TO IMPERIAL VALLEY 275 



gulsed the fact till the hoof was worn to the quick. 

 It was a cruel necessity to keep the poor beast 

 moving, but there was no alternative. This raised a 

 question: whether to keep to the easier but longer 

 route, or to strike over the shoulder of Coyote 

 Mountain, which would save ten miles, but would 

 bring us into rougher territory. I asked Wellson if he 

 felt sure of finding his water-hole in case we took the 

 shorter way, and as he had no doubts we chose it. 



In the midst of the wide sandy channel of Carrizo 

 Creek we crossed a faint track which marked the 

 road to Warner's. To us it was of no value, for our 

 way lay directly south. In winter, water might have 

 been found here, the stream that gladdened Colonel 

 Cooke in mid-January of 1847, when he arrived here 

 after the perilous crossing of the desert with his 

 ragged "Mormon Battalion." In three days and 

 two nights they had covered the fifty-six miles from 

 Alamo Mocho, without water for their animals, 

 which were half starved, at that. Had it been sum- 

 mer a wholesale tragedy might easily have occurred. 



Over a region of mesas of baked clay broken by 

 gullies that forced us into tedious detours, we slowly 

 made our way. If the gaunt and desolate has a degree 

 of perfection, here surely it is reached. I do not see 

 how Sahara, Gobi, or Arabia could improve on this 

 for rigid nakedness and sterility. One here sees 

 Mother Earth scalped, flayed, and stripped to the 

 skeleton. Yet there is a strange beauty in it all. 

 Perhaps the dormant savage in the breast, some 

 strain of the paleozoic, wakes up in the presence of 

 these chaotic, barbaric shapes. I felt a sort of excite- 



