8 CALIFORNIA DESERT TRAILS 



Whatever form of geological action may explain 

 the peculiarities of these mountain shapes, it has 

 resulted in a great irregularity of surface: but this 

 irregularity is worked in small scale. The long, al- 

 most isolated spur of the San Jacinto that lies be- 

 fore me can only be likened to one of those vast 

 surges one sees in mid-ocean, driven into infinite 

 complexity by hurricane or tornado. In a mile or 

 less of mountain-side I count ten or a dozen well- 

 defined main caiions. They have one general trend, 

 and score the barren, red-brown flank sharply from 

 almost the crest down to the sudden dead level. 

 Interwoven with these principal cleavages, meeting 

 and crossing them at every angle, are hundreds of 

 lesser depressions, miniature passes and divides. 

 The result is a positive cross-hatching of intricate 

 contours, resembling in midday light a choppy sea, 

 giving at evening and morning a chequer of delicious 

 color, molten gold in light, amethyst in shade; or, 

 under sunset or sunrise warmth, like the glow of 

 red-hot iron flecked with touches of purple more 

 than Tyrian. I think the coldest-blooded of men 

 would stand and gaze while that pageant was pass- 

 ing. For others, the experience, which can never be 

 made stale by custom, is more than aesthetic or emo- 

 tional: it is moral, I would almost say religious. 



But the remark that rock gives back its own color 

 must be qualified, for rock also responds to circum- 

 stances. The eastward extension of San Bernardino 

 Mountain, lying beyond the sand-hills to which I 

 referred above, gives a good example of the possi- 

 bilities of this stubborn material. In actual hue the 



