310 CALIFORNIA DESERT TRAILS 



I don't know why I did n't, unless because I am 

 English. Nor do I know why I should have thought 

 it strange for two Yuma Indians to be at a level of 

 sentiment that, as I was slightly ashamed to find, I 

 had not left behind. 



When the relentings, explanations, and reconcilia- 

 tions were done, and child, father, and grandfather 

 had been seen locked in embraces (with great "busi- 

 ness" by landlady and poodle), we lounged out and 

 drifted down the street to the ice-cream and billiard 

 parlor, where racial barriers fell again before a com- 

 mon passion for nickel ice-cream sodas. And so 

 home to our respective beds. 



That Goliath of the cacti, the saguaro, which is 

 such a notable feature of the Arizona deserts, exists 

 in small numbers at two or three points on the Cali- 

 fornia side of the river, a few being found about fif- 

 teen miles above Yuma. As a rarity in California 

 botany I thought it worth a side-trip to see and 

 photograph them. 



I took the road leading to the Laguna Dam, 

 which was built a few years ago to bring a tract of 

 land to the south of Yuma under cultivation. It was 

 an interesting region that I passed through, consid- 

 ering what Nature had meant it to be. On either 

 side of a willow-bordered road there stretched fields 

 of com and hay, and pastures stocked with horses 

 and cattle. It seems to be also a stronghold of the 

 turkey tribe, for large bands of gobblers and peepers 

 were wading about in the tall alfalfa, a head coming 

 to the surface here and there like a periscope. The 

 houses here were more like homes and less like 



