Page:Mexico, California and Arizona - 1900.djvu/489



IF there be anything politically disrupting in mere topography, the section cut off by the range below the Los Angeles and Riverside country should also be made a separate State. It should clamor at any rate to be joined to Arizona, since it is Arizona that it follows in climate, and not California. South-east of the low San Gorgonio Pass the seasons are the same as those of Mexico; that is to say, the rains fall in summer, while northward they fall in the winter and spring. Thunder-storms on each side of the mountains may be plainly visible from the other, but do not pass the limit. I myself saw, from the Arizona side, in December, in hot, clear sunshine at the time, murky clouds billowing above the range, and the lightnings playing in them, and, on returning to Los Angeles, found it drenched in its first showers of the season.

There is one excellent reason why the inhabitants of the section do not raise such a clamor, which is, that there are no inhabitants worth mentioning. For a hundred and fifty miles, from the pass, to the Arizona frontier at Yuma, the railroad hardly knows any local traffic. Its route is over the celebrated "Colorado Desert," in comparison with which previous deserts are of small importance. There are various stopping-places, with designa-