Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 20.djvu/399

Rh worst aspect, and I purpose trying to give others an account of its most interesting features.

The desert occupies almost the whole of the large county of San Diego. It is some one hundred and fifty miles long and fifty miles wide, and the Southern Pacific Railroad runs through the center of it. About sixty miles from Los Angeles, the railroad encounters a very heavy grade, one hundred to one hundred and ten feet to the mile, and it continues for twenty-two miles. At the summit, known as San Gorgonio Pass, begins the descent into the desert, and every mile brings you to a more desolate country. At Whitewater Station, twenty miles from the summit, the desert commences in earnest. First a few flowers enliven the scene. Large Œnotheras, three or four inches in diameter, grow on small stalks five or six inches high. Large plants of Abronia maritima, with clusters of brilliant purple flowers, spread over the ground. A little Gilia (G. Lemmoni), with white corolla and yellow center, adds its beauty to the scene; and the only shrub, Larrea Mexicana, or creosote-plant, with yellow flowers and sticky leaves and branches, reminds you of the forests you have left behind.

During the seven miles to the next station, known as Seven Palms, the vegetation gradually thins out. As we progress beyond, the flowers disappear, and cacti predominate, and farther on these are replaced by the stunted grease-wood. Finally, even this vanishes, and when Dos Palmas is reached we have come to a country where there is absolutely nothing in the shape of vegetation. Every one knows how a well-kept field looks when it has been plowed, and harrowed, and cultivated until not a stick, nor a stone, nor a weed shows itself aboveground. Well, in order to form a picture of this part of the Colorado Desert, imagine a field such as this extending for miles and miles, level as a floor, with no signs of life visible, and no indication of man's presence save the railroad-track and the telegraph-poles. Imagine the ground covered with an incrustation of alkali, which, when stepped on, breaks, and lets one sink ankle-deep into soil as soft and fine as powder. Picture to yourself a gale of wind blowing over the waste, the air filled with fine particles of sand, the sun obscured, and no objects visible one hundred feet away, and you will have formed a faint idea of the worst aspect of the desert.

But it is hard to imagine anything so fearful as the reality, and unless one can see the ground, and feel the sand, and experience a heat of 120° in the sun, one can have only a poor conception of the desert. Every one knows the efficacy of the sand-blast. In no place in the world can its effects be better seen than on this desert. The telegraph-poles are polished on one side as smooth as glass. The white paint on the sign-posts is worn off as clean as if scraped and rubbed with sand-paper. Many of the ties, and the timbers of small bridges and culverts along the railroad, look as if some industrious