TO SAN FELIPE CITY 257 



say that not a stick or leaf of herbage was there, 

 still less any animal life in that sterility of vermilion, 

 ochre, and gray. Life there is of both kinds, but so 

 scant that it is merely the scientific minimum, al- 

 most more theory than fact. 



Our eyes needed to be on the alert every moment 

 to get the benefit of the monuments. They were 

 sometimes a hundred yards, sometimes half a mile 

 apart, and such casual affairs that without a sort of 

 instinct one would not know them. However, with 

 one or two mistakes we worked our way through 

 and found ourselves in the main caiion. The name 

 of Split Mountain fairly describes its appearance. 

 The spectacular part of the defile begins some dis- 

 tance from the mouth, but already high walls shut 

 us in, and made a narrow corridor with level floor 

 of white sand in which a few bits of brush huddled 

 close to the cliffs for shelter from the blasting sun. 



Before getting far into the canon we came to the 

 place that gave our only chance of water. On a 

 boulder was dimly written in English and Spanish, 

 "Water 100 feet West. Dig": with an arrow mark- 

 ing the direction. Pacing off the distance we looked 

 for a likely spot and went to work. The first hole 

 giving no encouragement, we tried another, then a 

 third : but after half an hour of thirsty work we con- 

 cluded that it was hopeless, and ceased. Earlier in 

 the year we might have had success: now the water- 

 level had sunk out of reach. Traces of others' at- 

 tempts could be seen, and I hoped that none of them 

 stood for the last struggle of some fellow mortal. 



To us the failure meant pushing ahead at once 



