TO AGUA CALIENTE 245 



An hour more of climbing took us to the divide. 

 Kaweah is never happy in this sort of country. He 

 reminds me of the ingenious excuse of the defeated 

 Syrians: "their gods were not gods of the mountains 

 but of the plain." It is always weary work with him 

 on rocky trails, and puts my temper on a strain. 

 So it was a discontented pair that plodded down 

 that interminable canon of sand and boulders, jok- 

 ingly termed a road. The afternoon was sultry, with 

 clouds to south and west portending storm, though 

 eastward over the desert the sun glared down as 

 fiercely as ever. 



The canon opened at last into a brushy expanse 

 called Mason Valley, from the name of some old 

 settler. Through a narrow gateway in the mountain 

 wall to the north, known formerly as the Puerta de 

 San Felipe, the old stage-road climbed up to the 

 San Felipe Valley, and thence to Warner's and the 

 coast. The first vehicles to pass through it were 

 the wagon-train of the "Mormon Battalion," under 

 Lieutenant- Colonel Cooke, in 1847, on their long 

 trek from Fort Leavenworth to San Diego. The colo- 

 nel has given a vivid picture of the difficulties they 

 met at this point, where a way had to be hewed with 

 axes through the rocky pass before the wagons could 

 proceed.^ 



A naturalist friend who makes Mason Valley his 

 occasional home had made me welcome to the use 

 of his cabin and, much more important, his hay- 

 stack. About dusk we arrived at the place, but 



^ The Conquest of New Mexico and California, by P. St. George 

 Cooke: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1878. 



