100 CALIFORNIA DESERT TRAILS 



with colored designs, is so light that the fragments 

 remain on the surface, not buried by the wind. It 

 was the custom of these desert Indians to burn the 

 bodies of their dead and bury the ashes in a jar or 

 olla, often along with such articles as baskets, stone 

 or bone implements, and beads. Excavation in these 

 places of old habitation often yields interesting 

 treasure trove. 



Two-Bunch Palms has one of the finest outlooks 

 on the whole desert. On the west. Mount San 

 Jacinto stands near at hand in gray severity of gran- 

 ite, with many a league-long buttress, gallery, preci- 

 pice, chasm, and livid avalanche scar, from the vast 

 apron of Chino Canon that casts its burden on the 

 desert floor up to sky-piercing, splintery crag and 

 high-hung glimmer of snow. The topmost cliffs have 

 a fine cathedral look, with their fretted coigns, and 

 dark-niched, brooding pines. 



Separated from the northern spurs of San Jacinto 

 by the San Gorgonio Pass rises another magnificent 

 mountain, San Bernardino. With its height of 11,485 

 feet^ it slightly overtops San Jacinto, but being 

 rather more distant it makes from here a less majes- 

 tic though not less beautiful impression. The twin 

 mountains stand like portals for the traveller's gate- 

 way to the fertile coast, the Western ocean, and the 

 new-old world of the Orient. When, in winter and 

 spring, they are hooded with snow, they make a 

 memorable sight, and when a ruddy sunrise sets 

 them aflame they seem torches, lighthouses of a 

 continent, beacons of the old westward march. 



1 The mountain has two main peaks, San Gorgonio, 11,485 feet, 

 and San Bernardino, 10,666 feet. 



