CHAPTER XII 



A DESERT RIDE: FIGTREE JOHN TO BOREGO SPRINGS 



Travertine Rock — The desert's dead-line — A desolate region — 

 Fish Springs — "Fill up" the word — Tom Sawyer and Huck 

 Finn: an unhopeful venture — A Miltonic sunrise — Doubtful 

 trail — The dreary Salton — A vacant land — Mirage, ants, and 

 antelope — A missing spring — Economizing water — Sign-board 

 but no sign — Seventeen Palms — Vile water — Arabian surround- 

 ings — Watering Kaweah — Bad-lands — Devil's house of the 

 Indians — Stone curios — Difficult trail-work — Nearing the 

 mountains — Borego Springs, and water. 



A NOTICEABLE landmark, less than a mile dis- 

 tant from Figtree John Springs, is an isolated 

 outpost of Santa Rosa Mountain that from its coat- 

 ing of calcium carbonate is known as Travertine 

 Rock. Standing ringed about by the sandy ocean, 

 there is a suggestion of a battleship in its turreted 

 shape, an idea further carried out by the strongly 

 marked sea line near its top, as if that were the deck 

 level, the gun turrets and other upper structures 

 contrasting in pale gray of granite with the darker 

 bulk of the travertine covered hull. 



In the morning I walked over to examine it at 

 close range and climb it for a view over the Salton 

 Sea. Close to camp I noted a bench-mark of the 

 Geological Survey, giving a minus elevation of 197 

 feet below sea-level. (The lowest part, now of course 

 under water, of this depression has been found to 

 be 287 feet below the sea, eleven feet lower than the 

 bottom of Death Valley, on the Mojave, which is 

 dry.) But the testimony of bench-marks was dis- 



