TO PINON WELL 129 



cove, with beach of pure white sand. It was strange 

 to think what manner of children once played about 

 it, and how many centuries had silently passed since 

 their voices ceased with that of the Sea. Now the 

 hour is close at hand when children will again make 

 its crannies ring. Will they also * ' have their day and 

 cease to be"? And after lapse of other centuries, 

 will some other fashion of mankind again come, 

 again to vanish into silence? Above all, shall we 

 know and watch the recurring drama? — In the 

 desert one is prone to such aimless dreams. The soli- 

 tude, the vast unbroken levels, the wandering, idle 

 wind, perpetually turn one's thoughts inward, yet 

 seem to lead them out in vaguest reverie. If the 

 reader finds too much of such matter in these pages, 

 I can only say that the fault is inherent in the sub- 

 ject, as humanity has ever found. It was always to 

 the desert, if possible, that the hermit fled when he 

 meant to waste his time. 



The long ridge of mountains that bound this arm 

 of the desert on the north and east, and the question 

 of what might lie beyond them, had been on my 

 mind for a long time. That locality could best be 

 reached from the Indio region, so this was my oppor- 

 tunity. All I knew of it was that a road, of a sort, 

 ran that way into the old mining districts of Twenty- 

 nine Palms and Virginia Dale, and that water was 

 scarce and forage scarcer. By luck I heard of a 

 freighter who made periodical trips over part of the 

 distance, hauling supplies from Coachella to a mine 

 in these mountains. I hunted him up, and arranged 

 to accompany him as far as our road was the same, 



