202 CALIFORNIA DESERT TRAILS 



"devil's house" might be, say, one twentieth of an 

 Indian's under equal circumstances. It is just as 

 well, perhaps, that there are few attractions to draw 

 travellers to Chee-chlicsh'-noo-ah. 



Reaching more open country we entered on a 

 tract littered with curiously shaped objects of stone. 

 Dumb-bells were a common form, and accurately 

 circular plates and rings, balls, symmetrical ovoids, 

 and many more — among them grotesque figures of 

 men, quite as realistic as some pagan idols that one 

 sees in museums. The region is well above sea-level, 

 but probably water was the chief factor in shaping 

 these oddities, perhaps at the time when the oyster- 

 shell beds were laid down which are now a thousand 

 feet up on the adjacent mountain- side. Paralleling 

 our course a mile or two to the north ran a level 

 bluff of clay, colored in pale tints of rose, lavender, 

 green, and ochre, its face marked with vertical scor- 

 ings as neatly drawn as if they had been engraved 

 by a machine. 



It was the last day of July, and seemed to me even 

 hotter than the day before. Again I measured my 

 water in half-hourly gulps. I found my thoughts 

 turning constantly on water, as Arctic explorers' 

 dwell on beef-steaks. Ride for an hour and lead for 

 an hour was the programme. I had kept the trail 

 pretty well, missing it often in crossing wide washes 

 where the gravelly soil held no mark of travel, but 

 picking it up again in softer places. To keep it at all, 

 one's eyes must be "peeled " every moment. For long 

 distances the only indication was the powdery dead 

 leaves of the brush, which collect in the faint depres- 



