Chapter X 



The Home of the Mountain Lion 



CAMPING out or living in the Sierra Madre in 

 a rainy winter is not without charm and 

 excitement. To look at the placid and well- 

 wooded canon that cuts off Las Cacitas from the mesa 

 below in summer, one would never suspect the volume 

 of water which often comes foaming down during the 

 occasional winter rains. The river course is now dry ; 

 the summer sun has driven the water far below the sur- 

 face, where it sweeps slowly along, the underground river 

 that has given fame to Southern California. Yet I have 

 been shut in by floods on this spur of the mountains for 

 three days, and kept awake at night not by the roar of 

 the waters, but by the deep, menacing sound of boulders 

 rolling down the bed of the stream in a neighbouring 

 canon. 



All these canons, the arteries of the Sierra Madre, 

 have not been made by a steady, regulated wear and 

 tear, but by rushes of water, cloudbursts that suddenly 

 wipe out the fixtures of years, carrying away whole 



137 



