THE COLORADO DESERT 351 



soil. As the water slowly retires and leaves a miirgin of damp soil, 

 the Indian breaks small holes with a heavy pointed stick, at intervals 

 of a few feet, and in these deposits a few seeds. The moisture and 

 excessive heat combine to ]iroduce a rapidity of Ln'owth that is aston- 

 ishing:. It is the veritable beffinnint;- of n^-ri culture, and one may 

 learn here how such cultivation arose in the valleys of the Nile and 

 the Ox'us. Two hundred and sixty j'ears ago, when these Indians 

 were first seen by whites, they were planting and harvesting precisely 

 as they do today. 



The great meadow's of the overflow are utilized in summer and 

 fall by American cattlemen. Thousands of head of stock are driven 

 in as soon as the inundation comes. Below the line and along the 

 Cocopah Valley I saw^ a magnificent herd of 1,600. the ]>ropert\' of 

 San Diego cattlemen, which had been thriving and increasing in that 

 region for several years. 



The care of cattle on the desert gives rise to an occu])ation as nrdu- 

 ous and hazardous as exists among human em])loyments. Cattle- 

 punching anyw^here in the West is not an easy life ; here on the desert 

 of the Colorado its trials and dangers are multiidied. Feed and water 

 become scant in late winter and spring before the overflow arrives; 

 deathly want and scarcity settle down over all the country ; the starv- 

 ing cattle grow restless under the grievous want; then comes the 

 overflow, and hundreds of square miles of desert clay become the 

 stickiest surface on the face of the earth. The cattle, miserably re- 

 duced and weak, are unable to pull themselves <uit of the mud in 

 which they sink continually in their efforts to reach food and Avater. 

 One cannot appreciate what it is to have stock " bogging down " until 

 one has seen them sinking by scores in tiie bottondess clay of this 

 inundated country. From daylight to dark the cowboy must be in 

 the saddle pulling these founderetl cattle out with rintti and jxmy. 

 For weeks his skin is hardly dry and his person never free from the 

 thick incrustations of Huviatile mud. Diffl(!ultics lessen as the cattle 

 become nourished and grow stronger, but throughout tiic sunnner 

 there must l)e constant watch fuln(!ss. 'i'hcs*' young fellows live on a 

 diet of coffee, baking-powder bread, and jfrkccl beef roasted in the 

 flames. At night they lie down on the ground and seek shu'p in the 

 cover of a smudge of cow dung as prottnttion against mosipiitoes. 

 The few rude utensils and the stock of grub art^ jiacked in eowhiih' 

 rtZ/br/Vi."* on the backs ol' hurras, and the c.imi) is located under the 

 shade of mesquite bushes in some <lry spot along a slough, close l)y 

 the restless herds of cattle. 



