8 



THE DESERT 



Following 

 the trail 



Defensive 

 watts. 



The 

 summit. 



not the slightest evidence, either by rub upon 

 the rocks, or overturned stones, or scrape in 

 the gravel, that any living thing has passed np 

 this pathway for many years ; and yet the trail 

 is a distinct line of lighter colored stone stretch- 

 ing ahead of me. It is a path worn in the 

 rocks, and there is no grass or vine or weed to 

 obliterate it. It leads on and up to the saddle 

 of the mountain. There is a crevasse or chasm 

 breaking through this saddle which might have 

 been bridged at one time with mesquite trunks, 

 but is now to be leaped if one would reach the 

 summit. It is narrow only in one place and 

 this is just where the trail happens to run. 

 Across it, on the upper side, there is a horse- 

 shoe shaped enclosure of stone. It is only 

 a few feet in diameter, and the upper layers of 

 stone have fallen ; but the little wall still stands 

 as high as one's waist. Could this have been 

 a sentinel box used to guard the passage of the 

 trail at this place ? 



Higher and still higher until at last the 

 mountain broadens into a flat top. I am so 

 eager to gain the height and am expecting so 

 much that at first I overlook what is before me. 

 Gradually I make out a long parapet of loose 

 stone on the trail side of the mountain which 



