toward liberty. Occasionally our route lay through enormous fields of
cactus and yucca trees, twelve feet in height, and, usually, so
hideous from their distorted shapes and prickly spikes, that I could
understand the proverb, "Even the Devil cannot eat a cactus."

[Illustration: LIFE ON THE DESERT.]

[Illustration: THE DESERT'S MOUNTAINS.]

[Illustration: DESERT VEGETATION.]

As the day wore on, and we were drawn from one scene of desolation to
another, I almost doubted, like Bunyan's Pilgrim, whether we should
ever reach the promised land alive; but, finally, through a last
upheaval of defiant hills which were, if possible, more desolate and
weird than any we had seen, we gained the boundary of California and
gazed upon the Colorado River. It is a stream whose history thrilled
me as I remembered how in its long and tortuous course of more than a
thousand miles to this point it had laboriously cut its way through
countless desert cañons, and I felt glad to see it here at last,
sweeping along in tranquil majesty as if aware that all its struggles
were now ended, and peace and victory had been secured.

It was sunset when our train, having crossed this river, ran along
its western bank to our first stopping-place in California,--the
Needles. Never shall I forget the impression made upon me as I looked
back toward the wilderness from which we had emerged. What! was that
it--that vision of transfiguration--that illumined Zion radiant with
splendor? Across the river, lighted by the evening's after-glow of
fire, rose a celestial city, with towers, spires, and battlements