TO SAN FELIPE CITY 271 



I was surprised to find fragments of pottery 

 strewn about this hopeless region. In the canon I 

 saw none, but so far as I can learn there has never 

 been any water discovered there, not even the nat- 

 ural tanks that almost all the desert ranges afford. 

 It is hard to conjecture why Indians should ever 

 have chosen to live in this locality, the most forbid- 

 ding on the whole desert : one, moreover, that super- 

 stition prompts them to avoid. Perhaps the attrac- 

 tion was the fish they may have found here when 

 this was the margin of the ancient sea.^ 



The sun did not miss the good shot we offered as 

 we rode westward for hours, but at last he fired his 

 final round for the day and sank behind friendly San 

 Ysidro. I hung my hat on the saddle-horn, threw 

 open my shirt, and basked in relative coolness. By 

 nightfall we were back at our quarters. Our friends, 

 stripped to the waist, were waiting supper for us. 

 In the smoky lamplight the scene reminded me of a 

 ship's forecastle. Afterwards it was the extreme of 

 luxury to lie on a blanket and send up incense to the 

 starry bands marching overhead, while the eternal 

 talk went on of leads and lodes, veins and stringers, 

 placers and pockets, till sleep brought silence. 



1 Lee Arenas tells me of a tradition of his people (the Cahuillas) 

 that at one time all the fighting men of the tribe, numbering per- 

 haps five hundred, went on the war-path against one of the Colorado 

 River tribes, probably the Yumas. His story goes that the whole 

 party, with the exception of a score or so, perished somewhere in 

 these wastes. With such tales in mind, these potsherds scattered 

 about the desert — what tragedies may they not imply? This is the 

 only instance so far as I know of large bodies of Indians attempting 

 the crossing. 



