[Illustration]

Nature has carefully guarded Southern California. Ten thousand miles
of ocean roll between her western boundary and the nearest continent;
while eastward, her divinity is hedged by dreary deserts that forbid
approach. Although the arid plains of eastern Arizona are frequently
called deserts, it is not till the west-bound tourist has passed
Flagstaff that the word acquires a real and terrible significance.
Then, during almost an entire day he journeys through a region which,
while it fascinates, inspires him with dread. Occasionally a flock of
goats suggests the possibility of sustaining life here, but sometimes
for a distance of fifty miles he may see neither man nor beast. The
villages, if 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