YUMA TO BLYTHE 325 



A long day's march was laid out for next day. I 

 bade good-bye early to the friendly hermit, and we 

 took our way again northward. At each approach 

 to the river, bands of waterfowl flew quacking and 

 clattering across the shining water. The track was 

 dim, and was cut away in places by the summer 

 flood, causing us many detours. The thickets be- 

 came more jungle-like and difficult, and often the 

 axe came into play. There were vistas in these wil- 

 low woodlands where one might have thought him- 

 self in a wintry forest, every twig and leaf being 

 coated with white wool from the seed vessels. Where 

 the sun lighted these glades the resemblance to 

 snow was exact, but the steamy heat and the mos- 

 quitoes forbade such delusion as to the time of 

 year. 



There was more of interest when the trail took to 

 the mesa. Then the mountains were in view, and, 

 forbidding as they were in their look of eternal 

 drought and their uniformity of hue, their shapes 

 were always stimulating. The mere geographical 

 feeling, so to speak, that is excited by mountains is a 

 luxury to any one fond of geography ; and these des- 

 ert ranges, with their look of geologic austerity, have 

 a quality that amounts to fascination — the fasci- 

 nation of repulsion or something near that, a morbid 

 and dangerous thing in general, but which some- 

 how I find invigorating in a chain of blighted, be- 

 witched mountains. One group of hills that I passed 

 is named the Barren Mountains, as if in contrast 

 with the other ranges hereabout, but it is hard to 

 imagine what the difference can be. 



