The Old Yuma Trail 



39 



procession of pioneers 

 who trod the Old Yuma 

 Trail to make Califor- 

 nia — and then watched 

 the gradual settling of 

 present desolation. -^^ 



Besides their historic 

 interest, the high tina- 

 jas present problems in 

 geology and in meteor- 

 ology ; but it ma}^ be 

 noted merel}^ that they 

 lie on the lee side of a 

 rugged range, the first 

 to catch the humid air- 

 drift from Gulf of Cal ■ 

 ifornia, and that their 

 catchment gulch di- 

 V i d e s exceptionally 

 long spurs ot the nar- 

 row sierra. 



Six miles north of 

 Tinajas Altas the fifth 

 camp-fire is lighted, 

 and the team-stock 

 revel in corn-meal 

 while the saddle ani- 

 mals experiment sus- 

 piciously with hardtack 

 and other man- feed ; 

 for the breakdowns of 

 the supply outfit cost a 

 day in dearl}^ borne 

 provender as well as in 

 time. 



The next — and last 

 — day is a hard one 

 for the beasts, since the way skirts the 

 lower slopes of a plain (alluvial in the 

 valley bottom, but sheetflood-carved 

 above), over which the waters from a 

 local storm in the mountains flowed 

 yesterday — flowed not in coalescing 



*Kiuo's map is "Tabula Californise Anno 

 1702. Ex autoptica observatione deliiieata a 

 R. P. ChiiioeS. I." The padre's cart ograpln^ 

 but not his orthography, has been followed 

 in many if not most later maps of the region. 



The colloquial rendering of the name intro- 

 duces the local laison — it is lumped as Tina- 

 haltas (vowels Spanish). 



The lowest and largest is confined partly bj' great boulders and 

 granitic debris." 



streams such as gather on humid soils 

 m humid air, not in the continuous 

 sheetflood formed when soil and air are 

 of the dryness normal to the desert, but 

 in a plexus of interlacing rivulets unit- 

 ing and dividing every few yards or 

 rods, and digging little arroyos across 

 the trail to the average number of a 

 hundred per mile. Into these the wagon 

 plunges and out of them it is pulled by 

 the fagged mules hour after hour, until 

 the breaks of Gila River give respite. 

 From daybreak onward Castle Dome 



