374 ENTOMOLOGICAL SOCIETY 



LETTERS FROM THE SOUTHWEST. 



The Colorado Desert. 

 By H. G. HUBBARD. 



SAN DIEGO, GALA., February /, 1879. 



I must not close this letter without describing my journey across 

 the State of California from the Colorado river of Arizona to the 

 sea. On leaving Yuma we turn down stream and run for seven 

 miles in the bottom lands back from the river. At El Rio, the 

 old stage line crossing of the river, there is now but a sign-post 

 rising in solitary loneliness from the untrodden sands of the 

 desert,, but the distant river bank is marked by a line of old grey 

 cottonwood trees, which, doubtless, still rear underneath their 

 bark Eleusis fasciata and the numerous other Coleoptara of Dr. 

 LeConte's collecting in 1850. 



At this point the railroad climbs up from the river bottom onto 

 the desolate sandy plain and heads westward towards the sea. A 

 great isolated dome of barren rocks marks this point around which 

 the river turns away southward in its course to the gulf. Here 

 begins a broad and level avenue between two lines of hills which 

 rise gradually into snow-clad mountains, and on this course the 

 iron rails of the Southern Pacific stretch west by north, with 

 hardly a perceptible curve to right or left, and with not a single 

 cut through sand hill or rock, across the rolls of the continent to 

 the summit of the pass over the Sierra Nevada Mountains. 



At first we rise over a wave of sand 5 miles in width. The 

 vegetation consists of scanty and stunted shrubs ; on the north, 

 extending to the foot of absolutely barren and sunbaked rocks, 

 and. on the south, disappearing altogether in an endless succession 

 of white sand hills, drifted like the waves of the sea. More and 

 more desolate becomes the country as we descend into the region 

 beneath the level of the sea. At Mammoth Tanks the train stops 

 a moment to drop a cake of ice before the door of a solitary cot 

 tage, neat and trim in a fresh coat of brown paint, but resting on 

 the bare sands besides the track, with not a green leaf in sight for 

 miles around. A little garden ground, laid out with white stones 

 instead of plants, has the cynical notice to " keep off the grass !" 

 The sun of an August noon beats down upon the unshaded soil, 

 but underneath the shadow of the veranda of the dwelling stands 

 a young girl, fresh and cool in her white muslin dress, like a sum 

 mer girl at Newport. Against the wall of the building by her 

 side rests a bicycle resplendent in polished metal, and near at 

 hand a wonderful figure of a slim athletic man in knickerbockers 

 and red shirt, decorated with many medals and with a huge revol 

 ver slung in a leathei bolster at his hip. We did not delay to 



