CHAPTER XIX 



A DESERT RIDE: YUMA TO BLYTHE 



Autumn in the air — Northward now — Indian houses — Picacho 

 Peak — A tinaja — Sunset splendor — The back of the Chocolates 



— Picacho Mine — Rock colors — Mineral country — Mexican 

 hospitality — The Colorado River: its monotony: whirlpools: 

 river of many names — Hoag's Landing — A taciturn hermit — 

 A friendlier one — Frontier life — Riverside jungles — The fas- 

 cination of repulsion — Mexicans preferred — Summer floods — 

 Palo Verde — Infant prodigies — Water required — A boom 

 "town" — Great expectations — "Home, Sweet Home" — 

 Blythe : good points and bad — No Mexicans need apply — Pumped 

 dry by mosquitoes — A bit of Arizona — Mojave Indians — 

 Puzzle: find La Paz — Buried treasure — Country of the dead 



— Ehrenberg: population, i — The days of old — The missing citi- 

 zens — Evening on the Rio Colorado. 



IT was with a light-hearted feeling that I left 

 Yuma. For one thing, cooler weather was at 

 hand. People had told me that the middle of Sep- 

 tember would bring a break in the heat, and this was 

 the 8th of the month. (The previous night, for the 

 first time for months except when at Warner's in 

 the mountains, I had found it comfortable to sleep 

 under a thin blanket) . For another, in leaving Yuma 

 I was turning northward and in a general way home- 

 ward. Three months of travel in this desert country, 

 nearly all of it alone, and with everlasting anxieties 

 of water and forage, had brought a feeling that 

 sometimes bordered on disgust. 



Whether it was these considerations or some real 

 difference in the air, somehow I felt as if autumn had 

 come. I tried in vain to get at the source of the feel- 

 ing. It might have been a bird sitting meditatively 



