206 



THE DESERT 



Ba/re 

 mountains. 



The 



southern 



exposures. 



the grasses and flowers show everywhere. Some- 

 times the foot-hills are covered with a dense 

 chaparral made up of many low trees and 

 bushes ; but this growth is more peculiar to, 

 the Californian hills west of the Coast Eange 

 than to Arizona. Many of the ranges in the 

 Canyon country are almost as bare of vegeta- 

 tion as an ancient lake-bed. And sometimes 

 altitude seems to have little to do with the 

 kinds of growths. Cacti and the salt-bush 

 flourish at six thousand feet as readily as down 

 in the Salton Basin three hundred feet below 

 sea-level. The most dangerous and difficult 

 thing to set up about anything in this desert 

 world is the general law or common rule. The 

 exception — the thing that is perhaps uncom- 

 mon — comes up at every turn to your un- 

 doing. 



Even the mountains of Arizona that have an 

 elevation of from five to eight thousand feet 

 are often quite bare of timber. The sahuaro, 

 the nopal, the palo verde may grow to their 

 very peaks and still make only a scanty cover- 

 ing. Seen from a distance the southern ex- 

 posure of the mounta,in looks perfectly bare ; 

 but if you travel around it to the nortK side 

 where the sunlight does not fall except for a 



