International Excursion in America. 
327 
sealed, and the coast-line—the main route from San Francisco to 
Southern California—was completely blocked for about two months 
while the tunnel was repaired. Eventually we arrived at Santa 
Barbara in the middle of the night and stopped there instead of at 
Los Angeles as had been intended. 
The morning of September 18th was spent at Santa Barbara, 
a beautiful place with lovely gardens full of sub-tropical flowers and 
humming birds. The old Spanish mission is absolutely a bit of 
Southern Europe transported to America, and very pleasant to the 
homesick European. The town is backed by chaparral-covered 
mountains, very Mediterranean in aspect. Los Angeles, the busy 
flourishing metropolis of southern California, was reached at night, 
and after dinner in the town, the night-train was taken to Mecca, 
where a stop was made to visit the Salton Sea. 
The Salton Sea. 
On the morning of September 19th we woke to find ourselves 
in desert, and that of a very arid type—with an average yearly 
rainfall of less than 3 inches and a maximum evaporation of 120 
inches. After breakfast we drove from Mecca several miles across 
the desert to the edge of the Salton Sea, a lake formed in the bottom 
of a salty “sink” by the accidental inflowing of water from the 
Colorado river. The whole of this basin is considerably below sea- 
level. The flat desert supports an open shrub-vegetation consisting 
chiefly of Prosopis spp., Lavvea tridentata , Parosela spp. and Cercid'mm 
(Parkinsonia) torreyanum. The lake itself has rapidly receded since 
the influx of water was stopped in 1907 and is still receding year by 
year owing to the high evaporation. The dead trees and shrubs are 
being exposed by the receding waters. On the emersed beaches 
plants rapidly spring up, and this vegetation gradually changes as 
the conditions become more arid. At first the beach-line is 
colonised by growths of Typlia latifolia, Scirptis americanus and Snlix 
nigra , the last-named growing to a considerable height. Distichlis 
spicata, Spirostachys (AUenrolfea) occidentalism and Atriplex spp. 
soon appear on the salty soil, and are eventually replaced by the 
typical desert-vegetation, Prosopis, Isocoma, etc. 1 
In the afternoon we visited a fine date orchard at Mecca, where 
the finest strains of date palm from all parts of North Africa are 
tried. The date industry of this region is growing rapidly. 
1 For a very full account of the colonisation of the emersed beach lines 
see D. T. MacDougal, “The Salton Sea,” Carnegie Institution of Washington, 
1914. See Review, Nkw Rhytologist, October, 1914, p. 280. 
