Page:On the border with Crook - Bourke - 1892.djvu/170

 Crook much, they could never tell him anything twice, while as for reading signs on the trail there was none of them his superior.

At times we would march for miles through a country in which grew only the white-plumed yucca with trembling, serrated leaves; again, mescal would fill the hillsides so thickly that one could almost imagine that it had been planted purposely; or we passed along between masses of the dust-laden, ghostly sage-brush, or close to the foul-smelling joints of the "hediondilla." The floral wealth of Arizona astonished us the moment we had gained the higher elevations of the Mogollon and the other ranges. Arizona will hold a high place in any list that may be prepared in this connection; there are as many as twenty and thirty different varieties of very lovely flowers and blossoms to be plucked within a stone's-throw of one's saddle after reaching camp of an evening,—phloxes, marguerites, chrysanthemums, verbenas, golden-rod, sumach, columbines, delicate ferns, forget-me-nots, and many others for which my very limited knowledge of botany furnishes no name. The flowers of Arizona are delightful in color, but they yield no perfume, probably on account of the great dryness of the atmosphere.

As for grasses one has only to say what kind he wants, and lo! it is at his feet—from the coarse sacaton which is deadly to animals except when it is very green and tender; the dainty mesquite, the bunch, and the white and black grama, succulent and nutritious. But I am speaking of the situations where we would make camp, because, as already stated, there are miles and miles of land purely desert, and clothed only with thorny cacti and others of that ilk. I must say, too, that the wild grasses of Arizona always seemed to me to have but slight root in the soil, and my observation is that the presence of herds of cattle soon tears them up and leaves the land bare.

If the marching over the deserts had its unpleasant features, certainly the compensation offered by the camping places in the cañons, by limpid streams of rippling water, close to the grateful foliage of cottonwood, sycamore, ash, or walnut; or, in the mountains, the pine and juniper, and sheltered from the sun by walls of solid granite, porphyry or basalt, was a most delightful antithesis, and one well worthy of the sacrifices undergone to attain it. Strong pickets were invariably posted, as no risks could be run in that region; we were fortunate to have just enough evi