OTHER WATER BORDERS 



as many more and as inappropriately called 

 cowslips. 



By every mesa spring one may expect to 

 find a single shrub of the buckthorn, called 

 of old time Cascara sagrada — the sacred 

 bark. Up in the canons, within the limit 

 of the rains, it seeks rather a stony slope, 

 but in the dry valleys is not found away 

 from water borders. 



In all the valleys and along the desert 

 edges of the west are considerable areas of 

 soil sickly with alkali-collecting pools, black 

 and evil-smelling like old blood. Very little 

 grows hereabout but thick-leaved pickle 

 weed. Curiously enough, in this stiff mud, 

 along roadways where there is frequently 

 a little leakage from canals, grows the only 

 western representative of the true helio- 

 tropes {He Ho tr opium curassavicum). It has 

 flowers of faded white, foliage of faded 

 239 



