140 CALIFORNIA DESERT TRAILS 



The canon became a gorge, with yet higher walls, 

 the strata split and upreared at all manner of pain- 

 ful angles. Wild-looking shrubs leaned out overhead 

 and stared down at us with startled air. Strangest 

 of these were the so-called Joshua trees, Yzicca 

 brevifolia, that now began to appear. Nothing in the 

 vegetable world is more unprepossessing than this 

 scarecrow, all knees and elbows, with handfuls and 

 mouthfuls of daggers for leaves. The name is said to 

 have been given the plant by the early Mormon emi- 

 grants to California, in reference to its heralding 

 their approach to the promised land. There seems 

 to be no great compliment involved in having this 

 spiteful-looking object for a namesake. 



Next to appear was the ever-interesting juniper. 

 I like our California hero, Fray Junipero Serra, all 

 the better for his choice of a monastic name, though 

 it came second-hand (from that one of Saint 

 Francis's band of whom the Saint cried admiringly, 

 "O that I had a forest of such junipers!"). There is 

 some very wholesome quality about this plant, even 

 in its stunted desert form; and Pliny may be more 

 reliable than in some other items of natural history 

 when he declares that serpents shun this tree and 

 men may therefore safely sleep in its shade. ^ For 

 fuel qualities, anyhow, it has no equal, and I always 

 hail the chance of a juniper camp-fire. 



The pifion also soon came in, another of my favor- 

 ites, gnarly but cheerful, a sort of Puck of the pines. 

 Then appeared small oaks and willows, links with 



^ " Juniperus arbor est crescens in desertis, cujus umbram serpentes 

 fugiunt, et ideo in umbra ejus homines secure dormiunt." 



