CHAPTER XXIV. 



A Desert View Salt Grass The Caves A Desert Valley An improbable 

 Tradition Soda Lake A medicinal Spring Beelzebubs Snipe. 



" IT'S a far cry to Loch Awe," and many hundred miles lie 

 between Wet-mountain Valley and Fort Mojave, on the 

 Colorado River. The connection between these statements 

 is not obvious, neither will it be apparent that there is any 

 such linking this chapter with the last. There is indeed 

 none whatever. In it the scene was laid in the Rocky 

 Mountains. Now I purpose to write about the Mojaves of 

 the Colorado, their country, and their ways ; and anything 

 else that may come to my recollection, which is likely to be 

 interesting to the reader. In this book no attempt has been 

 made at a general sequence in the relation of facts ; so if I 

 am entertaining, as I always endeavour to be, why need I 

 care for the unities ? 



Fort Mojave is generally first approached by the mili- 

 tary road from Southern California ; and as this route 

 is over a very remarkable country, whose features are 

 totally unlike anything European, and have been seldom 

 described, I will try and give some idea of it by in 



