194 CALIFORNIA DESERT TRAILS 



was a heap of stones, and I felt a little anxiety on 

 seeing that no tracks came in there, lest it might 

 not be the turn-off for Seventeen Palms but only 

 some prospector's sign leading into the bad-lands 

 or the mountains. I had started with full canteens, 

 of course, but though a gallon and a half may seem 

 a good deal of liquid for one person for a day, any 

 one who has travelled the desert in summer knows 

 how quickly that quantity will be used. In this 

 parching land to be without water for a very few 

 hours means disaster. Hence, a mistake of direction, 

 requiring retracing of steps or leading one into coun- 

 try through which it is difficult to find one's way, is 

 a.thing to be dreaded (and, I may add, is dreaded 

 all the more as one gains in desert experience). It 

 was the thirtieth of July, and the summer heat at 

 its climax, reaching most days 115° to 120°, shade 

 temperature. 



I stopped Kaweah and glanced back at the Salton 

 Sea, which I was now leaving for a time. It is at 

 best a rather cheerless object, beautiful in a pale, 

 placid way, but the beauty is like that of the mirage, 

 the placidity that of stagnation and death. Charm 

 of color it has, but none of sentiment ; mystery, but 

 not romance. Loneliness has its own attraction, and 

 it is a deep one; but this is not so much loneliness as 

 abandonment, not a solitude sacred but a solitude 

 shunned. Even the gulls that drift and flicker over 

 it seem to have a spectral air, like bird-ghosts ban- 

 ished from the wholesome ocean. 



" E'en the weariest river 

 Winds somewhere safe to sea"; 



