178 CALIFORNIA DESERT TRAILS 



the fig season at its prime. At evening we all took 

 to the water, and for an hour the welkin rang with 

 shoutings, splashings, and barkings. When I re- 

 tired, cooled to sleeping point, repose was enlivened 

 by big over-ripe figs that dropped on me at inter- 

 vals through the night. 



My route now was for a few miles near the margin 

 of the Salton Sea. This body of water is well worth 

 a paragraph, and the more so, perhaps, for the rea- 

 son that it will probably find no place on the maps 

 of the next generation of schoolboys. The central 

 part of the Colorado Desert has long been known 

 to be below sea-level, a fact, indeed, plainly stamped 

 on the face of the country in the water line of the 

 ancient beach. The means by which Neptune lost 

 this corner of his domain can be stated in few words. 



In far distant times the point at which the Colo- 

 rado River debouched into the Gulf of California 

 was not, as it is now, at the head of the Gulf. The 

 sea then reached farther northward, to the limit 

 shown by the old shore line, so that the river's 

 mouth was some distance to the south of the sea's 

 northern boundary. In course of ages, the great 

 stream (then no doubt engaged in the carving of that 

 marvellous canon that ranks perhaps first among 

 the geographical wonders of the world) built up 

 with its silt a dam which in time extended com- 

 pletely across the Gulf, leaving the upper part cut 

 off from the ocean. This isolated part (which was 

 over two thousand square miles in area, and by 

 geologists is named Lake Cahuilla, from the Indian 

 tribe that inhabited its western side) receiving 



