76 CARNEGIE INSTITUTION 



road, to the foot of the mountain, and then on horseback to the 

 summit. Clouds lowered all the morning and hid the peak during 

 the approach, but I had a clear and excellent view from the summit. 

 I saw a country very different from the Los Angeles plains. It 

 looks like an old land, and has the simple form and coloring that 

 distinguish the arid regions everywhere. Sharp ridges rise ever 

 more numerous back from the sea, but among the rolling dunes 

 occasional peaks stand alone, boulder-strewn and desolate. San 

 Miguel itself is a type of these — treeless from its top to its base. 



The horses picked their way without difficulty through the scanty 

 chaparral. Most of it stood just to their knees, though now and 

 then a thicket of buckthorn rose to the riders' shoulders. From 

 the summit to the base I looked in vain for any sign of springs or 

 live water-courses, and there was almost no trace of animal life. 



Here and there in the valleys below shone little reserv^oirs of 

 water made by damming open streams. Now, at the close of the 

 rainy season, none of these were full. I was told that the great 

 Sweetwater dam, built at a cost of a quarter of a million dollars, 

 has scarcely lo feet of water behind it. There seems to be no bot- 

 tom to this laud, and in a season of ordinary rainfall most of the 

 water sinks out of sight before it gets to these dams. The higher 

 mountains, with their winter snows, are 40 miles away, and fluming 

 is expensive business. 



Riding back to town I read everywhere the story of the land of 

 little rain. Just for a few miles at the foot of San Miguel a grassy 

 mesa rolls irregularly down, but passes soon into the dunes of cactus 

 and prickly pear which extend to the sea. In the little winding 

 valleys orchards are dead or dying. Along the dry bed of the Sweet- 

 water river pumps are trying to recover enough to save the trees 

 of that district. 



San Diego is an incorporated city of perhaps 18,000 people. 



I went to Lakeside a few days later, and the San Miguel experi- 

 ence was in essentials repeated. Occasional orchards thriving, more 

 abandoned, dying, or dead, according as owners have been able or 

 not to hold out through the dry years and pay the high price of water 

 in a drouth. At Lakeside I took the stage for Cuyamaca, a ride of 

 35^ miles. This region was chosen as the site of my station for 

 the following reasons : My observations in San Diego had led me to 

 believe that in this region, as at Echo mountain, any altitude below 

 4,000 feet would often be covered by fog at this season. On this 

 account, as well as on account of the apparent lack of water within 



