120 CALIFORNIA DESERT TRAILS 



Rats made my mesquit thicket undesirable as a 

 sleeping-place, but I spread my blankets in its par- 

 tial shelter and passed a comfortable night, awaking 

 occasionally to enjoy the moderate breeze, which 

 came in playful puffs and sifted me lightly with 

 sand. Kaweah, picketed close by, stood stoically, 

 tail to the wind, until dawn, when he responded 

 promptly to my whistle and whinnied for his morn- 

 ing sugar. 



All next day the wind blew without cessation, 

 filling even the higher strata of the air with sand, 

 until in the north and west only the snowy heads of 

 the twin mountains remained in view. They seemed 

 like floating clouds anchored aloft to mark the Pass 

 of the San Gorgonio for the sailors of the new aerial 

 world-routes. By mid-afternoon they too had faded 

 behind the brown sand-haze, and sunset came with 

 a bar of turbid crimson, sharply met by the usual 

 aquamarine of the summer evening sky. Young 

 and slender, the moon moved gracefully down the 

 field of lucent green, a lily princess in a Caliph's 

 garden. 



The little town of Indio is an example of the many 

 California settlements whose hopes have been 

 blasted by the rise of an upstart neighbor. Indio is 

 old, for a California town and a desert one, and has 

 existed as a "division point" since the building of 

 the New Orleans to San Francisco railway. But 

 when, a few years ago, desert settlers began to arrive 

 in earnest, and the fight commenced which has al- 

 ready turned considerable tracts from gray to green, 

 a new town, christened Coachella, was started three 



