20 Adventures in Scenery 



seen in their glory, and the fields of alfalfa and the luxuriant 

 fields of vegetables and fruits, wherever there is water from the 

 canals which lead from the Colorado River, are the grandest 

 in the world. Mountains to the east, mountains to the west, 

 with streams tearing down the steep slopes to be swallowed up 

 in the parched soil of the arid desert basin, smile upon the plain. 

 To the west Borregio Valley pushes between two projecting 

 points of the impending mountain range, past Coyote Mountain 

 into a troubled wilderness of bare slopes, treeless hogbacks, and 

 dry canyons. Here is the desert's western wall. On the high- 

 way to the south the old Pony Express depot is passed. Off to 

 the west again is the Painted Desert in the Bad Lands of the 

 Borregio Valley, and the Petrified Forest. Travertine Rock, 

 described in 1853 by W. P. Blake, marks the highwater mark 

 of the larger Sal ton Sea, called by Blake Lake Coahuilla (pro- 

 nounced Kow-wee-yah) . Yonder in the northwest rises the 

 bleak and barren peak of Mt. San Jacinto (Ha-cin-to) , an ab- 

 rupt rise of nearly 2 miles from the flat floor of the desert. In 

 passing take a look at Toro Peak, about 25 miles in an airline 

 from San Jacinto. This is probably as wild a region as exists 

 in all this wonderland of southern California, scantily watered, 

 uninhabited, unvisited except by a cowman in search of his 

 cattle, or a nature-lover who has the temerity to seek out and 

 the spirit to enjoy this wildest of the wild southern sierra. Toro 

 rises to a height of one and a half miles, the highest of a cluster 

 of mountains that noses out into the desert and is known as the 

 Santa Rosas, a part of what was called by the early Spaniards 

 the Sierra Madre de California. 



The faces of the mountains are broken by deep precipitous 

 canyons and arroyos, mostly dry in summer but carrying in the 

 winter the run-off of the season's storms. Noteworthy among 

 the "seasonal" streams by which these mountain slopes have been 

 dissected is that of Palm Canyon, a gorge that extends from the 

 foot of the San Jacinto range 40 miles southward into the Santa 

 Rosa range. Occupying the bed of the canyon for several miles 



