io8 CALIFORNIA DESERT TRAILS 



ing night: otherwise they might be wasted, meeting 

 a Hstless, heat-burdened mood incapable of enthusi- 

 asm or even interest. The great twin mountains were 

 hidden from me here, but the San Bernardino spur 

 was close enough for its four thousand feet to show 

 to advantage. But though these drought-cursed 

 mountains are admirable for color, one's pleasure in 

 them is limited, since for mountains to be merely 

 admirable is almost for them to be failures. The 

 canons yonder, bathed in indescribable hues, have 

 no enticement for the imagination, for one knows 

 that no streams are there, no trees, no birds, no 

 ferny pools, nor spouting cascades: only uncouth 

 boulders, scant, unfriendly shrubs, threatening rep- 

 tiles, snarling wild-cat and slinking coyote. Such 

 mountains never reach one's love. 



The night was warm, though a breeze rattled the 

 palm fans over my bed. Once I was roused by the 

 approach of some large animal and was barely in 

 time to beat off a couple of mules that were making 

 for my saddle-bags. There is some instinct in these 

 brutes that guides them unerringly for miles on any 

 errand of depredation, yet drives them away from 

 where their presence is desired. 



Toward morning, raising myself on elbow for a 

 drink from the canteen (which, on the desert, one 

 keeps at one's bolster, as King Saul kept his cruse 

 of water), I noticed the odd appearance of a star 

 that was just rising in the east. It grew quickly to a 

 little horn, and in a few moments announced itself 

 as the moon, nearly at her monthly finale. By the 

 time she had climbed to where her light fell among 



