71 



among the creosote bushes, Pancho and I towards the suffocat- 

 ing flood-plain of the Laguna Salada. We drove our pack- 

 animals hard, allowing the speed to slacken only where the 

 glistening alkaline crust broke through, and the horses' feet 

 sank above the hocks. It was perceptibly hotter than when 

 we had come on the southward journey, but we made good 

 time and reached the first watering place on the Hardy at noon. 



Looking back toward the beautiful though inhospitable wilder- 

 ness of our two weeks' sojourn, I again had the impression of a 

 tremendous grassy lawn, sloping gently from the rugged 

 Tinajas to the level of the flood-plain. Here and there over 

 this region we could see scores of dusty whirlwinds, each send- 

 ing its thin, pale column up like a church steeple. We had 

 become accustomed to meeting these whirlwinds during our 

 hunting. Sometimes they had seemed to stand in the same 

 place for minutes at a time; sometimes they rushed along at 

 great speed, shaking the bushes in their path, and carrying a 

 swirl of sand and dead leaves in their bases. 



While Pancho was preparing lunch, I enjoyed a cool swim 

 in a cove of Hardy's Colorado. We then packed again, 

 making a short noon, and rode along below the jagged moun- 

 tains. Quail, now all breeding, called from every copse. 

 Bevies of them ran before us, as did also an occasional jack- 

 rabbit and many brush cottontails (Sylvilagus auduhoni 

 arizonce). The latter had a peculiarly comical, half-grown 

 appearance. 



The Hardy was very much higher than it had been in March. 

 In places we had to make wide detours, while at every bend 

 the muddy river went rushing along at a rate of six or seven 

 miles an hour, with backward-flowing eddies near the banks. 

 During the afternoon we followed for a time an upper trail 

 over a small ridge, from where I could survey the whole 

 delta of the Colorado, clear to the mountains of Sonora many 

 a long mile to the eastward. The arrowweed, willows, and 

 reeds of the river-bottom were as green as the flooding 

 stream could make them. Along a sandy bank beyond the 

 river, I could see the turkey vultures standing in a row with 

 their broad wings spread to the sun, like Roman legionaries 



