74 CALIFORNIA DESERT TRAILS 



first trip "inside," was taken by friends of hers and 

 mine to see the ocean. The place chosen was a sea- 

 side resort near Los Angeles, one that aspires, I be- 

 lieve, to the proud title of the Coney Island of Cali- 

 fornia. On coming in view of the sea she was deeply 

 excited, though self-possessed. The car was stopped 

 so that she might gaze her fill. Her childlike wonder 

 and murmured words of awe were a study in natural 

 emotion. Approaching the water's edge she was a 

 little reluctant at the boom and wash of the surf. 

 Then she stood quiet and intent, as if striving to 

 grasp the hitherto unimaginable fact of such an 

 infinity of water. Her companions made no unwise 

 attempt to overwhelm her with statements of the 

 real vastness of the ocean. When at length they 

 turned to leave the beach she still stood enthralled : 

 then knelt by the margin and tasted the water, beck- 

 oning to it, and speaking to herself, or to it, in the 

 Indian tongue. It was hard for her to turn away. 

 Again and again she stopped to gaze ; and when they 

 came among the side-shows and switchbacks she 

 had no eyes for these irrelevancies, but at every 

 opportunity she turned afresh to the great simple 

 marvel of the sea. It was to that, not to Fat Ladies 

 or Pink-Eyed Cannibals, that the "uncultured" 

 Indian nature reacted. 



The leaves of the quail-bush, Atriplex lentiformis, 

 whose hemispherical gray hummocks are almost the 

 sole feature of the monotonous silt flats, are used 

 for soap, and the seeds are boiled for food. The twigs 

 and leaves of the Suceda, which inhabits the same 

 localities, besides being boiled and eaten, yield a 



