242 ON THE FEONTIEE. 



selves at "The Caves," distant from the Cajon Pass 

 a hundred and ten miles, and nearly fifteen hundred feet 

 above the sea-level. 



The Caves is probably a contraction for the Pass of 

 the Caves; that name being the one by which a pass 

 through the range of mountains lying across our road is 

 known, and in the middle of which some caves are 

 situated. 



It is truly a pass, in the strictest sense of the term. It 

 is a passage through, not over, a mountain range. The 

 mountains, cleft by the pass called The Caves, are a 

 short but steep chain of basaltic and red-sandstone peaks, 

 high, rugged, and bare, loosely connected with each other by 

 obtruding masses of lava-rock, the whole rising abruptly 

 from the general level of the desert. The pass is about eight 

 miles long, and the entrance to it quite narrow ; but we soon 

 find ourselves in a small, long, winding valley, in which beds 

 of tuleX immense rushes and bamboo reeds, and thickets 

 of willows and osiers alternate with pools of green alkaline 

 water, strongly impregnated with arsenic and medicinal salts 

 the Mojave river, risen again to the surface. 



This valley has been the chosen place for several Indian 

 massacres, the reeds and thickets affording admirable 

 ambushes, and the unscalable sides of the pass preventing 

 defensive flank movement. Not a few small cairns of 

 stones, each surmounted with a rude cross, mark the spots 

 where wayfarers, who have gone this road before, have 

 " gone under ; " and, impressively if silently, admonish us to 

 " keep our eyes peeled." 



Three miles farther on the pass canons again, becoming 



