30 CALIFORNIA DESERT TRAILS 



cosmic disintegration. How many years the olla had 

 stood there is matter for free guessing — perhaps 

 fifty, perhaps five hundred. Its circumference was 

 over fifty inches, and its capacity about eight gal- 

 lons. A furious wind was blowing that threatened to 

 throw me from the cliff and gave me trying mo- 

 ments, but hugging olla with one arm and cliff with 

 the other I got my prize safely down. 



Next I moved some miles farther south to Deep 

 Cafion (To'-ho of the Indians, commemorating 

 some " hunter- who-never-gets-his-game"). This is 

 a cafion of Santa Rosa Mountain, opening just west 

 of the long, rocky point that runs out on the desert 

 at Indian Wells. It is notable for its vast apron of 

 debris, through which Mesquit and I struggled for 

 endless hours, being forced at last to make a dry 

 camp when hightfall overtook us in a jungle of 

 cholla. In the morning we soon reached water, and 

 also the ocotillos, the view of which in flower was 

 my special object here. Since first meeting the plant 

 the previous year I had looked forw^ard to camping 

 among them when in full blossom, as these now 

 were (it was the middle of March), and so entering 

 them in my lasting book of remembrance. 



I have described this remarkable plant of the 

 Western deserts in another chapter. Here I pitched 

 my tent in a thicket of them, enjoying their splen- 

 dor of color by day and their weird shadow-play on 

 my moonlit canvas at night. The dead canes and 

 stumps made an excellent camp-fire, burning with a 

 white flame, as of wax, that justified the plant's 

 alternative name of "candle-wood." Near by were 



