FIGTREE JOHN TO BOREGO SPRINGS 193 



of barley that I had brought for helping him over 

 the hard spots in the near future, and before five 

 o'clock we were on the move. A heron rose from the 

 lake as we started, and flapped slowly alongside 

 for a hundred yards, etched Japanesquely on the 

 brightening saffron. In a few moments the sun rose 

 in his old tyrannic splendor, and our heron steered 

 away as if it might have been one of the "yellow- 

 skirted fayes" of that quaint idea of Milton's — 



"So when the sun in bed, 

 Curtained with cloudy red, 

 Pillows his chin upon an orient wave, 

 The flocking shadows pale 

 Troop to the infernal jail, 

 Each fettered ghost slips to his several grave, 

 And the yellow-skirted fayes 

 Fly after the night-steeds, leaving their moon-loved maze." 



This time his chin was pillowed on the Cotton- 

 wood Mountains, and his first shot at me came in 

 a blaze of red across the dreary waters of the 

 Salton. 



The road (if it could be called a road) continued 

 southward, paralleling on one hand the sea and on 

 the other a long southeasterly spur of Santa Rosa. 

 The spur ran out at last in a tongue of yellowish rock 

 of the malpais kind, cut by many gullies and bar- 

 rancas. Round this spur, which is known as Clay 

 Point, my route lay. It seemed as if we should never 

 turn that point. The going became worse, loose 

 sand and gravel for hour after hour, and travel was 

 slow and tiresome. It was a relief to reach the place 

 where we must leave the road and strike westward 

 across unbroken desert. The only mark of this spot 



