SKETCHES OF THE COLORADO DESERT 



S. B. PARISH 

 San Bernardino, Cat.- 



RED CANYON 



Red Canyon is situated on the southwestern slope of the 

 Chuckawalla Range, which divides the Colorado from the 

 Mojave desert. It is about 5 miles from Mecca, and when a 

 torrential thunderstorm bursts over the naked peaks, Red Can- 

 yon discharges a flood of water over the intervening slope of Sal- 

 ton Sink, which may even reach the Salton Sea. Its mouth is 

 some quarter of a mile wide, and is filled with coarse sand, as is 

 the whole bed of the canyon The entrance is indicated by a 

 dull red band along the flank of the mountain, whose side ap- 

 pears absolutely destitute of all vegetation. But a closer in- 

 spection detects, scattered at wide intervals, small tufts, an inch 

 or two high, of Aristida bromoides, a few specimens of Chori- 

 zanthe rigida, Eriogonum inflaturn, Lupinus arizonicus, and even 

 a stunted Opuntia ramosissima. 



The canyon speedily narrows, its inclosing walls rising per- 

 pendicularly fully 100 feet to their pinnacled summits. They are 

 colored in varied shades of chocolate, red, yellow, gray and brown. 

 Side canyons, mere crevices, whose lofty walls may be touched 

 at once on either side by the outstretched hands, wind far back 

 into the heart of the mountains. The whole system appears 

 rather the result of seismic disturbances than of erosion. 



Unbroken silence reigned; no song of bird was heard, nor hum 

 of insect; no lizzard basked in the sun, or darted over the rocks. 

 A solitary flycatcher peered from its nest in a cranny of the 

 wall, and mice had made a faint trail in the sand at its base; so 

 meager were the indications of animal life. 



Vegetable life, also, was scanty. The faces of the cliffs were 

 bare of even a lichen, but in the crevices at their bases grew a few 



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