ee See eee, 
1881. | Botanizing on the Colorado Desert. 27 
palm.of his hand and gave it a slight toss in the air, thus testing 
to his own satisfaction its weight and genuineness. Each one of 
the speechless company went through the same performance, and 
then. the ring was handed back to me by the one who had first 
received it, greatly to the quieting of my nerves. And now my 
botanist’s portfolio had to be examined. It was well filled with 
flowers, and boughs and twigs of desert bushes, with which my 
interviewers were familiar. They all gathered close about me to 
admire my herbs, and then entered into conversation among 
themselves, discussing, I dare say, the question of my object in 
gathering up these things. They gave me their names for cer-. 
tain of the plants and then inquired what I called them. Presently 
he who seemed the chief man among them expressed to me his opin- 
ion that I was a “ medico,” and I felt that I was safe. Composedly I 
now surveyed the persons of these representatives of a tribe that was 
_newto me. In appearance they were the least repulsive of all the In- 
dians I had ever seen. Every one of the party must have measured 
at least six feet in height; and clad only in their breech clothes, 
each displayed a development of form and figure well nigh fault- 
less. Their faces, too, really bore an expression of mildness and 
good humor not commonly. noticeable in aboriginal Americans. 
In short, I beheld for the first time a group of rather handsome 
Indians. What their business: may have been here in the midst 
of the desert, so far from their homes on the ‘fertile banks of the’ 
Colorado, I cannot guess. 
To-day the distance from station to station was thirty-two miles. 
Happily for the pedestrian there is a well mid-way between the 
stations. This place of refreshing was arrived at within a half 
hour after I had concluded my visit at the encampment of Yumas. 
It is called New River Well; not because there is any river there 
or ever was. There is, however, a broad and shallow channel 
where once, since white men began to traverse the region, there 
flowed for a few hours a broad and turbid stream. Though the 
flood was transient, and no one could tell whence it came, the fact 
sufficed to give the place the name of New River. A deep well 
has been sunk at this point by the stage company. The water, 
though clear and cold, has such a sweet, nauseating and rather 
metallic taste that no one drinks of it unless impelled by most 
inordinate thirst ; however, it does not seem to be at all unwhole- 
some. There is no describing the almost maddening thirst which 
