panamint, to the great Waterman mine, and to many another spot where the gold-and-silverseeking animal doth congregate. During the dry season, the loose sand of these roads must be thrust aside by the advancing wheel; but when the rains come, the surface of the desert arteries is hard and smooth as Newport beach.

During the dry season, that ridiculous instrument, the thermometer, at two, postmeridian, frequently indicates a number of degrees of heat far in excess of a hundred; just after dawn, on an October morning succeeding a night when more than an inch of ice formed on the water in exposed vessels, I, marveling that an animal with wings did not leave "semi-tropical" California, at least for a season, found lying stiff upon the ground a whip-poor-will. Yet the Mojave nomad of a midsummer night swathes himself in blankets, for the bosom of the mother is chilly to her wearied children; and when the fierce blasts of tropic winter howl about him, he shivers over that greatest of delusions and snares, a camp-fire, fondly imagining that with a few sticks he shall warm the universe. Wiser he who sulks within his tent, over the prosaic stove, fashioned of sheet-iron, and filled to repletion with the heat-producing wood of the yucca, yearning earnestly the while for the morrow's sun.

About the desert wind the highways of the commonweath. Beside the road already mentioned, along which, toward the close of the first third of the century, came the hardy trapper-first foam-drift of American civilization soon to sweep irresistibly over the semi-barbarous outlying province of Mexico well-beaten tracks cross it in all directions. The old stage-road from Los An

Nor is the desert, to the very summits of the sand-hills and the tops of the buttes, destitute of vegetation, even in the long season of drought. Where the sand is deepest, there the yucca, popularly called “cactus and "palm"-probably on the lucus a non lucendo principle, for it is neither the one nor the other flourishes most luxuriantly, sometimes covering the ground with the thick. growth of a forest. The little yucca pushes from the sand its sharp triangular leavesveritable vegetable bayonets they-and as it grows, slowly in stature, more slowly still in girth, a stem comes into sight beneath; year by year the up-pointing green spikes wither, turn downward, and at length lie dead, pointing earthward along the trunk, upon which, beneath them, a true bark, not unlike that of the cork-tree, has been forming; then branches appear, and later, a multiplicity of them, growing at every conceivable angle, all clothed like the main trunk, and bearing at their extremities strange whorls of flowers; until, after centuries of growth (for I have counted

more than sixty concentric rings in the trunk of a yucca of less than ten inches in diameter), we have a weird tree, utterly unlike any other product of Nature's varied and generally symmetrical handicraft, of about forty feet in hight, and occasionally fifteen in girth. The monarch of the desert has no tap-root, but clings to the loose soil by means of a myriad of tentacular rootlets, which penetrate but a few inches; he sturdily faces the terrific gales which seek to uproot him, leaning, it is true, a little from the quarter whence they almost invariably blow, and dies, from the top downward, stubborn to the lastslowly dying just as he grew to maturity. Though soft and easily cut into, the tough, moist fiber of the trunk does not "chip out" | (as the woodman hath it), and it is not so easy as it would seem to fell the tree. Dead and dry, the lower trunk is easily broken in pieces, and forms the fuel of the desert, burning like coal, and invaluable to him who roams the plain. Sometimes the wayfarer, in the thoughtful spirit of him who removes stones from a road, fires the bark and dead down-pointing leaves, which ignite readily, so that he or they coming after may find in the future abundant fuel. By girdling the tree, the same result is brought about.

There seem to be two varieties of the yucca; of the trunk of one, matting might be made, for it unrolls as papyrus does; while both supply valuable pulp to the paper-maker. The yucca invades the mountain-tops, singly and in groups, like an undisciplined invading army penetrating the cañons; and meeting at the foot of the highland ramparts the sturdy juniper and the lordly pine, outlying pickets of those within these fastnesses. Toward the western extremity of the desert there is an extensive forest of yuccas, the home of a numerous herd of antelopes.

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the omnivorous mule passes it by disdainfully. Three varieties of cactus are found, none of them abundantly. One is a lowgrowing kind of nopal, such as, in lands far to the northward, the cochineal insect, and here the "jackass-rabbit," loves; of another the thick-growing spines are covered by sheaths, themselves thorns; the third is the viznaga, on the rounded surface of which interlace the multi-calcarate, hard, thorny spikes, known as "Mojave toothpicks ❞—a veritable chevaux-de-frise. When the returning sun warms again the breast of the universal mother, everywhere the desert is spangled with humble flowers, some of them blooming all through the long months of the dry season: austere blossoms they, odorless all, save the rank, air-polluting, lupine, puritanical plants, of a character befitting the soil that gives them birth. Among these there is one, the lowliest, of use to man—the gol ondrino, of which the tiny vinelike stems, with their dark green, rounded leaves, and starlike, pink-and-white flowerets, cling to the sand as the sensitive-plant does. When the stem is broken, a juice, not unlike that of the familiar milk-weed, exudes from the wound. This plant, bruised with a stone, and moistened with water in which salt has been dissolved, if applied as a poultice, will infallibly and speedily extract the venom from a wound caused by the bite of a rattlesnake. In many places the Mojave is bordered by dense growths of sycamore, cottonwood, and willow, and occasional clumps of very thrifty mezquite. Along that river, and about the springs, are little oases of tule, zacaton, wiregrass, and the like.

Animal life is as abundant throughout the desert as in other regions of the State. The herd of antelopes inhabiting the great yucca forest is said to number thousands, and the "trails" made by this shy lover of the desert cross it in all directions. He loves not the mountains, but his cousin of the manypronged antlers not infrequently leaves the That as

Everywhere grow the grease-wood, the common thorn, the bitter sage, and the still more bitter muscrú, which, with his utter disregard of Spanish grammar, he whom we designate as the "native Californian" calls "he-hills, and visits him in his haunts. diondea." This is a straggling shrub of rather lofty growth, with bright green leaves, but of a savor so intensely bitter that even

tounding product of civilization, the mule, may be found (it is said) dwelling in unity with the antelope. Sleek coyotes, dozing

the incautious insect slipping over its brink, and so brings him within reach of his formidable mandibles. The so-called tarantula, which, though very venemous, is merely the trap-door spider, opens the door of his cunningly hidden house, and stalks forth with a wary eye for the "tarantula hawk," which swoops upon and slays him; and then, despite her lesser bulk, with infinite pains, lugs him away, in order to make of his limp carcass the depository of her eggs. Immense scorpions, sand-like in color, crawl rapidly along; two or three varieties of lizard, with open-eyed curiosity, dart from bush to bush; last, but by no means least, the rattlesnake arms himself for battle, while his queer conqueror, the horned "side-winder," or "wobbler," writhes in sidelong contortions clumsily over the ground-these two assimilating in color to the soil, and therefore being the more dangerous.

underneath the yuccas, stare at the passer- | which, lying perdu at the bottom of his funby, or, if he come too near, move slowly nel-shaped pitfall, hurls showers of sand at away, with the reluctant gait of a mongrel cur; while the great hare, called "jackass rabbit," and by the godless plainsman, "narrow-gauge mule," scampers in ziz-zag, senseless bounds across his path. The badger burrows everywhere, and preys upon the chipmunck, differing in color only from his brother of the far east. The gopher and the ground-squirrel are seen only on the edge of the bad lands: they prefer the wheat and the barley of the Kern, or the luxuriance of Angeleño vegetation. Here, as everywhere, the raven and the crow are the chiffoniers of the winged tribes; the tecolote flies abroad at night, and the whip-poor-will in the gloaming pursues the clouds of insects; the linnet warbles from the yucca, and the meadow-lark builds in the muscrú bush; in their vernal and their autumnal flights, myriads of geese and ducks settle on the surface of some one of the ponds then full of water. Insects, too, are of many kinds. Devil's darning-needles' | glitter in the sunshine; butterflies flit from shrub to shrub; flies and gnats, profanityevoking, swarm as in more favored regions; the omnipresent grasshopper-the chapul of the Aztec calendar, bestowing his name also on the palace of Aztec emperors-dodges about; the pinocate beetle makes frantic and repeated efforts to effect a bold burglary on some ant-hill, and emerges thence on a reluctant run, with scores of the outraged utilitarians clinging to his attenuated legs; the ants, in turn, fall a prey to the ant-lion,

I opine, then, that the Mojave Desert is not a desert. Neither its heat nor its cold are in excess; its winds, unladen with the fog characterizing those of San Francisco's bleak peninsula, blow the cobwebs from one's brain; nor are its plains fever-haunted, like the swamps around Bakersfield. The desert is mineral producing; during one-third of the year no better pasture land is to be found in the State; and water can be obtained in many places by digging or boring for it. At the worst, it is a region highly interesting to the student of Nature unadorned.

GEORGE BUTLER GRIFFIN.

ONE OF THE WORLD-BUILDERS.*

* All rights reserved to the author.