OUR ARABY 



I. PALM SPRINGS: ITS SITUATION 

 AND SURROUNDINGS 



M 



OUNT SAN JACINTO stands isolated and 

 conspicuous, like another Shasta, at the 

 southern end of the great Sierra which 

 forms the backbone of California. To south and 

 west the great mountain faces a land diversified 

 with hill and valley, farm and cattle-range, stretch- 

 ing to the Mexican line and the Pacific: to north 

 and east it looks steeply down upon a strange sun- 

 blanched land, the pale, mysterious desert. From 

 its topmost crags, garnished with storm-wrenched 

 pines, to the gray levels where palm-fronds quiver 

 under torrid blasts of sun there is a fall of over two 

 miles of altitude within an air-line distance but 

 three miles greater; from which it may be gathered 

 (as is indeed the fact) that this desert face of San 

 Jacinto offers to the view a mountain wall unparal- 

 leled for its conjunction of height and verticality 

 — in effect, a vast precipice of ten thousand feet. 



Right at the mountain's eastern foot, where the 

 red rock-slabs rise sharply from the grav desert 

 floor, lies the village of Palm Springs. Geographi- 

 cally it is a village unique. One might well call it 

 the child of the mountain, for it lives in the moun- 



