Climate and Health 73 



back with chilly rain and pelted liberally with 

 hail: while all the time the golden land stretched 

 away before us, smiling lazily in the sun. Suddenly, 

 a mile or two below Cabezon, we rode out into 

 glorious warmth. The rest was pure enjoyment. 

 We lunched in pleasant shade of a desert willow at 

 Whitewater Point and by early afternoon were at 

 Palm Springs receiving a good Scots welcome from 

 our old friend Doctor Murray. That night we 

 stretched out luxuriously under the flowering gre- 

 villeas of the Brooks House, bathed in moonbeams 

 and odor of orange-blossoms, lulled by the soft 

 clatter of palm-fronds and an occasional somnam- 

 bulistic outbreak from the night-herons roosting in 

 the cottonwoods near the spring. 



I have related this by way of illustration. It is 

 an incident which could be duplicated a score of 

 times any winter or spring. Day after day we resi- 

 dents and visitors of Our Araby may sit snugly in 

 the sun, watching, like a show, the gloomy or angry 

 moods of the Cloud King in his mountain fastnesses 

 over San Bernardino, San Jacinto, and Santa Rosa, 

 and rubbing our hands over the contrast. Night 

 after night we may lie out under a full hemisphere 

 of stars, breathing air which Professor Van Dyke 

 properly names "the finest air on the continent," 

 with no thought of rheumatic or neuralgic imps 

 lurking in fog or dew. Morning after morning we 

 may wake to see San Jacinto's flank of dusky red 

 turn suddenly to a mystery of rosy loveliness as the 

 sun flashes up over the eastern wall of the valley 



