INTRODUCTORY ii 



for a time at the entreaty of her most winsome child, 

 virginal, petal-eyed Flora. It is only a transient 

 flush, rising, culminating, and fading quickly, al- 

 most as fleeting as sunset on cloud or mountain; 

 but it is enough: Draco does relent, Colonel Abso- 

 lute has been seen playing horsey on the hearthrug. 

 It proves the desert livable and possibly lovable: 

 and for all the rest of the year one bears in mind that 

 brief touch of graciousness. 



In speaking of the color of the desert there re- 

 mains the great field of the sky. Let not the reader 

 stay, as I did too long, under the conventional no- 

 tion of an ever-cloudless blue. Clear skies, of course, 

 predominate, but even in summer no long time 

 passes without grateful show of vapor — glorious 

 white or yet more glorious gray. Nearness to the 

 Pacific and the Gulf of California gives the sky of 

 the Colorado Desert a degree of cloudiness far greater 

 than that, for instance, of the Sahara, though the 

 rainfall on our desert is as scanty as there. In both 

 summer and winter the sun may rise, make his 

 march, and set, day after day for weeks, in un- 

 dimmed power; but at any season there will not be 

 many mornings or evenings together without some 

 skeiny film of rose, some shimmering bar of mad- 

 der, purple, or coppery gold, though for months the 

 sky through all the middle hours of the day may be 

 a hard and uniform cobalt. 



There is in fact a constant battle in these skies, 

 often to be seen by interested mortals below, like 

 the scrimmages of pro and anti deities that went on 

 above the plains of Troy. From the spot where I 



