26 Our Araby 



indeed has fairly claimed it for its own; but the 

 glory of horseback is the cross-country feature, and 

 here you have it unalloyed. The free fenceless 

 desert stretches before you to the horizon, and 

 wherever you guide your horse, something new, 

 strange, or wonderful calls constantly for notice — 

 new plants and animals, new colors, new shapes, 

 (perhaps also new thoughts.) Thus, there are few 

 Palm Springs mornings that you will not see some 

 gay party cantering off on the wise Indian ponies 

 bound for Palm Caiion, or Andreas, or the dunes; 

 or, maybe, starting more leisurely with saddle-bags 

 and blanket-rolls on the longer trip down to the 

 Salton Sea, or into the Morongos, or up the Vande- 

 venter trail to Pinon Flat, or by the Gordon trail 

 to Idyllwild in the pines. 



To those who are wedded to their ease and their 

 autos plenty of inviting resources are open. Good 

 or practicable roads have been built to several of 

 the near-by carions — notably to Palm Caiion, the 

 favorite — and the main stage-road across the desert 

 runs through Palm Springs, by which you may go 

 down the valley as far as you like — or on to New 

 York, for that matter. All the valley towns are on 

 that road — Indio, Coachella, Thermal, Mecca — and 

 from it one has access to all other roads and may 

 explore whither and what he will — date-gardens, 

 fig-groves, the haunts of the earliest grapes, melons, 

 and asparagus: or may run down beside the Salton 

 Sea to Imperial Valley, the land of cotton, and "the 



