1 72 Life in the Open 



attractions are lost. It may savour of exaggeration to 

 some readers if I say that I have felt vastly more un- 

 comfortable in Chicago, New York, or Philadelphia than 

 I have when passing through the heart of the desert in 

 midsummer. Not long ago I made the trip across what 

 is considered the hottest part of the United States in 

 the hottest time or August, crossing the California 

 desert to Yuma, then on through Arizona and New 

 Mexico to Texas, and so on to the Gulf near the mouth 

 of the Rio Grande. Doubtless to some the land for 

 the entire distance was a desert, and certainly it was not 

 far from it, so far as appearance was concerned ; a dry 

 hot ride of several thousand miles ; yet I have been far 

 more uncomfortable from heat in the East, north of 

 Cape Cod. This unpopular region, in parts, is truly a 

 desert, particularly the eastern portion of California, 

 but it has its compensations ; it appeals to the lover of 

 nature, its- very barrenness in places giving it a peculiar 

 interest. The great beds of shifting sand, where there 

 seems to be absolutely no vegetable life, are fascinating 

 to some. They have a life peculiarly their own. They 

 move, they seem to breathe, they change form and 

 stature from day to day ; now rising high ; anon low and 

 flat ; now creeping along in many streams or rivers ; 

 towering high in air a spectral cloud to sweep along, 

 shutting out the entire desert from view. 



Few places are more desolate than the slope of the 

 Sierra Madre as it rolls down into the Mojave country ; 

 yet I have always been rewarded by the splendours of the 



