IN CALIFORNIA 71 



all but essential, as to be lost may easily mean death. 

 In default of such a guide, it is prudent to keep close 

 to some one of the settlements on or near the rail- 

 way, such as Palm Springs, Indio, or Mecca, making 

 short trips of not over a day from one of them as a 

 base. Unless the distances are very great, walking 

 is perhaps the best method of locomotion for the 

 plant collector, as he needs to stop continually to 

 observe or gather ; but a burro or other pack-animal 

 to carry the canteen, the chuck-box, the camera, and 

 the collections, is something more than a luxury in 

 the desert heat and sand it is pretty nearly a ne- 

 cessity. 



Our starting point was the oasis-village of Palm 

 Springs, six miles from the station of the same name 

 on the Southern Pacific Railway ; and we were afoot 

 in the first delicious freshness of the desert morn- 

 ing. Our traps were packed on Eytel's horse, who 

 has since made his debut in literature as "the philo- 

 sophical Billy," of Mr. J. Smeaton Chase's de- 

 lightful book, "California Coast Trails." We 

 struck eastward, leaving to our left the old historic 

 stage road that plows away through the sand to 

 the Imperial Valley and Yuma, and followed trails 

 through the creosote and sage along the base of the 

 San Jacinto Mountains, whose mighty wall rose at 

 our right to an elevation of two miles above the 



