72 WITH THE FLOWERS AND TREES 



desert floor. Up there the snow was packed many 

 feet deep among the pines and firs, the fountain 

 head of sparkling streams that came bounding down 

 the precipitous canons which here and there split 

 the mountain's side. Clear of the mountains, val- 

 iantly these waters charge the desert sands forc- 

 ing fast narrowing channels through bowlder- 

 strewn washes ; but the odds are too great, and they 

 are soon engulfed in the waste of aridity. Though 

 lost to sight, however, their hidden influence is long 

 felt and serves to give life along and in these washes 

 to a rather abundant floral life, some of it arboreal, 

 and in such a place we found our first desert wil- 

 lows. 



"Not willows at all," the Professor complained, 

 for he has a distaste for inaccuracy, "but really 

 cousins of the catalpa that you all know back East. 

 Chilopsis saligna, or linearis I believe they call it 

 now.*' 



They were, nevertheless, not a bad imitation of 

 willows fifteen or twenty feet high, with their 

 crooked trunks in approved willow fashion leaning 

 over the wash where then only the memory of water 

 was, and their slender branches clothed with nar- 

 row, willowy leaves. The opening flower clusters, 

 however, told a story that no willows ever uttered 

 white trumpets of loveliness, suffused with purple, 



