306 CALIFORNIA DESERT TRAILS 



pecially took my fancy. He wore a close-fitting lilac 

 tunic of knitted silk, closed at the throat with a scar- 

 let ribbon; his hair hung in straight ropes to his 

 waist and was tied with a cord of bright green; for 

 sash he had an orange silk bandanna. Crude as this 

 may sound, his lithe figure, open look, and general 

 air of efficiency carried it off and made a really fine 

 effect. 



The women did not evoke my enthusiasm, though 

 they did my attention. They are much inferior to 

 the men in physique, though perhaps up to the 

 average of our Western Indian women. Their fea- 

 tures have none of the clean-cut look seen in the 

 men, and as for dress, gaudy is the only word. Over 

 the usual shapeless "wrapper," generally of blue- 

 and-white check, the women without exception wear 

 a square sheet of the strongest hues known to the 

 dry-goods world — purple, grass-green, flame-color, 

 scarlet, ultramarine, yellow. As a rule these have a 

 two or three inch border of some violent contrast, 

 such as purple on orange or green on blue. These 

 startling draperies are fastened at the neck and left 

 flowing to the breeze. The head is usually encircled 

 with a banda of red, and the straight hair, which 

 is seldom so long as that of the men, hangs in a 

 shock on the shoulders. A group of Yuma women in 

 a lively wind would give a futurist some valuable 

 ideas. 



A visit to the court-house revealed a rather de- 

 pressing state of things: a fair exterior, but, within, 

 a pervading carelessness and a general air of spit- 

 toons. However, I was repaid by two views that 



