CHAPTER X 



A DESERT RIDE: PINON WELL TO MECCA 



Rats and quail — Natural water tanks — A problem of the trail — 

 Need of guide-posts — A mineral solitude — Anxious miners — 

 Camp at Twenty-nine Palms — Sunrise — Fourth of July — Black 

 and white landscape — A desert grave — Bygone inhabitants — 

 Rock mosaic — The road runner — Desert mines — Virginia Dale 

 the First — And the present — "Blind pigs" — Mining-camp hos- 

 pitality — Dales and dales — The Sheepholes — Old "prospects'* 



— Hard going and slow — Desert ranges — Changes of vegetation 



— Another thirst-tragedy — Cottonwood Springs — A lucky strike 

 of fodder — Early morning on the trail — The palo fierro and 

 ocotillo — Right-line contours — Chipmunks — A hot march — 

 View of the Salton Sea — Mecca and luxury. 



I WOULD willingly have stayed for days at Pifion 

 Well but for that annoying trait of the human 

 mind that renders ease uneasy so long as there is an 

 unpleasant task ahead; and there are enough un- 

 pleasant possibilities inherent in an unknown stretch 

 of desert to debar the traveller from freedom of 

 mind. The rats that haunted the old house played 

 havoc, too, with my scanty food supplies. They in- 

 fested everything, even the coffee-pot, of dimensions 

 that might be named Homeric, that hung on the 

 wall, and in which I had thought my bacon would 

 be secure. 



Accordingly, after a day's rest we left at half-past 

 five in the morning and took the road down the caiion 

 for a mile, to where a wide valley began. My route 

 soon left the main track, striking directly north into 

 a strange looking country, a sloping plain broken by 

 abrupt hills that looked as if they had burst up from 



