TO COACHELLA VALLEY 121 



miles to the south, and has measurably prospered, 

 partly at the expense of the older place. I stayed for 

 a day or two about Indio, finding barely tolerable 

 quarters at a wretched hotel. The sleeping accommo- 

 dation consisted of a cot bed, with mattress and 

 sheets, on an upper veranda. My request for a 

 blanket for emergency apparently was considered 

 unreasonable, for the article was not supplied (and 

 in fact proved not to be needed at this season of 

 early June). 



Indio supports a weekly newspaperette, and my 

 arrival, as a stranger, being duly announced, I was 

 looked up by an old Los Angeles acquaintance, now 

 turned desert farmer, who urged that I make my 

 next stop at his farm. Here again a mesquit thicket 

 made an ideal camping-place. The only drawback 

 was the presence of a horde of the insects locally 

 called locusts, really cicadas. These pests kept up 

 all day a shrill, monotonous hiss, like the falsetto 

 shriek of imps, which I soon came to loathe. There 

 was compensation, though, in the friendship of the 

 kindly people and the sight and sound of happy 

 children. I do not forget, either, the melons and 

 cucumbers, tomatoes, chiles, and egg-plants, that 

 for a notable week displaced my daily round of 

 beans, rice, and dull, insipid flapjacks. 



The country hereabout is the pick of the Coachella 

 Valley farming region. Looking south and west from 

 camp I saw little but greenness; only isolated spots 

 of gray gave token of the desert. On all sides ranks 

 and clumps of fast-growing cottonwoods outlined 

 the stations of farms; and everywhere along the 



