far that life and death are not before you. Painted lizards slip in
and out of rock crevices, and pant on the white-hot sands. Birds,
humming-birds even, nest in the cactus scrub; woodpeckers befriend the
demoniac yuccas; out of the stark, treeless waste rings the music of
the night-singing mocking bird. If it be summer and the sun well down,
there will be a burrowing owl to call. Strange, furry, tricksey things
dart across the open places, or sit motionless in the conning towers
of the creosote.

MARY AUSTIN,
in _The Land of Little Rain._



JUNE 13.


EL CAMINO REAL.

_El Camino Real_--"The Royal Road," is the poetic name given to
the original government road of Spanish California that joined the
missions from San Diego to San Francisco de Solano. The route selected
by the Franciscan Fathers was the most direct road that was
practicable, connecting their four Presidios, three Pueblos and
twenty-one Missions. By restoring this road and making it a State
Highway with the twenty-one missions as stations, California will
come to possess the most historic, picturesque, romantic and unique
boulevard in the world.

MRS. A.S.C. FORBES,