222 



THE DESERT 



and escarp- 

 ments. 



Under 

 the pines. 



Bushes, 

 ferns, and 

 mosses. 



der the lee of a vast escarpment. The wall is 

 perpendicular and you have to circle it looking 

 for an exit higher up. For half an hour you 

 move across a talus of granite blocks, and then 

 through a break in the wall you clamber up to 

 the top of the escarpment. You are on a high 

 spur which leads up a pine-clad slope. You are 

 coming nearer your quest. 



The pines ! at last the pines ! How gigan- 

 tic they seem, those trees standing so calm and 

 majestic in their mantles of dark green how 

 gigantic to eyes grown used to the little palo 

 verde or the scrubby grease-wood ! All classes 

 of pines are here sugar pines, bull pines, white 

 pines, yellow pines not in dense numbers 

 standing close together as in the woods of Ore- 

 gon, but scattered here and there with open 

 aisles through which the sunshine falls in broad 

 bars. Many small bushes berry bushes most 

 of them are under the pines ; and with them 

 are grasses growing in tufts, flowers growing in 

 beds, and bear-clover growing in fields. Aimless 

 and apparently endless little streams wander 

 everywhere, and ferns and mosses go with them. 

 Bowlder streams they are, for the rounded bowl- 

 der is still in evidence in the stream, on the 

 bank, and under the roots of the pine. 



