Backwards March. 331 



I make a note of one other thing as I traverse this region going north. 

 It is that ghost of the desert called the Yucca palm. As a specter it may be 

 said to rival the giant cactus. The Yucca palm is the indescribable. It rises 

 from the sand like a round post, with a rough, chaparral -like gray-green 

 bark curling out upward from the stem. A squirrel might run up to the 

 fork easily enough, but would have trouble in coming down. The trunk 

 branches at the height of from eight to twelve feet, and puts out weird, long 

 arms, which look as though they had been straight at first, but several times 

 broken and re-set by Mrs. Apache Squaw, M. D. At the end of these con- 

 torted elbows appear stunted bunches of pseudo-tropical leaves, and that is 

 your Yucca palm, your ghost of the Mojave desert. 



It is a long ride from Los Angeles to San Francisco, especially when your 

 sleeper is the old " Peoria." This vehicle of human transportation was built 

 by the Pullmans in 1867, and is, I believe, a venerable relic of the first year 

 of their manufacture. I could but reflect, as I inspected the narrow and in- 

 commodious apartments of this primitive sleeping-coach, how great a trans- 

 formation has taken place in the apparatus of civilization since the reign of 

 Andrew II. Your colored porter takes his manners and character from the 

 coach which he has in charge, and you take your temper from him. 



During the night I have an indistinct consciousness that the train is 

 still. After some turns I awake, expecting to find myself in San Francisco, 

 but on looking out it is only the desert town of Mojave. There has been a 

 cloud-burst in the mountains just ahead, the track has suffered a wash-out, 

 and a ninety-ton freight engine, lying dead, with his nose in the sand, is 

 awaiting the first resurrection. 



All day long I wander around the desert. Yonder to the east I see some 

 heavy ox-wagons coming in, laden with borax from the mines in Death Val- 

 ley. Here I find a miserable tent, inhabited by some Digger Indians — the 

 most squalid human abode I ever saw. The leering, dirty squaw has two 

 daughters, mere animals; the elder about ten, the other may be seven years 

 old. There is a sort of dog-wolf sneaking around the tent, and a magnifi- 

 cent tortoise, about a foot across the back, is drilled through as to a hole in 

 his parti-colored shell, and is tied with a strip of intestine to a stake. Charles 

 Darwin, F. R. S., come and take her away ! 



After a cloud-burst have a care how you scurry out on this desert, or in 

 you go. Ankle-deep or knee-deep, in you go; but if you will wait till the 

 afternoon you can run everywhere, so quickly does this superficial slush of 

 sandy water go down forever. It did not rain much here at Mojave last 

 night, but six or eight miles up yon canon there was a water-spout that 

 would have drowned Deucalion. Out of that canon comes a river. It is a 

 yellow, plunging flood of turbulent waters, headlong, desperate, broad and 

 deep. But at the mouth of the gorge, where the angry delui^e issues on the 

 plain, the roaring river suddenly spreads out flat, and then flatter. It finds 

 many shallow channels, and makes others for itself. For a certain distance 

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