such they can be called, are merely clusters of rude
huts dotting an area of rocky desolation. No trees are visible. No
grazing-ground relieves the dismal monochrome of sand. The mountains
stand forth dreary, gaunt, and naked. In one locality the train runs
through a series of gorges the sides of which are covered with
disintegrated rock, heaped up in infinite confusion, as if an awful
ague-fit had seized the hills, and shaken them until their ledges had
been broken into a million boulders. At another point, emerging from
a maze of mountains, the locomotive shoots into a plain, forty or
fifty miles square, and sentineled on every side by savage peaks.
Once, doubtless, an enormous lake was held encompassed by these
giants; but, taking advantage of some seismic agitation, it finally
slipped through their fingers to the sea, and now men travel over its
deserted bed. Sometimes these monsters seemed to be closing in upon
us, as if to thwart our exit and crush us in their stony arms; but
the resistless steed that bore us onward, though quivering and
panting with the effort, always contrived to find the narrow opening
toward liberty. Occasionally our route lay through enormous fields of
cactus and yucca trees, twelve feet in height, and, usually, so
hideous from their distorted shapes and prickly spikes, that I could
understand the proverb, "Even the Devil cannot eat a cactus."

[Illustration: LIFE ON THE DESERT.]

[Illustration: THE DESERT'S MOUNTAINS.]

[Illustration: DESERT VEGETATION.]

As the day wore on, and we were drawn from one scene of desolation to
another, I almost doubted, like Bunyan's Pilgrim, whether we should
ever reach the promised land alive; but, finally, through a last
upheaval of defiant hills which were, if possible, more desolate and
weird than any we had seen, we gained the boundary of California and
gazed upon the Colorado River. It is a stream whose history thrilled
me as I remembered how in its long and tortuous course of more than a
thousand miles to this point it had laboriously cut its way through
countless desert canons, and I felt glad to see it here at last,
sweeping along in tranquil majesty as if aware that all its struggles
were now ended, and peace and victory had been secured.

It was sunset when our train, having crossed this river, ran along
its western bank to our first stopping-place in California,--the
Needles. Never shall I forget the impression made upon me as I looked
back