i6 CALIFORNIA DESERT TRAILS 



mainly prospectors and such stray characters, 

 whose business or hobby makes them wanderers in 

 that harsh region. Such human Hfe as the desert has 

 — that is, the actual desert, the unconquered and 

 unconquerable wastes of burning sand and moun- 

 tain — drifts and circles about these spots: neces- 

 sarily so, since the presence of palms means the 

 presence also of that rarest, strictest necessity, 

 water. The Arabs' axiom regarding the date-palm, 

 that its foot must be in water and its head in open 

 sun, is true of its relative the fan-palm. Thus, in 

 the talk of desert men the palm figures constantly. 

 You hear of Dos Palmas, Thousand Palms, Palm 

 Springs, Twenty-nine Palms, Seventeen Palms, Two- 

 Bunch Palms, and so on; and the names mean to 

 the traveller not only water, but shade, with the 

 chance of grass for his animals, and the relief of 

 verdure for his sorely harassed eyes. 



Some of the groups occur about the boundary of 

 the sea that anciently filled the great depression 

 which is now partly occupied by the Salton Sea, and 

 whose beach-mark is to-day startlingly plain at the 

 base of the encircling hills. Such groups, probably, 

 represent the indigenous growths, A number more 

 are found at higher altitudes, but of these many are 

 known to have been planted by the present or for- 

 mer Indian inhabitants of the region. 



The westerly limit of growth is a rocky defile on 

 the south side of Snow Creek Canon, which is a rift 

 of San Jacinto Mountain, about opposite WTiite- 

 water Station on the Southern Pacific Railway. This 

 group marks the nearest approach made by the wild 



