PINON WELL TO MECCA 165 



I here began to meet the palo fierro or ironwood, a 

 tree that to me has always an interesting, friendly 

 look. I had hoped to find it in ftower, but it was a 

 month too late, and the apple-green foliage was 

 sprinkled thickly with brown seed-vessels. This 

 locality seems to be about the northwesterly limit 

 of the tree's growth. 



To the canon there ensued the usual expanse of 

 gravelly plain, somewhat relieved here by a remark- 

 ably fine growth of ocotillos. Their short season of 

 beauty was over, the leaves had fallen and left the 

 thorny canes skeleton-like and gray, and the fiery 

 blossoms were dried to the color of rust. But in size 

 many of them far exceeded the ordinary. Some were 

 over twenty feet in height, with butts as thick as 

 well-grown oaks. The typical contour of the desert 

 mountains also is specially well marked in this local- 

 ity. The steep slope of the rock wall meets the hori- 

 zontal abruptly, with no conjoining curve; but from 

 every canon a long straight tongue or bajada runs 

 out at low angle, and even then the junction with 

 the line of the plain is clearly marked. That is the 

 desert: no suavity, grace, or curve of beauty, but 

 always a stark construction of right lines and angles, 

 repeated to the point of obsession. 



A higher mass at length came in sight to the south, 

 and I recognized Santa Rosa; then, more westerly, 

 San Jacinto swung into view: both faintly drawn 

 in the haze, mere bands of uncertain blue hardly 

 darker than the sky. A few more miles, and far in 

 the west I caught a glimpse of what seemed a white 

 iceberg, showing above the long, sea-like horizon of 



