FIGTREE JOHN TO BOREGO SPRINGS 201 



I wished I could make an incision In his hide and 

 pump him full, willy-nilly. 



I determined to-day to make a particular effort 

 to keep the "road." The start was plain enough, for 

 there was only one outlet to the canon that could 

 lead in my direction. It was a long ravine similar to 

 that by which we had come, winding among strange 

 shapes of clay, the dome being the most common. 

 Red and yellow were the prevailing colors, with 

 mud-hued grays and drabs for background. Ocotil- 

 los, always interesting in their weird way, had come 

 in as I entered this clay country, but they looked 

 starved and haggard, the shrivelled flower heads a 

 rusty relic of their vivid spring. There was little 

 other brush to be seen, and all looked at the point 

 of death. 



This clay formation, wherever found on the desert, 

 is the last extreme of the barren, dreary, and danger- 

 ous. The vast network of gullies into which it be- 

 comes worn may easily become a death-trap for 

 the traveller. Sense of direction is quickly lost: in 

 the deep sand and gravel of the bottoms a trail is 

 almost as evanescent as if marked in water. I was 

 recently looking down again on this tract from the 

 mountain country to the west. The Indian who was 

 my companion pointed to the hazy yellowish patch, 

 twenty miles from where we stood, and said, " Chee- 

 chlicsh'-noo-ah, devil's house, we call that. Very 

 bad place. Man get in there no can get out never. 

 One time some of our people camp there. Night 

 time one get up and go for drink. He die, never come 

 back." A white man's chance of escape from this 



