346 CALIFORNIA DESERT TRAILS 



at all, and failure meant a bad, perhaps serious, fall 

 for the horse. I clambered a little way up, gave him 

 plenty of rope, and then shouted to him, at the same 

 time scrambling ahead. The good little fellow came 

 up with a run as if hand over hand, sending an ava- 

 lanche of stuff to the bottom, I kept cheering and 

 hauling him on, and in a few moments we were on the 

 top. There, almost at the edge, was a well-marked 

 track, heading for the cafion. (I take it to be a cross- 

 cut between Com Springs and Gruendike's Well.) 

 I now had leisure for the scenic features of my 

 surroundings, which indeed were sufficiently weird. 

 To the right was a mesa of the curious mosaic-like 

 character that I have described elsewhere: to the 

 left was the deep barranca on the brink of which ran 

 the track. The moon shone clearly down on the 

 gleaming black floor, which might have been the 

 pavement of some ruined city of antiquity. At in- 

 tervals stood great ocotillos whose gaunt arms 

 waved aloft in sinister contortions, while here and 

 there a dead one lay bleached to the hue of bone. 

 Looking down into the ravine I could make out dark 

 forms of palo verde and ironwood, or gray smoke- 

 trees, like ghosts, outlined on the pallid sand of the 

 bottom. The only sound was that of Kaweah's hoofs 

 hoarsely rattling the gravel of the track. Close 

 ahead rose the black wall of the Chuckwallas, with 

 here and there some bolt of rock taking questionable 

 shape under the eerie touches of the moon. The 

 total impression was freakish and unearthly: it was 



"A place nor uninformed with phantasy 

 And looks that threaten the profane." 



