TO IMPERIAL VALLEY 285 



I saw far ahead the buildings of the first of these, a 

 hamlet named Dixieland, and about midday we 

 arrived at a canal (or ditch, as they call it), the 

 farthest one in this direction of the great irrigation 

 system. 



It was instructive to notice how the desert held 

 out without palliation up to the very edge of the 

 canal. On the other side began, equally abruptly, 

 telephone poles, fields of cotton and alfalfa, pastures 

 with cattle, horses, and hogs, green, rustling cotton- 

 woods, and an unbroken succession of farms. 



Dixieland I found to consist of a brick store, a 

 small but ambitious-looking school, six or eight 

 little houses, and a bam. Behind this I camped in a 

 comer of the corral, but, for a change from my own 

 cookery, persuaded a weary woman who lived in 

 the bam to get me a meal. I regretted this when I 

 faced the discs of tepid paste tendered as biscuits, 

 and the bowl of yellow oil which passed for butter. 

 However, honey, watermelon, and the kindly heart 

 which overcame weariness and 122° Fahrenheit at 

 the request of a stranger, made amends for all short- 

 comings, even the tablecloth. 



I took my way next morning toward El Centro, 

 the central point, as the name proudly announces, 

 of the valley. A main crop of the locality is cotton, 

 and a general Southern and cottony air prevailed, 

 even to the colored brothers plying the hoe. Field 

 beyond field of the pretty plants stretched away 

 southward to the border, varied with blocks of milo- 

 maize or squares of vivid alfalfa. Herds of cattle and 

 bands of glossy horses were in evidence, and every- 



