THE PALM OASES AND CANONS 33 



eremiastrum, or desert-star, looked up, winsome as 

 daisies on an English lawn. 



Upon returning to camp I found the first rattle- 

 snake of the season had arrived and was enjoying 

 my blankets in the tent. He seemed firm but calm, 

 as if open to any reasonable offer. While I sought a 

 tripod he vanished. In the night I felt something 

 creeping over my chest under the blankets, and with 

 panic remembered my visitor, who might have come 

 to claim a share of the accommodation. I made a 

 really brilliant jump, struck a match, and met the 

 reproachful gaze of a large, stout, comatose lizard 

 that was searching affectionately for the nice warm 

 bedfellow who had suddenly turned unkind. 



Crossing to the east side of the desert, here not 

 many miles wide, a wonderful spectacle is seen in 

 the crowding groves of Thousand Palm Canon. In 

 this wide gallery, opening from the foothills of the 

 San Bernardino at near sea-level, the palm seems 

 most thoroughly at home, growing in companies of 

 hundreds that make what might almost be termed 

 a forest. One has a sense of strangeness in threading 

 these pillared aisles. One's steps rattle harshly on a 

 pavement of dry yellow leaves whose mahogany- 

 brown stems, long, tough, and thorny, impose care 

 in walking, while the mind does not easily ignore 

 the thought of snakes, tarantulas, and scorpions 

 that find the deep dry cover highly agreeable to 

 their constitutions. The summer temperature here 

 is of the hottest, for weeks ranging daily over ioo° 

 in the shade, and often over iio°, with not infre- 

 quent excursions into the hundred-and-twenties. 



