YUMA TO BLYTHE 333 



forth. Probably some much-travelled Mojave buck 

 had been illustrating to his household circle the 

 wondrous things he had seen on a visit to Needles, 

 perchance even to Phoenix, the State capital. 



A few other houses of the same kind were passed, 

 but all were deserted. In the rear of one, which ap- 

 peared to have been a store, there were the remains 

 of an arrastra, the primitive contrivance for grind- 

 ing ore by crushing it with rocks in a circular pit by 

 means of a capstan operated by horse, burro, or 

 ox power. One is constantly meeting these remind- 

 ers of "the days of old, the days of gold," in all sorts 

 of unlikely comers about the desert, and comes to 

 have the feeling of being in a region of the dead. 



The young rancher had warned me that La Paz 

 was not now much of a place, but had told me 

 how to find it. Five miles farther on I glimpsed his 

 landmark, a cone-shaped cement monument visible 

 from the road on the right. On making my way to it 

 I understood the point of his remark that I must be 

 careful or I might miss the place. The monument, he 

 told me, stood at the head of the principal street. I 

 gazed all around. I was in a waste of mesquit scrub 

 and arrowweed : perhaps the houses were hidden by 

 the brush. I searched for houses, then for any token 

 showing where houses had stood. There was nothing, 

 not so much as a scrap of foundation, or adobe wall, 

 or of lumber, or even debris. Apart from the monu- 

 ment and a few mud bricks close thereby not a sign 

 remained of the city of La Paz, which forty or fifty 

 years ago was a place of five thousand or more peo- 

 ple, the county seat, and hopeful of becoming the 



