1880. ] Botanizing on the Colorado Desert. 789 
down through an iron pipe from a small spring that rises among 
rocks which almost overhang the house hundreds of feet above; 
and by the way, the sound of running water is never so musical as 
when one has traveled six hours in torrid heat without having 
tasted a drop. Music also of insects was here, evidently some 
sort of bees which, even in the late twilight, were humming amid 
the rosy, dower lade boughs of the desert almond. This hand- 
_ Some bush (Prunus andersonii Gray). when in flower, resembling 
a small peach tree, contrasts very prettily with its associates, the 
cacti and agaves which thrust forth their clumsy, graceless forms 
from every niche and crevice of this grand mass of rock which 
walls in the desert on the west. While most trees and bushes of 
that genus require good soil and a fair supply of moisture, this 
Species appears to thrive, like the spiny cacti, on nothing more 
substantial than the sunburnt rocks and the desert air. 
The condition in which I found the solitary tenant of this 
isolated hostelry illustrates one of many dangers to which the 
lone keepers of these desert stations are exposed. He was bend- 
ing over a basin of water bathing his head and face, which parts, 
as I could see by what remained of daylight, were bleeding freely. 
He seemed in too much pain to notice the near approach of the 
Stranger, at whose unexpected presence the man’s sole household 
companion, a fierce bull-dog, tugged away at the end of the chain 
in a rage which I should not have smiled at had the chain been a 
light one. Presently, however, the man tied a bandage about his 
head, unbent himself, turned toward the door where I was stand- 
ing, and I inquired what had befallen him. He replied that he 
had, a few moments previous to my coming, gathered himself up 
from the stable floor where he had been lying unconscious he 
hardly knew how long, having been kicked by a vicious stage 
horse left in his keeping. Luckily for him and somewhat so for 
me, tired and hungry as I was, the wound was not serious. He 
was an intelligent youth, intelligent enough to comprehend my 
reason for undertaking a walk across the desert. Under his 
cabin roof I fared well, and on the hardest of beds enjoyed such 
sound, refreshing sleep as is given to tired but happy travelers. 
From this hostelry among the cliffs, a few minutes’ morning 
= walk brought me to where the mountain flanks are parted by a — a 
deep gorge indicating where, in times long past, a river made its © 
way from the highlands down to the sea which then occupied the 
