TREES AND TREE-LIKE GROWTHS 41 



blown away. In examining a small one of these roots, 

 with a thickness of about two inches and looking 

 like a smooth brown rope stretched taut, I noted 

 that in a distance of twenty feet it showed no varia- 

 tion of diameter. 



Besides its boons of game, fuel, shade, and possi- 

 bly water, the mesquit yields food for man and beast 

 and insect. The vivid young green of late February 

 becomes tinged in March with clouds of fragrant 

 yellow catkins. This is the bonanza of the thrifty 

 desert bees: now or never they must re-stock those 

 rows of empty golden honey-pots in the rocky 

 cranny of the hillside, and they go to the work with 

 all the proverbial ardor, plus the stimulus of need- 

 ful haste. Later the mesquits form the great har- 

 borage for those most objectionable creatures the 

 cicadas. All day the thickets ring with their nerve- 

 racking pipings, like the whizz of steam escaping 

 under high pressure. I frankly hate these insects 

 for their way of dashing out and squirting at one 

 a spray of some vile secretion. I was puzzled to ac- 

 count for these disgusting anointings, which fell 

 upon me even at night, until, camping under a big 

 mesquit near Indio, I tracked the offenders down. 



That camp, by the by, deserves description as 

 illustrating the possibilities of growth of the mes- 

 quit. Other wayfarers, probably Indians or Mexi- 

 cans, had used the place before me, and had spent 

 no little labor on making it convenient. From the 

 outside it was a dome-shaped, isolated clump, a 

 hundred yards or so in circumference and perhaps 

 fifteen feet in height. A sort of tunnel had been cut 



