TO PINON WELL 127 



and those gliding, melancholy dust-wraiths threw 

 us both into a drowse, broken unpleasantly when 

 Kaweah stepped on a ground -rat's or squirrel's bur- 

 row, with resulting jerk and snort, or when, passing 

 a mesquit, clouds of locusts came charging at us 

 with goblin eyes and banshee screech, squirting 

 their vile artillery. 



Shells covered the ground, mostly tiny spirals 

 smaller than rice grains, with a few three-inch, clam- 

 shaped ones that gave an iridescent coloring to the 

 surface. Pottery fragments were plentiful, plying 

 the fancy with visions of strange aboriginal things. 

 An occasional litter of cans or bottles raised the 

 reflection that future ages, judging us by our debris, 

 will conclude that we were an ugly, uncouth lot, 

 much inferior to the race we displaced. 



On a near approach the mountains on this south- 

 ern border of the valley showed a more than usually 

 forbidding aspect. Rising abruptly from the sand- 

 level, their forms are almost grotesque, with sugges- 

 tions of plesiosaurus and pterodactyl in their vast, 

 ridgy backbones. Yet it is these brick-like shapes 

 that at a distance and with sunrise or sunset color- 

 ing take on a look that can only be called heavenly. 

 Perhaps it is one point of the analogy between Na- 

 ture and the mind of man that in retrospect, life, 

 even if it has been unlovely, like these crude rock 

 masses, may gain a quality of beauty from that which 

 enfolds all, the universal Goodness that is God. 



The "reef" itself is an isolated hill, close to the 

 main rise of the mountain,noticeable for the strongly 

 marked beach-line, which is seen in a broad band of 



