SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA ACADEMY OF SCIENCES 65 
pily. The trail to Palm Canyon opens out from Van de. Venter 
Flat, and the wall which encloses “‘Big Canyon’’ all the way 
seems to have been thrown there by the hand of a Cyclops; per- 
haps Big Canyon is Palm Canyon. You might find out if you 
had the courage to drop into its head and follow it until you 
meet the first palm; follow it—at least—so long as you lived; 
what with the furnace blast of the desert and the cacti which 
beset the way, and the utter lack of water, and no shade save 
such as a prostrate Juniper bush can give. As you will have 
long since left the pines behind, you are quite content to tramp 
along without investigations either to right or to left, other 
than those which are thrown in your way. 
The land is sentineled by yuceas and century plants ten to 
twenty feet tall, and white as tapers in November against the 
over-burnt hills, while Spanish bayonets are challenging on 
every hand; endless ‘‘washes’’ line the way where you 
walk, and you hail the ‘‘desert willow’’ or clump of 
dry cottonwoods as a remarkable propitiation of the fates; 
indeed, you come to think no green thing ean thrive in such a 
land and that all must partake necessarily of the grayness of 
the sage brush or of the color of the sun, or of the voleanic 
tints of the over-burnt hills. But the next moment transfixed 
you stand, for just below in a tangled arroyo are the uplifted 
plumes of a forest which ‘“‘stand dressed in living green;”’’ 
while a thousand feet below and beyond the white sands of the 
deserts are drifted lke the snows on San Jacinto’s head in 
winter, and you tramp down as in a dream to drink of the 
water and to lave your burning head. 
The palms, over one hundred feet high, thrive in these 
arroyos, where columnar cacti as large as a man’s waist, live 
on the dry cliff edges. 
Although it seems a desecration to use a palm as a back-log, 
the great trunks one to two feet in diameter make an excellent 
bed of coals in the campfire all night. 
The stream of water in which the palms grow is strongly 
alkaline and is always running even in dry years. There is 
also a warm spring in this region. 
Young palms are as thick as grass under your feet and in 
all stages of growth. There are so many trees and the failen 
leaves occupy so large a space that it is really a difficult task 
to tramp through these places; you cannot. decide whether to 
turn to left or right, as trees twenty-five to thirty feet tall 
are burdened with their -down-hangine leaves, which 
droop to the ground and make of them mammoth screens. 
Whichever way you go, you are sure to encounter the hooked- 
spine, leaf-blade of the palm, and stepping high to lunge over 
