CHAPTER XI 



A DESERT RIDE: MECCA TO FIGTREE JOHN 



Painted Canon — Complicated shapes and strange colors — The 

 Heroic Age of Geologies — Work of earth-sprites — Solitude — 

 Hot drinking-water — A date plantation — Erosion once more — 

 A "low-down" newspaper — Camp at Toro — A friendly capitan 



— Martinez Indian village — Cahuilla Indian wells — The old 

 fish-traps — Alamo Bonito Indian village — A thunder-storm — 

 The Oasis Ranch: a swimming-pool — The Salton Sea, its origin 



— Engineer vs. River — Pelicans — Figtree John — Valuable 

 archives — Duke of Conejo Prieto — Hair-ropes and rattlesnakes 



— A sophisticated "sitter" — Camp at Figtree John Springs — 

 Evening colors — Night and coyotes. 



A FEW miles to the north of Mecca a canon 

 opens into the Cottonwood Mountains that is 

 remarkable for the contour and the coloring of its 

 walls. It is known as Painted Canon. A view of it 

 well repaid the discomfort of the ride on a July 

 morning with the thermometer at iio° in the shade. 

 A broad horizontal band of red on the face of the 

 mud-colored foothills plainly marks the point of 

 entrance.^ 



These foothills never fail to rouse my curiosity 

 by the complicated shapes into which the material 

 has been wrought. The material is earth, not rock, 

 and is mostly of a pale gray hue, approaching white. 

 Erosion, supplementing the work of some violent 

 original upthrow, has produced a most intricate med- 

 ley of forms. At a mile or two, the light and shade 

 effects are so eccentric as to seem artificial. Creasing, 



^ It is not the cafion that opens directly into the red formation, 

 but the next one to the westward, that is most notable. 



