58 



At noon we camped where the Hardy ran so close to the 

 granite hills that it left scarcely a beach between. Here the 

 water flowed in a maze of separate streams. Two of us took 

 a swim in one of the swift, muddy, side channels, while the 

 horses and asses crunched and slopped among the succulent 

 tules. Groups of wild ducks were floating down stream, and 

 a flock of white pelicans circled cloud-high over the marshes. 

 Two families of vermilion flycatchers evidently had head- 

 quarters close by, for the blazing males sat on the most con- 

 spicuous perches over the streams. Desert quail uttered their 

 melancholy yelps from the brush at the base of the mountain, 

 but they clung closely about the sheltering mesquite stalks. 



The afternoon's march was hot and hard. When we made 

 camp below Mount Mayor, of the Cocopah Range, men and 

 beasts were thoroughly tired, and the horses, mules, and burros 

 rolled on their backs in the dry mud of the flood-plain as soon 

 as their pack-saddles had been removed. 



The night was mild, whereas the two preceding had been 

 cold. After an early start, on April 1, our caravan journeyed 

 between the Hardy and the mountains for about four miles, 

 until we had rounded the southern end of the Cocopahs. Then 

 began a portion of the trip which will always be remembered 

 as an ordeal. We struck out over the flat, plantless flood- 

 plain of the Pattie Basin, a vast bar of alluvium, as level as a 

 table, that stretched from Hardy's Colorado to the Laguna 

 Salada, and from the Cocopahs to a chain of mountains called 

 the Pintos, twenty miles to the southward. In May, when 

 snows thaw in the Rocky Mountains, the Colorado overleaps 

 all bounds, and converts this desert into a great sea, an en- 

 largement of the Laguna Salada. The plain was now stark 



they chance to be noosed by the leather lariats of the Indians. On April 

 14, 1915, several miles northwest of the Cerro Prieto, I saw three wild 

 bay horses, which ran away from me like deer. Later in the same day I 

 encountered a pair of errant burros wandering along affectionately to- 

 gether. Almost at the same moment I happened to flush a jack-rabbit, 

 which accidently ran plump into one of these burros, and it would be hard 

 to decide which was the more startled. The burros stampeded as rapidly 

 as their limited powers of speed would permit, while the rabbit disappeared 

 in seven-league boots. 



