FIGTREE JOHN TO BOREGO SPRINGS 195 



but for the Salton the appointed end is but a slow 

 sinking of its bitter, useless waters, a gradual baring of 

 slimy shores, until it comes once more, and probably 

 for the last time, to extinction in dead, hopeless desert. 



My outlook ahead and to the south was changed 

 now that I had turned the shoulder of Santa Rosa. 

 Before me to the west stretched one of the most for- 

 bidding tracts of the desert, grayer, more dreary 

 than the rest. The shrubs grew smaller and more 

 sparse; even the greasewood seemed ready to suc- 

 cumb. For mile on mile one sees no animal life either 

 of beast, reptile, or bird, hardly of insect. Once I 

 noted the track of a sidewinder, but this is a creature 

 that moves by night: desert-dweller though it is, 

 the desert sun is deadly to it. Far in front was the 

 line of the Peninsular Sierra that runs on southward 

 down the long length of Lower California. On the 

 left, across a glistening alkaline expanse, rose the 

 pale uncertain shapes of the Vallecitos and other 

 ranges, fading into the Cocopa country beyond the 

 Mexican border. Close at hand on the right was the 

 southern face of Santa Rosa. The shells that whit- 

 ened the ground told that I was still on the minus 

 side of zero in elevation. 



I looked carefully for tracks that might show I 

 was headed rightly for Seventeen Palms. At long 

 intervals I came on some faint wheel mark or doubt- 

 ful shape of horse-hoof, but they were disjointed 

 fragments, signifying little. Every rain storm brings 

 down fresh sheets of sand from the washes of the 

 mountain caiions, and every wind storm distributes 

 the sand afresh; so that whatever travel there may 



