THE DESERT REJOICES 249 



with blossoms. Patches of sun-bright yellow, 

 some of them to all appearance an acre or more 

 in extent, can be seen clear across the plain. I 

 saw them yesterday afternoon as I started home- 

 ward from Camp Lowell. The distance could 

 hardly be less than eight miles, and probably 

 they would have been visible had it been twice 

 as far. That the flowers are poppies, and not 

 blossoms of a smaller cruciferous plant that is 

 very abundant and gregarious hereabout, I am 

 confident, not only because I am assured so by 

 residents of the city, but because the patches are 

 much less conspicuous in the early forenoon, 

 when poppies are not wide open, than later in 

 the day. Some of the patches (I can see a dozen 

 from my window as I write, fully five miles off *) 

 are well toward the tops of the mountains, which, 

 needless to say, are not of great elevation, per- 

 haps four thousand feet. 



The poppy is the Tucson flower. Children go 

 out upon the hills and bring back bunches to sell 

 along the streets and from house to house. Their 

 splendid color need not be praised. It is known 

 to all Eastern people, who grow the plants in gar- 

 dens (I seem to remember when they came in) 

 under the name of Esclischoltzia. And here, on 

 the mountain walls of this Arizona desert, are 



1 I visited more than one of them afterward. 



