222 



THE DESERT 



Barrancas 

 a/nd eBca/rp- 

 Tnents. 



Under 

 the pines. 



Bushes, 

 fernSf and 

 mosses. 



der the lee of a vast escarpment. The wall is 

 perpendicular and yon have to circle it looking 

 for an exit higher up. For half an hour you 

 move across a talus of granite blocks, and then 

 through a break in the wall you clamber up to 

 the top of the escarpment. You are on a high 

 spur which leads up a pine-clad slope. You are 

 coming nearer your quest. 



The pines ! — at last the pines ! How gigan- 

 tic they seem, those trees standing so calm and 

 majestic in their mantles of dark green — ^how 

 gigantic to eyes grown used to the little palo 

 verde or the scrubby grease-wood ! All classes 

 of pines are here — sugar pines, bull pines, white 

 pines, yellow pines — not in dense numbers 

 standing close together as in the woods of Ore- 

 gon, but scattered here and there with open 

 aisles through which the sunshine falls in broad 

 bars. Many small bushes — berry bushes most 

 of them — are under the pines ; and with them 

 are grasses growing in tufts, flowers growing in 

 beds, and bear-clover growing in fields. Aimless 

 and apparently endless little streams wander 

 everywhere, and ferns and mosses go with them. 

 Bowlder streams they are, for the rounded bowl- 

 der is still in evidence — in the stream, on the 

 bank, and under the roots of the pine. 



