350 CALIFORNIA DESERT TRAILS 



violation of its solitude with instant menace of 

 poison. 



I sometimes wonder what kind of interpretation 

 music might give of these landscapes. No doubt 

 something unique might be achieved by the mod- 

 ernists, some crude depiction of the obvious and sen- 

 sational: but what I mean is, the impression that 

 the desert would make on the mind of a master. 

 What the expression would be we are not likely to 

 know; for music seems to have lost self-control, and 

 cannot wait to comprehend its theme before it is 

 ready with some noisy but futile demonstration. 



After awhile my fading hope that we were on the 

 right track was strengthened by coming on marks of 

 another old mine. There was a puddle of water at the 

 bottom of a prospect hole, but it was foul with de- 

 caying rats and lizards, and quite unusable. We 

 made our slow way down the gradually widening 

 cafion, now and then on a sort of phantom trail but 

 usually picking a trackless way by guesswork and 

 probabilities. It was the most worrying job of its 

 kind that I met on the whole journey, and the water 

 problem kept nudging at me like a pestering fiend. 



Noon came, and we should be nearing the Red 

 Cloud Mine. There we should find water, and prob- 

 ably a caretaker, though the mine was not being 

 worked. The canon had opened into a delta of inter- 

 lacing gullies, all rocky, choked with boulders, and 

 crossed at short intervals by abrupt, slippery ledges 

 which bothered Kaweah considerably. My fear was 

 that we might come to some impassable place and 

 be obliged to turn back. I had noted the landmarks 



