332 CALIFORNIA DESERT TRAILS 



area. I tried tobacco, but this they seemed to find an 

 interesting novelty. When I put Kaweah to a gallop 

 I only got more bites in less time and barked my 

 shins against the close-growing trees. The mosqui- 

 toes here were of the large mottled kind that leave 

 a mark like an old-fashioned legal wafer. 



A cable ferry plies at this point, which in the early 

 days of the West was a main crossing place for Cal- 

 ifornia travel. In answer to my hail a grizzled old 

 fellow came out of a cabin on the farther side, and 

 in the leisurely manner of ferrymen the world over, 

 brought his boat across. This was a new experience 

 for Kaweah, and I expected him to balk when I rode 

 him on board; but the Egyptians were behind, and 

 the river, he knew, was our Red Sea of safety. When 

 I asked the ferryman how he endured the mosqui- 

 toes, "Why," he replied, "there's no more blood in 

 me, you see. They got the last out of me about nine- 

 teen ten, so they've quit coming around." 



I found a road following the stream, and turned 

 northward over a clay mesa bearing the usual assort- 

 ment of plants but with a few saguaros added to give 

 the characteristic of Arizona. A mile or two along I 

 found a house of the familiar stick-in-the-mud type, 

 where a young rancher had taken up an abandoned 

 piece of bottom-land. He was no exception to the 

 rule of friendliness, and indeed urged me to stop 

 with him more or less indefinitely. The house had 

 been built by Mojave Indians, whose tribal territory 

 begins hereabout, and it still bore marks of their re- 

 gime such as ollas and metates, and on the walls 

 crude drawings of trains, city buildings, and so 



