The desert

by John C. Van Dyke

Footnotes

[6] I am indebted to Professor Forbes of the University of Arizona for this and several other statements in connection with desert vegetation.

[7] It is said to be very scarce but I have found it growing along the Castle Creek region of Arizona, also at Kingman, Peach Springs, and further north. A stunted variety grows on the Mojave but it is not frequently seen on the Colorado.

CHAPTER IX
DESERT ANIMALS

Meeting desert requirements.

The life of the desert lives only by virtue of adapting itself to the conditions of the desert. Nature does not bend the elements to favor the plants and the animals; she makes the plants and the animals do the bending. The torote and the evening primrose must get used to heat, drouth, and a rocky bed; the coyote must learn to go without food and water for long periods. Even man, whose magnificent complacency leads him to think himself one of Nature’s favorites, fares no better than a wild cat or an angle of cholla. He must endure the same heat, thirst, and hunger or perish. There is no other alternative.

The peculiar desert character.

Desert Indians.

And so it happens that those things that can live in the desert become stamped after a time with a peculiar desert character. The struggle seems to develop in them special characteristics and make them, not different from their kind; but more positive, more insistent. The yucca of the Mojave is the yucca of New Mexico and Old Mexico but hardier; the wild cat of the Colorado is the wild cat of Virginia but swifter, more ferocious; the Yuma Indian is like the Zuni or the Navajo but lanker, more sinewy, more enduring. Father Garces, who passed through here one hundred and twenty-five years ago, records in his Memoirs more than once the wonderful endurance of the desert Indians. “The Jamajabs (a branch of the Yumas) endure hunger and thirst for four days,” he writes in one place. The tale is told that the Indians in the Coahuila Valley at the present day can do substantially the same thing. And, too, it is said that the Yumas have traveled from the Colorado to the Pacific, across the desert on foot, without any sustenance whatever. No one, not to the desert born, could do such a thing. Years of training in starvation, thirst and exposure have produced a man almost as hardy as the cactus, and just as distinctly a type of the desert as the coyote.

The animals.

Life without water.

But the Indian and the plant must have some water. They cannot go without it indefinitely. And just there the desert animals seem to fit their environment a little snugger than either plant or human. For, strange as it may appear, many of them get no water at all. There are sections of the desert, fifty or more miles square, where there is not a trace of water in river, creek, arroyo or pocket, where there is never a drop of dew falling; and where the two or three showers of rain each year sink into the sand and are lost in half an hour after they have fallen. Yet that fifty-mile tract of sand and rock supports its animal, reptile and insect life just the same as a similar tract in Illinois or Florida. How the animals endure, how—even on the theory of getting used to it—the jack-rabbit, the ground squirrel, the rat, and the gopher can live for months without even the moisture from green vegetation, is one of the mysteries. A mirror held to the nose of a desert rabbit will show a moist breath-mark on the glass. The moisture came out of the rabbit, is coming out of him every few seconds of the day; and there is not a drop of moisture going into him. Evidently the ancient axiom: “Out of nothing, nothing comes” is all wrong.

Endurance of the jack-rabbit.

Rock squirrels.

Prairie dogs and water.

It is said in answer that the jack-rabbit gets moisture from roots, cactus-lobes and the like. And the reply is that you find him where there are no roots but greasewood and no cactus at all. Besides there is no evidence from an examination of his stomach that he ever eats anything but dried grass, bark, and sage leaves. But if the matter is a trifle doubtful about the rabbit on account of his traveling capacities, there is no doubt whatever about the ground squirrels, the rock squirrels, and the prairie dogs. None of them ever gets more than a hundred yards from his hole in his life, except possibly when migrating. And the circuit about each hole is usually bare of everything except dried grass. There in no moisture to be had. The prairie dog is not found on the desert, but in Wyoming and Montana there are villages of them on the grass prairies, with no water, root, lobe, or leaf within miles of them. The old theory of the prairie dog digging his hole down to water has no basis in fact. Patience, a strong arm and a spade will get to the bottom of his burrow in half an hour.

Water famine.

Mule-deer browsing.

Coyotes and wild-cats living without water.

Lean, gaunt life.

All the desert animals know the meaning of a water famine, and even those that are pronounced water drinkers know how to get on with the minimum supply. The mule-deer whose cousin in the Adirondacks goes down to water every night, lives in the desert mountains, month in and month out with nothing more watery to quench thirst than a lobe of the prickly pear or a joint of cholla. But he is naturally fond of green vegetation, and in the early morning he usually leaves the valley and climbs the mountains where with goats and mountain sheep he browses on the twigs of shrub and tree. The coyote likes water, too, but he puts up with sucking a nest of quail eggs, eating some mesquite beans, or at best absorbing the blood from some rabbit. The wild cat will go for weeks without more moisture than the blood of birds or lizards, and then perhaps, after long thirst, he will come to a water pocket in the rocks to lap only a handful, doing it with an angry snarling snap as though he disliked it and was drinking under compulsion. The gray wolf is too much of a traveler to depend upon any one locality. He will run fifty miles in a night and be back before morning. Whether he gets water or not is not possible to ascertain. The badger, the coon, and the bear are very seldom seen in the more arid regions. They are not strictly speaking desert animals because unfitted to endure desert hardships. They are naturally great eaters and sleepers, loving cool weather and their own fatness; and to that the desert is sharply opposed. There is nothing fat in the land of sand and cactus. Animal life is lean and gaunt; if it sleeps at all it is with one eye open; and as for heat it cares very little about it. For the first law of the desert to which animal life of every kind pays allegiance is the law of endurance and abstinence. After that requirement is fulfilled special needs produce the peculiar qualities and habits of the individual.

Fierceness of the animals.

Fitness for attack and escape.

Yet there is one quality more general than special since almost everything possesses it, and that is ferocity—fierceness. The strife is desperate; the supply of food and moisture is small, the animal is very hungry and thirsty. What wonder then that there is the determination of the starving in all desert life! Everything pursues or is pursued. Every muscle is strung to the highest tension. The bounding deer must get away; the swift-following wolf must not let him. The gray lizard dashes for a ledge of rock like a flash of light; but the bayonet bill of the road runner must catch him before he gets there. Neither can afford to miss his mark. And that is perhaps the reason why there is so much development in special directions, so much fitness for a particular purpose, so much equipment for the doing or the avoiding of death. Because the wild-cat cannot afford to miss his quarry, therefore is he made a something that seldom does miss.

The wild-cat.

The spring of the cat.

The description of the lion as “a jaw on four paws” will fit the wild-cat very well—only he is a jaw on two paws. The hind legs are insignificant compared with the front ones, and the body back of the shoulders is lean, lank, slight, but withal muscular and sinewy. The head is bushy, heavy, and square, the neck and shoulders are massive, the forelegs and paws so large that they look to belong to some other animal. The ears are small yet sensitive enough to catch the least noise, the nose is acute, the eyes are like great mirrors, the teeth like points of steel. In fact the whole animal is little more than a machine for dragging down and devouring prey. That and the protection of his breed are his only missions on earth. He is the same creeping, snarling beast that one finds in the mountains of California, but the desert animal is larger and stronger. He sneaks upon a band of quail or a rabbit with greater caution, and when he springs and strikes it is with greater certainty. The enormous paws pin the game to the earth, and the sharp teeth cut through like knives. It is not more than once in two or three days that a meal comes within reach and he has no notion of allowing it to get away.

The mountain lion.

Habits of the mountain lion.

The panther, or as he is more commonly called, the mountain lion, is no such square-built mass of muscle, no such bundle of energy as the wild-cat, though much longer and larger. The figure is wiry and serpentine, and has all the action and grace of the tiger. It is pre-eminently a figure for crouching, sneaking, springing, and dragging down. His struggle-for-life is perhaps not so desperate as that of the cat because he lives high up in the desert mountains where game is more plentiful; but he is a very good struggler for all that. Occasionally one hears his cry in the night (a cry that stops the yelp of the coyote very quickly and sets the ears of the jack-rabbit a-trembling) but he is seldom seen unless sought for. Even then the seeker does not usually care to look for him, or at him too long. He has the tiger eye, and his jaw and claw are too powerful to be trifled with. He will not attack one unless at bay or wounded; but as a mountain prowler he is the terror of the young deer, the mountain sheep, and the rabbit family.

The gray wolf.

Home of the wolf.

One sees the gray wolf but little oftener than the mountain lion. Sometimes in the very early morning you may catch a glimpse of him sneaking up a mountain canyon, but he usually keeps out of sight. His size is great for a wolf—sometimes over six feet from nose to tail tip—but it lies mostly in length and bulk. He does not stand high on his feet and yet is a swift and long-winded runner. In this and in his strength of jaw lies his special equipment. He is not very cunning but he takes up and follows a trail, and runs the game to earth with considerable perseverance. I have never seen anything but his footprints on the desert. Usually he keeps well up in the mountains and comes down on the plains only at night. He prefers prairie or table-land country, with adjacent stock ranges, to the desert, because there the hunting is not difficult. Sheep, calves, and pigs he will eat with some relish, but his favorite game is the young colt. He runs all his game and catches it as it runs like the true wolf that he is. Sometimes he hunts in packs of half a dozen, but if there is no companionship he does not hesitate to hunt alone.

The coyote.

Cleverness of the coyote.

His subsistence.

His background.

The prairie wolf or coyote is not at all like the gray wolf. He seldom runs after things, though he does a good deal of running away from them. And he is a fairly good runner too. But he does not win his living by his courage. His special gift is not the muscular energy that crushes at a blow; nor the great strength that follows and tires and finally drags down. Nature designed him with the wolf form and instinct, but gave him something of the cleverness of the fox. It is by cunning and an obliging stomach that the coyote is enabled to eke out a living. He is cunning enough to know, for instance, that you cannot see him on a desert background as long as he does not move; so he sits still at times for many minutes, watching you from some little knoll. As long as he is motionless your eyes pass over him as a patch of sand or a weathered rock. When he starts to move, it is with some deliberation. He prefers a dog-trot and often several shots from your rifle will not stir him into a run. He slips along easily and gracefully—a lean, hungry-looking wretch with all the insolence of a hoodlum and all the shrewdness of a thief. He requires just such qualities together with a keen nose, good eyes and ears, and some swiftness of dash to make a living. The desert bill of fare is not all that a wolf could desire; but the coyote is not very particular. Everything is food that comes to his jaws. He likes rabbit meat, but does not often get it. For desert rabbits do not go to sleep with both eyes shut. Failing the rabbit he snuffs out birds and their nests, trails up anything sick or wounded, and in emergencies runs down and devours a lizard. If animal food is scarce he turns his attention to vegetation, eats prickly pears and mesquite beans; and up in the mountains he stands on his hind legs and gathers choke cherries and manzanitas. With such precarious living he becomes gaunt, leathery, muscled with whip-cord. There is a meagreness and a scantiness about him; his coarse coat of hair is sun-scorched, his whole appearance is arid, dusty, sandy. There is no other animal so thoroughly typical of the desert. He belongs there, skulking along the arroyos and washes just as a horned toad belongs under a granite bowlder. That he can live there at all is due to Nature’s gift to him of all-around cleverness.

The fox.

The fox is usually accounted the epitome of animal cunning, but here in the desert he is not frequently seen and is usually thought less clever than the coyote. He prefers the foot-hills and the cover of dense chaparral where he preys upon birds, smells out the nest of the valley quail, catches a wood-rat; or, if hard pushed to it, makes a meal of crickets and grasshoppers. But even at this he is not more facile than the coyote. Nor can he surpass the coyote in robbing a hen-roost and keeping out of a trap while doing it. He cuts no important figure on the desert and, indeed, he is hardly a desert animal though sometimes found there. The conditions of existence are too severe for him. The strength of the cat, the legs of the wolf, and the stomach of the coyote are not his; and so he prowls nearer civilization and takes more risk for an easier life.

The prey.

Devices for escape.

Senses of the rabbit.

And the prey, what of the prey! The animals of the desert that furnish food for the meat eaters like the wolf and the cat—the animals that cannot fight back or at least wage unequal warfare—are they left hopelessly and helplessly at the mercy of the destroyers? Not so. Nature endows them and protects them as best she can. Every one of them has some device to baffle or trick the enemy. Even the poor little horned toad, that has only his not too thick skin to save him, can slightly change the color of that skin to suit the bowlder he is flattened upon so that the keenest eye would pass him over unnoticed. The jack-rabbit cannot change his skin, but he knows many devices whereby he contrives to save it. Lying in his form at the root of some bush or cactus he is not easily seen. He crouches low and the gray of his fur fits into the sand imperceptibly. You do not see him but he sees you. His eyes never close; they are always watching. Look at them closely as he lies dead before you and how large and protruding they are! In the life they see everything that moves. And if his eyes fail him, perhaps his ears will not. He was named the jackass-rabbit because of his long ears; and the length of them is in exact proportion to their acuteness of hearing. No footstep escapes them. They are natural megaphones for the reception of sound. It can hardly be doubted that his nose is just as acute as his eyes and his ears. So that all told he is not an animal easily caught napping.

Speed of the jack-rabbit.

His endurance.

And if the jack-rabbit’s senses fail him, has he no other resource? Certainly, yes; that is if he is not captured. In proportion to his size he has the strongest hind legs of anything on the desert. In this respect he is almost like a kangaroo. When he starts running and begins with his long bound, there is nothing that can overtake him except a trained greyhound. He ricochets from knoll to knoll like a bounding ball, and as he crosses ahead of you perhaps you think he is not moving very fast. But shoot at him and see how far behind him your rifle ball strikes the dust. No coyote or wolf is foolish enough to chase him or ever try to run him down. His endurance is quite as good as his speed. It makes no difference about his not drinking water and that all his energy comes from bark and dry grass. He keeps right on running; over stones, through cactus, down a canyon, up a mountain. For keen senses and swift legs he is the desert type as emphatically as the coyote that is forever prowling on his track.

The “cotton-tail.”

Squirrels and gophers.

The little “cotton-tail” rabbit is not perhaps so well provided for as the jack-rabbit; but then he does not live in the open and is not so exposed to attack. He hides in brush, weeds, or grass; and when startled makes a quick dash for a hole in the ground or a ledge of rock. His legs are good for a short distance, and his senses are acute; but the wild-cat or the coyote catches him at last. The continuance of his species lies in prolific breeding. The wild-cat, too, catches a good many gophers, rats, mice, and squirrels. The squirrels are many in kind and beautiful in their forms and colorings. One can hardly count them all—squirrels with long tails and short tails and no tails; squirrels yellow, brown, gray, blue, and slate-colored. They live in the rocks about the bases of the desert mountains; and eventually they fall a prey to the wild-cat who watches for them just as the domestic cat watches for the house rat. Their only safeguard is their energetic way of darting into a hole. For all their sharp noses and ears they are foolish little folk and will keep poking their heads out to see what is going on.

The desert antelope.

His eyes.

But for acute senses, swift legs, and powerful endurance nothing can surpass the antelope. He is rarely seen to-day (more’s the pity!); but only a few years ago there were quite a number of them on the Sonora edge of the Colorado Desert. Usually they prefer the higher mesas where the land is grass-grown and the view is unobstructed; but they have been known to come far down into the desert. And the antelope is very well fitted for the sandy waste. The lack of water does not bother him, he can eat anything that grows in grass or bush; and he can keep from being eaten about as cleverly as any of the deer tribe. His eye alone is a marvel of development. It protrudes from the socket—bulges out almost like the end of an egg—and if there were corners on the desert mesas I believe that eye could see around them. He cannot be approached in any direction without seeing what is going on; but he may be still-hunted and shot from behind crag or cover.

His nose and ears.

His swiftness.

His curiosity is usually the death of him, because he will persist in standing still and looking at things; but his senses almost always give him fair warning. His nose and ears are just as acute as his eyes. And how he can run! His legs seem to open and shut like the blades of a pocket-knife, so leisurely, so apparently effortless. But how they do take him over the ground! With one leg shot from under him he runs pretty nearly as fast as before. A tougher, more wiry, more beautiful animal was never created. Perhaps that is the reason why every man’s hand has been raised against him until now his breed is almost extinct. He was well fitted to survive on the desert mesas and the upland plains—a fine type of swiftness and endurance—but Nature in her economy never reckoned with the magazine rifle nor the greed of the individual who calls himself a sportsman.

The mule-deer.

Deer in flight.

Habits of the desert-deer.

The white-tail.

The mule-deer with his large ears, long muzzle and keen eyes, is almost as well provided for as the antelope. He has survived the antelope possibly because he does not live in the open country. He haunts the brush and the rock cover of the gorge and the mountain side. There in the heavy chaparral he will skulk and hide while you may pass within a few feet of him. If he sees that he is discovered he can make a dash up or down the mountain in a way that astonishes. Stones, sticks, and brush have no terror for him. He jumps over them or smashes through them. He will bound across a talus of broken porphyry that will cut the toughest boots to pieces, striking all four feet with every bound, and yet not ruffle the hair around his dew claws; or he will dash through a tough dry chaparral at full speed without receiving a scrape or a cut of any kind. The speed he attains on such ground astonishes again. His feet seem to strike rubber instead of stone; for he bounds like a ball, describes a quarter circle, and bounds again. The magazine of your rifle may be emptied at him; and still he may go on, gayly cutting quarter circles, until he disappears over the ridge. He is one of the hardiest of the desert progeny. The lack of water affects him little. He browses and gets fat on twigs and leaves that seem to have as little nutriment about them as a telegraph-pole; and he lies down on a bed of stones as upon a bed of roses. He is as tough as the goats and sheep that keep well up on the high mountain ridges; and in cleverness is perhaps superior to the antelope. But oftentimes he will turn around to have a last look, and therein lies his undoing. In Sonora there is found a dwarf deer—a foolish if pretty little creature—and along river-beds the white-tailed deer is occasionally seen; but these deer with the goats and the sheep hardly belong to the desert, though living upon its confines.

The reptiles.

Poison of reptiles.

The fang and sting.

In fact, none of the far-travelling animals lives right down in the desert gravel-beds continuously. They go there at night or in the early morning, but in the daytime they are usually found in the neighboring hills. The rabbits, rats, and squirrels, if undisturbed, will usually stay upon the flat ground; and there is also another variety of desert life that does not wander far from the sand and the rocks. I mean the reptiles. They are not as a class swift in flight, nor over-clever in sense, nor cunning in devices. Nor have they sufficient strength to grapple and fight with the larger animals. It would seem as though Nature had brought them into the desert only half made-up—a prey to every beast and bird. But no; they are given the most deadly weapon of defence of all—poison. Almost all of the reptiles have poison about them in fang or sting. We are accustomed to label them “poisonous” or “not poisonous,” as they kill or do not kill a human being; but that is not the proper criterion by which to judge. The bite of the trap-door spider will not seriously affect a man, but it will kill a lizard in a few minutes. In proportion to his size the common red ant of the desert is more poisonous than the rattlesnake. It is reiterated with much positiveness that a swarm of these ants have been known to kill men. There is, however, only one reptile on the desert that humanity need greatly fear on account of his poison and that is the rattlesnake. There are several varieties called in local parlance “side-winders,” “ground rattlers,” and the like; but the ordinary spotted, brown, or yellow rattlesnake is the type. He is not a pleasant creature, but then he is not often met with. In travelling many hundreds of miles on the desert I never encountered more than half a dozen.

The rattlesnake.

Effect of the poison.

The rattle is indescribable, but a person will know it the first time he hears it. It is something between a buzz and a burr, and can cause a cold perspiration in a minute fraction of time. The snake is very slow in getting ready to strike, in fact sluggish; but once the head shoots out, it does so with the swiftness of an arrow. Nothing except the road-runner can dodge it. The poison is deadly if the fang has entered a vein or a fleshy portion of the body where the flow of blood to the heart is free. If struck on the hand or foot, the man may recover, because the circulation there is slow and the heart has time to repel the attack. Every animal on the desert knows just how venomous is that poison. Even your dog knows it by instinct. He may shake and kill garter-snakes, but he will not touch the rattlesnake.

Spiders and tarantulas.

Centipedes and scorpions.

All of the spider family are poisonous and you can find almost every one of them on the desert. The most sharp-witted of the family is the trap-door spider—the name coming from the door which he hinges and fastens over the entrance of his hole in the ground. The tarantula is simply an overgrown spider, very heavy in weight, and inclined to be slow and stupid in action. He is a ferocious-looking wretch and has a ferocious bite. It makes an ugly wound and is deadly enough to small animals. The scorpion has the reputation of being very venomous; but his sting on the hand amounts to little more than that of an ordinary wasp. Nor is the long-bodied, many-legged, rather graceful centipede so great a poison-carrier as has been alleged. They are all of them poisonous, but in varying degrees. Doubtless the (to us) harmless horned toads and the swifts have for their enemies some venom in store.

Lizards and swifts.

The hydrophobia skunk.

The lizards are many in variety, and their colors are often very beautiful in grays, yellows, reds, blues, and indigoes. The Gila monster belongs to their family, though he is much larger. The look of him is very forbidding and he has an ugly way of hissing at you; but just how venomous he is I do not know. Very likely there is some poison about him, though this has been denied. It would seem that everything that cannot stand or run or hide must be defended somehow. Even the poor little skunk when he comes to live on the desert develops poisoned teeth and his bite produces what is called hydrophobia. The truth about the hydrophobia skunk is, I imagine, that he is an eater of carrion; and when he bites a person he is likely to produce blood-poisoning, which is miscalled hydrophobia.

The cutthroat band.

The eternal struggle.

Taking them for all in all, they seem like a precious pack of cutthroats, these beasts and reptiles of the desert. Perhaps there never was a life so nurtured in violence, so tutored in attack and defence as this. The warfare is continuous from the birth to the death. Everything must fight, fly, feint, or use poison; and every slayer eventually becomes a victim. What a murderous brood for Nature to bring forth! And what a place she has chosen in which to breed them! Not only the struggle among themselves, but the struggle with the land, the elements—the eternal fighting with heat, drouth, and famine. What else but fierceness and savagery could come out of such conditions?

Brute courage.

Brute character.

But, after all, is there not something in the sheer brute courage that endures, worthy of our admiration? These animals have made the best out of the worst, and their struggle has given them a physical character which is, shall we not say, beautiful? Perhaps you shudder at the thought of a panther dragging down a deer—one enormous paw over the deer’s muzzle, one on his neck, and the strain of all the back muscles coming into play. But was not that the purpose for which the panther was designed? As a living machine how wonderfully he works! Look at the same subject done in bronze by Barye and you will see what a revelation of character the great statuary thought it. Look, too, at Barye’s wolf and fox, look at the lions of Géricault, and the tigers and serpents of Delacroix; and with all the jaw and poison of them how beautiful they are!

Beauty in character.

You will say they are made beautiful through the art of the artists, and that is partly true; but we are seeing only what the artists saw. And how did they come to choose such subjects? Why, simply because they recognized that for art there is no such thing as nobility or vulgarity of subject. Everything may be fit if it possesses character. The beautiful is the characteristic—the large, full-bodied, well-expressed truth of character. At least that is one very positive phase of beauty.

Graceful forms of animals.

Colors of lizards.

Mystery of motion.

Even the classic idea of beauty, which regards only the graceful in form or movement or the sensuous in color, finds types among these desert inhabitants. The dullest person in the arts could not but see fine form and proportion in the panther, graceful movement in the antelope, and charm of color in all the pretty rock squirrels. For myself, being somewhat prejudiced in favor of this drear waste and its savage progeny, I may confess to having watched the flowing movements of snakes, their coil and rattle and strike, many times and with great pleasure; to having stretched myself for hours upon granite bowlders while following the play of indigo lizards in the sand; to having traced with surprise the slightly changing skin of the horned toad produced by the reflection of different colors held near him. I may also confess that common as is the jack-rabbit he never bursts away in speed before me without being followed by my wonder at his graceful mystery of motion; that the crawl of a wild-cat upon game is something that arrests and fascinates by its masterful skill; and that even that desert tramp, the coyote, is entitled to admiration for the graceful way he can slip through patches of cactus. The fault is not in the subject. It is not vulgar or ugly. The trouble is that we perhaps have not the proper angle of vision. If we understood all, we should admire all.

CHAPTER X
WINGED LIFE

The first day’s walk.

The desert’s secrets of life and growth and death are not to be read at a glance. The first day’s walk is usually a disappointment. You see little more than a desolate waste. The light of the blue sky, the subtle color of the air, the roll of the valleys, the heave of the mountains do not reveal themselves at once. The vegetation you think looks like a thin covering of dry sticks. And as for the animals, the birds—the living things on the desert—they are not apparent at all.

Tracks in the sand.

Scarcity of birds.

But the casual stroll does not bring you to the end of the desert’s resources. You may perhaps walk for a whole day and see not a beast or a bird of any description. Yet they are here. Even in the lava-beds where not even cactus will grow, and where to all appearance there is no life whatever, you may see tracks in the sand where quail and road-runners and linnets have been running about in search of food. There are tracks, too, of the coyote and the wild-cat—tracks following tracks. The animals and the birds belong to the desert or the neighboring mountains; but they are not always on view. You meet with them only in the early morning and evening when they are moving about. In the middle of the day they are in the shadow of bush or rock or lying in some cut bank or cave—keeping out of the direct rays of the sun. The birds are not very numerous even when they come forth. They prefer places that afford better cover. And yet as you make a memorandum of each new bird you see you are surprised after a time to find how many are the varieties.

Dangers of bird-life.

No cover for protection.

And the surprise grows when you think of the dangers and hardships that continually harass bird-life here in the desert. It may be fancied perhaps that the bird is exempt from danger because he has wings to carry him out of the reach of the animals; but we forget that he has enemies of his own kind in the air. And if he avoids the hawks by day, how shall he avoid the owls by night? Where at night shall he go for protection? There are no broad-leaved trees to offer a refuge—in fact few trees of any sort. The bushes are not so high that a coyote cannot reach to their top at a jump; nor are the spines and ledges of rock in the mountains so steep that a wild-cat cannot climb up them.

The food problem.

The heat and drouth again.

A bird’s temperature.

No; the bird is subject to the same dangers as the animals and the plants. Something is forever on his trail. He must always be on guard. And the food problem, ever of vital interest to bird-life, bothers him just as much as it does the coyote. There is little for him to eat and nothing for him to drink; and hardly a resting-place for the sole of his foot. Besides, it would seem as though he should be affected by the intense heat more than he is in reality. Humanity at times has difficulty in withstanding this heat, for though it is not suffocating, it parches the mouth and dries up the blood so rapidly that if water is not attainable the effect is soon apparent. The animals—that is, the wild ones—are never fazed by it; but the domestic horse, dog, and cow yield to it almost as readily as a man. And men and animals are all of low-blood temperature—a man’s normal temperature being about 98 F. But what of the bird in his coat of feathers which may add to or detract from his warmth? What is his normal temperature? It varies with the species, so far as I can ascertain by experiment, from 112 to 120 F. Consider that blood temperature in connection with a surrounding air varying from 100 to 125 F.! It would seem impossible for any life to support it. One may well wonder what strange wings beat this glowing air, what bird-life lives in this fiery waste!

Innocent-looking birds with savage instincts.

The road-runner.

Yet the desert-birds look not very different from their cousins of the woods and streams except that they are thinner, more subdued in color, somewhat more alert. They are very pretty, very innocent-looking birds. But we may be sure that living here in the desert, enduring its hardships and participating in its incessant struggle for life and for the species, they have just the same savage instincts as the plants and the animals. The sprightliness and the color may suggest harmlessness; but the eye, the beak, the claw are designed for destruction. The road-runner is one of the mildest-looking and most graceful birds of the desert, but the spring of the wild-cat to crush down a rabbit is not more fierce than the snap of the bird’s beak as he tosses a luckless lizard. He is the only thing on the desert that has the temerity to fight a rattlesnake. It is said that he kills the snake, but as to that I am not able to give evidence.

Wrens and fly-catchers.

And it is not alone the bird of prey—not alone the road-runners, the eagles, the vultures, the hawks, and the owls that are savage of mood. Every little wisp of energy that carries a bunch of feathers is endowed with the same spirit. The downward swoop of the cactus wren upon a butterfly and the snip of his little scissors bill, the dash after insects of the fly-catchers, vireos, swallows, bats, and whip-poor-wills are just as murderous in kind as the blow of the condor and the vice-like clutch of his talons as they sink into the back of a rabbit. Skill and strength in the chase are absolutely necessary in a desert where food is so scarce, and in proportion the little birds have these qualities in common with the great.

Development of special characteristics.

Birds of the air.

And naturally, as in the case of the animals, the skill and the strength develop along the line of the bird’s needs, producing that quality of character, that fitness for the work cut out for him, to which we have so often referred. There are birds that belong almost solely to the kingdom of the air—birds like the condor, the vulture, and the eagle. Upon the ground they move awkwardly, not having better feet to walk with than ducks and geese. The talons are too much developed for walking. When they rise from the ground they do it heavily and with quick flapping wings. Not until they are fairly started in the upper air do they show what wonderful wing-power they possess.

The brown-black vulture.

The vulture hunting.

The vulture sailing.

The common brown-black vulture or turkey buzzard is the type of all the wheelers and sailers. The “soaring eagle” of poetry is something of a goose beside him. For the wings of the vulture bear him through wind, sun, and heat, hour after hour, without a pause. To see him circling as he hunts down a mountain range a hundred miles or more, one might think that the abnormal breast-muscles never grew weary. He goes over every foot of the ground with his eyes and at the same time watches every other vulture in the sky. Let one of his fellows stop circling and drop earthward on a long incline, and immediately he is followed by all the black crew. They know instantly that something has been discovered. But often the hunt is in vain, and then for whole days at a time those motionless wings bear their burden apparently without fatigue. With no food perhaps for a fortnight and never any water, that spare rack of muscles sails the air with as little effort as floating thistle-down. No one knows just how it is done. In blow or calm, against the wind or with it, high in the blue or low over the ground, any place, anywhere, and under any circumstances those wings cut through the air almost like sunlight. You can hear a whizz like the flight of arrows as the bird passes close over your head; but you cannot see the slightest motion in the feathers.

The southern buzzard.

The crow.

The hot, thin air of the desert would seem a less favorable air for sailing than the moister atmosphere of the south; but the vulture of the tropics is not the equal of the desert-bird. He is heavier, lazier, and more stupid—possibly because better fed. There are several varieties in the family, the chief variants being the one with white tipped wings and the one with a white eagle-like head. Neither of them is as good on the wing as the black species, though none of them is to be despised. Even the ordinary carrion crow of the desert is an expert sailer compared with any of the crow family to be found elsewhere. The exigencies of the situation seem to require wings developed for long-distance flights; and the vultures, the crows, the eagles, the hawks, all respond after their individual fashions.

The great condor.

The condor is perhaps the vulture’s peer in the matter of sailing. He belongs to the vulture family, though very much larger than any of its members, sometimes measuring fifteen feet across the wings and weighing forty pounds. He is the largest bird on the continent. At the present time he is occasionally seen wheeling high in air like a mere insect in the great blue dome. It is said that he soars as high as twenty-five thousand feet above the earth. But to-day he sails alone and his tribe has grown less year by year. With the eagles he keeps well up in the high sierras and builds a nest on the inaccessible peaks or along the steep escarpments. He belongs to the desert only because it is one of his hunting-grounds.

The eagles and hawks.

Bats and owls.

The burrowing owl.

This may be said of the eagles and the hawks. They hunt the desert by day, but go home to the mountains at night. The owls are somewhat different, not being given to long flight. The deep caves or wind-worn recesses under mountain ledges furnish them abiding-places. These caves also send forth at dusk a full complement of bats that seem not different from the ordinary Eastern bats. The burrowing owl is perhaps misnamed, though not misplaced. There is no evidence whatever, that I have ever seen or heard, to show that he burrows. What happens is that he crawls into some hole that is already burrowed instead of a cave or recess in the rocks. A prairie-dog or badger hole is his preference. That the place has inhabitants, including the tarantula and (it is said) the rattlesnake, does not bother the owl. He walks in with his mate and speedily makes himself at home. How the different families get on together can be imagined by one person as well as by another. They do not seem to pay any attention to each other so far as I have observed. Ordinarily the desert animals, birds, and reptiles agree to no such truce. They are at war from the start. I do not know that the owls, the bats, the night-hawks have any special equipment for carrying on their part of the war. Sometimes I have fancied they had larger eyes than is usual with their kinds outside of the desert; but I have no proof of this. Perhaps it is like the speculation as to whether the buzzard sees or scents the carrion that he discovers so readily—hardly amenable to proof.

The ground birds.

The road-runner’s swiftness.

The vicious beak.

All of the air-birds are strikingly developed in the wings and equally undeveloped in the feet, while all the ground-birds of the desert are just the reverse of this—that is, deficient in wings but strong of foot and leg. The road-runner, or as he is sometimes called the chaparralcock, is a notable instance of this. He is a lizard-eater, and in order to eat he must first catch his lizard. Now this is by no means an easy task. The ordinary gray, brown, or yellow lizard is the swiftest dodger and darter there is in the sand, and even in straight-line running he will travel too fast for an ordinary dog to catch him. His facility, too, in dashing up, over, and under bowlders is not to be underestimated. The road-runner’s task then is not an easy one, and yet he seems to accomplish it easily. There is no great effort about his pursuit and yet he generally manages to catch the lizard. It is because his legs are specially constructed for running, and his head, neck, and beak for darting. His wings are of little use. When chased by a dog he will finally take to them, but only for about fifty yards. Then he drops to the ground and starts on foot again. He will run away from a man, and sometimes even a horse cannot keep up with him. Oddly enough, he seems always to run a little sideways. The long tail (used as a rudder) is carried a little to the right or the left and gives this impression. When frightened, his top-knot is raised like that of the pheasant, and he often runs with his beak open. It is a most vicious beak for all that it looks not more blood-thirsty than that of the crow. It snaps through a scorpion or a centipede like a pair of sheep-shearers. And with all his energy and strength the road-runner weighs only about a pound. He is a long-geared bird, but not actually any larger than a pigeon.

The desert-quail.

Wings of the quail.

Travelling for water.

The blue valley-quail—whether of Arizona or California breeding—is quite as strong of leg as the road-runner, though not perhaps so swift. He does not care much about using his wings; and at best they are not better than the rather poor average of quails’ wings. By that I mean that all quails rise from cover with a great roar and bustle, and they fly very fast for a short distance; but they are soon down upon the ground, running and hiding. The flight of the quail, too, is straight ahead. It is not possible for him to rise up over five hundred feet of canyon wall, for instance, and even on an ordinary mountain side he takes several flights before he reaches the summit. The wings are not muscled like the legs, and that is because the quail is a ground-bird. He gets his food there and spends most of his time there. In the East Bob White always roosts upon the ground, but the desert-quail is usually too clever to trust himself in such an exposed place. He will travel miles to get into a cotton-wood tree at dusk, and if there is water near at hand so much the better. He dearly loves the water and the tree, but if he cannot get them he accepts the situation philosophically and goes to sleep on a high ledge of rock with water perhaps in his thought but not in his crop.

Habits of quail.

His strong legs.

Thanks to his capacity for travelling, the quail usually manages to get enough of small seeds and insects to keep himself alive. He is a great roamer—in the course of a day travelling over many miles of country—and his quest is always food. He likes to be among the great bowlders that lie along the bases of the mountains; and when disturbed he flies and jumps from rock to rock, much to the discouragement of the coyote that happens to be the disturber. When forced to rise he flies perhaps for a hundred yards or more and then drops and begins running. In the spring he mates, raises a brood, and teaches the young ones the gentle art of running. In the fall he and his family of a dozen or sixteen join with other families to make a great covey of several hundred, or in the old days before the market-hunters came, several thousand. And they all run. The bottom of the quail’s foot is always itching for the ground; and he seems never so happy as when leaving the enemy far behind him. His little legs take him through the brush so fast that you cannot keep up with him. Every muscle in him is as tough as a watch-spring. You may wound him, but you have not yet got him. He will creep into some cactus patch or crawl down a snake-hole—elude you in some way—and in the end die game just out of your reach.

Bush-birds.

The woodpeckers and cactus.

There are few trees upon the desert and few bushes of any size; yet there are birds of the tree and the bush here just as there are birds of the air and the ground. The most of them seem the same kind of linnets, sparrows, and thrushes that are seen along the California coast; though probably they have some peculiar desert characteristic. I cannot see any difference between the little woodpeckers here and the woodpeckers elsewhere; yet this desert variety flies from sahuaro to sahuaro, alights on the spiny trunk with a little thump, and immediately begins hitching himself up through the worst imaginable rows of needles just as though he were climbing a plain pine-tree. The ordinary turtle-dove with his red pigeon-feet alights on the top of the same sahuaro, the wren bores holes in it and makes a nest within the cylinder; and the dwarf thrush dashes in and out of tangled thickets of cholla all day long, and yet none of them suffers any injury. It seems incredible that birds not accustomed to the desert could do such things.

Finches and mocking-birds.

The humming-bird.

Possibly, too, these bush-birds—insect-devourers most of them—have some special faculty for catching their prey, though I have not been able to discover it. The fly-catchers, the mocking-birds, the finches, in a land of plenty are quick enough in breaking the back of a butterfly or beetle, and any extra energy would seem superfluous. Still there is no telling what fine extra stimulus lies in an empty crop. And crops are usually empty on the desert. Even the little humming-bird has difficulty in picking a living. In blossom time he is, of course, in fine condition, but I have seen him dashing about in the fall when nothing at all was in bloom, and evidently none the worse for some starvation. He is a swifter flyer than the ordinary bird and is also duller in coloring, but in other respects he seems not different. He breeds on the desert, building his nest in the pitahaya; and he and his mate then have a standing quarrel with their neighbors for the rest of the summer. There is not in the whole feathered tribe a more quarrelsome scrap of vivacity than the humming-bird.

Doves and grosbeaks.

The lark and flicker.

Jays and magpies.

Water-fowl.

The dwarf dove common to Sonora, the oven-bird, the red grosbeak, and many other of the smaller birds known to civilization, are found on the desert; but apparently with no special faculty for overcoming its hardships. This is due perhaps to the fact that they are not always there—are not exclusively desert-birds. Nor do any of the migratory birds belong to the desert, though they stop here for weeks at a time in their flights north or south. At almost any season of the year one sees the cow-blackbird and the smaller crow-blackbird. The mocking-bird comes only in the spring and fall, and the lark in early summer. The lark looks precisely like the Eastern bird, but his note is changed; whereas the flicker has changed the color under his wings from yellow to pink, but not his note. The robin is no whit different from the front-lawn robin of our childhood; and the bobolink rising from salt-bush and yucca, singing as he rises, is the bobolink of ancient days. At times there are troops of magpies that come and go across the waste, and at other times troops of blue-jays. And high in air through the warmth of spring and the cold of autumn there are great flocks of ducks, geese, brant, divers, shags, willet, curlew, swinging along silently to the southern or northern waterways. They seldom pause, even when following the Colorado River, unless in need of water. On the mesas and uplands one sometimes sees a group of sand-hill cranes walking about and indulging in a crazy dance peculiarly their own, but the sight is no longer a common one.

Beetles and worms.

Fighting destruction by breed.

And again the prey—what of the prey? Has Nature left the beetles, the bugs, the worms, the bees, completely at the pleasure of the bird’s beak? No; not completely, though it must be acknowledged that she has not provided much defensive armor for them individually. She incases her beautiful blue and yellow beetles in hard shells that other insects cannot break through, but they are flimsy defences against the mocking-bird. To bugs and worms and bees she gives perhaps a sting, deadly enough when thrust into a spider, but useless again when used in defence against a cactus-thrush. And this is where Nature shows her absolute indifference to the life or the death of the individual. She allows the bugs and beetles to be slaughtered like the mackerel in the sea. But she is a little more careful about preserving the species. And how does she do this without preserving the individual? Why, simply by increasing the number of individuals, by breed, by fertility, by multiplicity. Thousands are annually slaughtered; yes, but thousands are annually bred. What matter about their lives or deaths provided they do not increase or decrease as a species!

The blue and green beetles.

Butterflies.

Design and character.

The insects on the desert are mere flashes of life—pin-points of energy—but not without purpose and not without beauty. The beasts and the birds may be bleached brown or gray by the sun; but the insects are many of them as gay as those of the tropics. The ordinary beetles that a chance turn of a stone reveals are like scarabs of gold, turquoise, azurite, bronze, platinum, hurrying and scurrying out of the way. The tarantula-wasp, with his gorgeous orange-colored body and his blue wings, is like a bauble made of precious stones flickering along the ground. The great dragon-fly with his many lensed eyes, the bees with black and yellow bodies, the butterflies with bright-hued wings, the white and gray millers—all of them dwellers in the sands—are spots of light and color that illumine the desert as the rich jewel the Ethiop’s ear. The wings of gauze that bear the ordinary fly upon the air, the feet of ebony that carry the plain black beetle along the rocks, are made with just as much care and skill as the wings of the condor and the foot of the road-runner. Nature in every product of her hand shows the completeness of her workmanship. She made the wings and the legs for a purpose and they fulfil that purpose. They are without flaw and above reproach. Once more, therefore, have they character and fitness, and once more, therefore, are they beautiful.

Beauty of birds.

Beauty also of reptiles.

I need not now argue beauty in the birds, the beetles, and the butterflies. You will admit it without argument. The slate-blue of the quail, the gay red of the grosbeak, the charm of the rock-wren, the vivacity of the bobolink or the scale-runner, captivate you and compel your sympathy and admiration. Yes; but everyone of them is, after his kind, as much of a butcher, just as much of a destroyer, as the wild-cat or the yellow rattlesnake. And they have no more character and perhaps less fitness for the desert life than the sneaking coyote or the flattened lizard which you do not admire. But why are not the coyote and the lizard beautiful too? Why not the beauty of the horned toad and the serpent? Are we never to love or to admire save where form and color tickle the eye? Are these forever to monopolize the name of beauty and gather to themselves the world’s applause?

Nature’s work all purposeful.

Precious jewel of the toad.

If we could but rid ourselves of the false ideas, which, taken en masse, are called education, we should know that there is nothing ugly under the sun, save that which comes from human distortion. Nature’s work is all of it good, all of it purposeful, all of it wonderful, all of it beautiful. We like or dislike certain things which may be a way of expressing our prejudice or our limitation; but the work is always perfect of its kind irrespective of human appreciation. We may prefer the sunlight to the starlight, the evening primrose to the bisnaga, the antelope to the mountain-lion, the mocking-bird to the lizard; but to say that one is good and the other bad, that one is beautiful and the other ugly, is to accuse Nature herself of preference—something which she never knew. She designs for the cactus of the desert as skilfully and as faithfully as for the lily of the garden. Each in its way is suited to its place, and each in its way has its unique beauty of character. And so, more truly perhaps than Shakespeare himself knew, the toad called ugly and venomous, still holds a precious jewel in its head.

CHAPTER XI
MESAS AND FOOT-HILLS

Flat steps of the desert.

The word mesa (table), by local usage in Mexico and in the western United States, is applied to any flat tract of ground that lies above an arroyo or valley, as well as to the flat top of a mountain. In a broad, if somewhat strained use of the word, it also means the great table-lands and elevated plains lying between a river-valley and the mountain confines on either side of it. The mesas are the steps or benches that lead upward from the river to the mountain, though the resemblance to benches is not always apparent because of the cuttings and washings of intermittent streams, and the breakings and crossings of mountain-spurs.

Across Southern Arizona.

As you rise up from the Colorado Desert, crossing the river to the east, you meet with a great plain or so-called mesa that extends far across Southern Arizona and Sonora almost up to the Continental Divide. It is broken by short ranges of barren mountains, that have the general trend of the main Sierra Madre, and it looks so much like the country to the west of the river that it is usually recognized as a part of the desert, or at the least “desert country.”

Rising up from the desert.

The great mesas.

It is, however, somewhat different from the Bottom of the Bowl or even the valleys of the Mojave. The elevation, for one thing, gives it another character. The rise from bench to bench is very gradual, and to the ordinary observer hardly perceptible; but nevertheless when the foot-hills of the Santa Rita Mountains are reached, the altitude is four thousand feet or more. There is a difference in light, sky, color, air; even some change in the surface of the earth. The fine sands of the lower desert and the sea-bed silts are missing; the mesas lie close up to the mountains and receive the first coarse wash from the sides; the barrancas on the mountain-sides are choked with great masses of fallen rock, with bowlders of granite, with blocks of blackened lava. The arroyos that carry the wash from the mountains—mere ditches and trenches cut through the mesas—are filled with rounded stones, coarse sands, glittering scales of mica, bits of quartz, breaks of agate and carnelian. The mesas themselves are made up of sand and gravel, sometimes long shelvings of horizontal rocks, sometimes patches of terra-cotta, rifts of copper shale, or beds of parti-colored clay.

“Grease wood” plains.

Upland vegetation.

There is more rain in this upland country and consequently more vegetation than down below. Grease wood grows everywhere and is the principal green thing in sight. So predominant is it that the term “grease wood plains” is not inappropriate to the whole region. Groves of sahuaro stand in the valleys and reach up and over the mountain-tops, chollas and nopals are on the flats; the mesquite grows in miniature forests. But besides these there are bushes and trees not seen in the basin. Palo fierro, palo blanco, cottonwood live along the dry river-beds, white and black sage on the mesas, white and black oaks in the foot-hills. Then, too, there are patches of pale yellow sun-dried grass covering many acres, great beds of evening primrose, and fields covered with the purple salt-bush. It is quite another country when you come to examine it piece by piece.

Grass plains.

As you rise higher and higher to the Continental Divide the whole face of the mesa undergoes a further change. It slips imperceptibly into a grass plain, stretching flat as far as the eye can see, covered with whitened grass, and marked by clumps of yuccas slowly growing into yucca palms. No rocks, trees, cacti, or grease wood; no primrose, wild gourd, or verbena. Nothing but yucca palms, bleached grass, blue sky, and lilac mountains. It is still in kind a desert country, and it is still called a mesa or table-land; but its character is changed into something like the great flat lands of Nebraska or the broken plateau country of Montana.

Spring and summer on the plains.

Home of the antelope.

In the spring, when the snows have melted and the rains have fallen, these plains turn green with young grass and are spattered with great patches of wild-flowers; but the drouth and heat of early summer soon fade the grasses to a bright yellow, and in the fall the yellow bleaches to a dead white. There is little wild life left upon these plains. The bush-birds need more cover than is to be found here, while the ground-birds need more open roadway. In the spring, when the prairie pools are filled with water, there are geese and cranes in abundance; but they soon pass on north. These great grass tracts were once the home of countless bands of antelope, for it is just such an open country as the antelope loves; but they have passed on, too. In their place roam herds of cattle, and the gray wolf, the coyote, and the buzzard follow the herds.

Beds of soda and gypsum.

Riding into the unexpected.

The grease wood and the grass plains of Arizona and New Mexico are typical of all the flat countries lying up from the deserts; and yet there are many tracts of small acreage in this same region that show distinctly different features. Sometimes there are small beds of flat alkali dust, sometimes beds of soda and gypsum, sometimes beds of salt. Then occasionally there is a broad plain sown broadcast far and wide with blocks of lava—the remnants of a great lava-stream sent forth many centuries ago; and again flat reaches strewn thick with blocks of porphyry that have been washed down from the mountains no one knows just when or how. You are always riding into the unexpected in these barren countries, stumbling upon strange phenomena, seeing strange sights.

The Grand Canyon country.

Hills covered with juniper.

The Painted Desert.

And yet as you ascend from the valley of the Colorado moving to the northeast, the lands and the sights become even stranger. For now you are rising to the Great Plateau and the Grand Canyon country—the region of the butte, the vast escarpment, the dome, the cliff, the gorge. It is a more mountainous land than that lying to the south, and it is deeper cut with river-beds and canyons. Yet still you have no trouble in finding even here the flat spaces peculiar to all the desert-bordering territory. There are grease wood plains as at the south and great bare benches that seem endless in their sweep. There are, too, spaces covered with lava-blocks and beds of soda and salt. More rain falls here than at the south or west; and in certain sections the grass grows rank, the yuccas become trees, and higher up toward Ash Fork the hills are covered with a growth of juniper. Flowers and shrubs are more abundant, birds and animals come and go across your pathway, and there are green valleys with water running upon the surface of the ground. And yet not twenty miles from the green valley you may enter upon the most barren plain imaginable—a place like the Painted Desert, perhaps, where in spots not a living thing of any kind is seen, where there is nothing but dry rock in the mountains and dry dust in the valley. These areas of utter desolation are of frequent enough occurrence in all the regions lying immediately to the north and the east of the Mojave to remind you that you are still in a desert land, and that the bench and the arid plain are really a part of the great waste itself.

Riding on the mesas.

The reversion to savagery.

Nature never designed more fascinating country to ride over than these plains and mesas lying up and back from the desert basin. You may be alone without necessarily being lonesome. And everyone rides here with the feeling that he is the first one that ever broke into this unknown land, that he is the original discoverer; and that this new world belongs to him by right of original exploration and conquest. Life becomes simplified from necessity. It begins all over again, starting at the primitive stage. There is a reversion to the savage. Civilization, the race, history, philosophy, art—how very far away and how very useless, even contemptible, they seem. What have they to do with the air and the sunlight and the vastness of the plateau! Nature and her gift of buoyant life are overpowering. The joy of mere animal existence, the feeling that it is good to be alive and face to face with Nature’s self, drives everything else into the background.

The thin air again.

And what air one breathes on these plains—what wonderful air! It is exhilarating to the whole body; it brightens the senses and sweetens the mind and quiets the nerves. And how clear it is! Leagues away needle and spine and mountain-ridge still come out clear cut against the sky. Is it the air alone that makes possible such far-away visions, or has the light somewhat to do with it? What penetrating, all-pervading, wide-spread light! How silently it falls and how like a great mirror the plain reflects it back to heaven!

The light and its deceptions.

Distorted proportions.

Changed colors.

Light and air—what means wherewith to conjure up illusions and deceive the senses! We think we see far away a range of low hills, but, as we ride on, buttes and lomas seem to detach and come toward us. There is no range ahead of us; there are only scattered groups of hills many miles apart. Far away to the left on a little rise of ground is a wild horse watching us, his head high in air, his nostrils sniffing for our scent upon the breeze. How colossal he seems! Doubtless he is the last of some upland band, the leader of the troop who through great size and strength was best fitted to survive. But no; he is only a common little Indian pony distorted to huge proportions by the heated atmosphere. We are riding into the sunset. Ahead of us every notch in the hills, every little valley has a shaft of golden light streaming through it. But turn in your saddle and look to the east, and the hills we have left behind us are surrounded by veilings of lilac. Again the omnipresent desert air! We see the western hills as through an amber glass, but looking to the east the glass is changed to pale amethyst.

The little hills.

Painting the desert.

How delicately beautiful are the hills that seem to gather in little groups along the waste! They are not sharp-edged in their ridges like the higher mountains. Wind, rain, and sand have done their work upon them until there is hardly a rough feature left to them. All their lines are smooth and flow from one into another; and all the parti-colors of their rocks and soils are blended into one tone by the light and the air. With surfaces that catch and reflect light, and little depressions that hold shadows, how very picturesque they are! Indeed as you watch them breaking the horizon-line you are surprised to see how easily they compose into pictures. If you tried to put them upon canvas your surprise would probably be greater to find how very little you could make of them. The desert is not more paintable than the Alps. Both are too big.

Worn-down mountains.

These hills—they are usually called lomas—that one meets with in the plateau region are not of the same make-up as the clay buttes of Wyoming or the gravel hills of New England. They have a core of rock within them and are nothing less than washed-down foot-hills. You will often see a chain of them receding from the range toward the plain, and growing smaller as they recede, until the last one is a mound only a few feet in height. They are flattening down to the level of the plain—sinking into the sandy sea.

The mountain wash and its effect.

Flattening down to the plain.

Mountain-making.

Usually the lomas are seen against a background of dark mountains of which they are or have been at one time a constituent part. For the lomas are the outliers from the foot-hills as the foot-hills from the mountains proper. They are the most worn because they are the lowest down in the valley—in fact the bottom steps which receive not only their own wash but that of all the other steps besides. The mountains pour their waters and loose stones upon the foot-hills, the foot-hills cast them off upon the lomas, and the lomas in turn thrust them upon the plains. But the casting off effort becomes weaker at each step as the sides of the hill become less of a declivity. When the little hill is reached the sand-wash settles about the base, and in time the whole mass rises on its sides and sinks somewhat in the centre, until a mere rise of ground is all that remains. So perish the hills that we are accustomed to speak of as “everlasting.” It is merely another illustration of Nature’s method in the universe. She is as careless of the individual hill or mountain as of the individual man, animal, or flower. All are beaten into dust. But the species is more enduring, better preserved. Year by year Nature is tearing down, washing down, pulling to pieces range after range; but year by year she is also heaving up stupendous mountains like the Alps, and crackling with a mighty squeeze the earth’s crust into the ridges of the Rockies and the Andes.

The foot-hills.

Forms of the foot-hills.

The foot-hills are just what their name indicates—the hills that lie at the foot of the mountains. They are not usually detached from the main range like so many of the lomas, but are a part of it; and while not exactly the buttresses of the mountains, yet they remind one of those architectural supports of cathedral walls. The foot-hills themselves are perhaps as firmly supported as the mountains for very often they stretch down from the mountains in a long ridge like a spine, and from the spine are thrown out supporting ribs that trail away into the valleys. In a granite country these foot-hills are usually very smooth, and are made up largely, as regards their surfaces, of the grit and grind of the rocks. The rocks themselves are usually wind worn, rounded by rain and sand, and sometimes fantastic in shape. Often the soft granite wears through in seams and leaves lozenge-like blocks linked together like beads upon a string; often the whole rock-crown of the hill is honey-combed by the wind until it looks as soft as a sponge. The foot-hills of porphyry are more jagged and rough in every way. The stone is much harder and while it splits like granite and falls along the mountain-side in a talus it does not readily disintegrate. The last bit of it remains a hard kernel, and the porphyry foot-hill is usually a keen-edged mountain in miniature.

Mountain-plants.

Bare mountains.

The hills have a desert vegetation of grease wood, cactus, and sage, with occasional trees like the palo verde and the lluvia d’oro; but their general appearance is not very different from the mesas. Where the altitude is high—say five thousand feet and over—there may be a more radical change in vegetation; for now the oak begins to appear, and if it is open country the grasses and flowers show everywhere. Sometimes the foot-hills are covered with a dense chaparral made up of many low trees and bushes; but this growth is more peculiar to the Californian hills west of the Coast Range than to Arizona. Many of the ranges in the Canyon country are almost as bare of vegetation as an ancient lake-bed. And sometimes altitude seems to have little to do with the kinds of growths. Cacti and the salt-bush flourish at six thousand feet as readily as down in the Salton Basin three hundred feet below sea-level. The most dangerous and difficult thing to set up about anything in this desert world is the general law or common rule. The exception—the thing that is perhaps uncommon—comes up at every turn to your undoing.

The southern exposures.

Gray lichens.

Even the mountains of Arizona that have an elevation of from five to eight thousand feet are often quite bare of timber. The sahuaro, the nopal, the palo verde may grow to their very peaks and still make only a scanty covering. Seen from a distance the southern exposure of the mountain looks perfectly bare; but if you travel around it to the north side where the sunlight does not fall except for a few hours of the day, you will find a growth of bushes, small trees, vines, and grasses that, taken together, form something of a thicket—that is for a desert. And here, too, on the northern exposure you will find the abrupt walls of the peak stained with great fields of orange and gray lichens that lend a color quality to the whole top.

Still in the desert region.

Arida zona.

But through the bushes and grasses and lichens the wine-red of the porphyry comes cropping out to tell you that the mountain is a mass of rock, that it holds little or no soil on its sides, that it has not a suspicion of water; and that whatever grows upon it, does so, not by favor of circumstance, but through sheer desert stubbornness. The vegetation is a thin disguise that is penetrated in a few moments. The arid character of the mountain says plainly enough that we are not yet out of the region of sands and burning winds and fiery sun-shafts. The whole of the Arizona country as far east as the Continental Divide, in spite of its occasional green valleys and few high mountain-ranges with timbered tops, is a slope leading up and out from the desert by gradual if broken steps which we have called mesas or benches. It is a bare, dry land. Its name would imply that the early Spaniards had found it that and called it arida zona for cause.[8]

Cloud-bursts on the mesas.

The wash of rains.

Gorge cutting.

Yet at times it is a land of heavy cloud-bursts and wash-outs. In the summer months it frequently rains on the mesas in torrents. The bare surface of the country drains this water almost like the roof of a house because there are no grasses or bushes of consequence to check the water and allow it to soak into the ground. The descent from the Divide to the Colorado River is quite steep. The flood of waters rushes down the steps of the mesas and over the bare ground with terrific force. It quickly cuts channels in the low places down which are hurled sand, gravel, and bowlders. The cutting of the channel during the heavy rains is something extraordinary, partly because the stream has great volume and fall, and partly because the channel-bed is usually of soft rock and easily cut. In a few dozen years the arroyo of a mesa that carries off the water from the mountain-range has cut a river-bed many feet deep; in a few hundred years the valley-bed changes into a gorge with five hundred feet of sheer rock-wall; in a few thousand years perhaps the restless wearing water of the great river has sunk its bed five thousand feet below the surface and made the Grand Canyon of the Colorado.

In the canyons.

Upright walls of rock.

The Canyon country is well named, for it has plenty of wash-outs and gorges. Almost anywhere among the mountain-ranges you can find them—not Grand Canyons, to be sure, but ones of size sufficient to be impressive without being stupendous. Walls of upright rock several hundred feet in height have enough bulk and body about them to impress anyone. The mass is really overpowering. It is but the crust of the earth exposed to view; but the gorge at Niagara and the looming shaft of the Matterhorn are not more. The imagination strains at such magnitude. And all the accessories of the gorge and canyon have a might to them that adds to the general effect. The sheer precipices, the leaning towers, the pinnacles and shafts, the recesses and caves, the huge basins rounded out of rock by the waterfalls are all touched by the majesty of the sublime.

Color in canyon shadows.

The blue sky seen from the canyon depths.

And what could be more beautiful than the deep shadow of the canyon! You may have had doubts about those colored shadows which painters of the plein-air school talked so much about a few years ago. You may have thought that it was all talk and no reality; but now that you are in the canyon, and in a shadow, look about you and see if there is not plenty of color there, too. The walls are dyed with it, the stones are stained with it—all sorts of colors from strata of rock, from clays and slates, from minerals, from lichens, from mosses. The stones under your feet have not turned black or brown because out of the sunlight. If you were on the upper rim of the canyon looking down, the whole body of air in shadow would look blue. And that strange light coming from above! You may have had doubts, too, about the intense luminosity of the blue sky; but look up at it along the walls of rock to where it spreads in a thin strip above the jaws of the canyon. Did you ever see such light coming out of the blue before! See how it flashes from the long line of tumbling water that pitches over the rocks! White as an avalanche, the water slips through the air down to its basin of stone; and white, again, as the snow are the foam and froth of the pool.

Desert landscape.

The former knowledge of Nature.

Stones and water in a gorge, wastes of rock thrust upward into mountains, long vistas of plain and mesa glaring in the sunlight—what things are these for a human being to fall in love with? Doctor Johnson, who occasionally went into the country to see his friends, but never to see the country, who thought a man demented who enjoyed living out of town; and who cared for a tree only as firewood or lumber, what would he have had to say about the desert and its confines? In his classic time, and in all the long time before him, the earth and the beauty thereof remained comparatively unnoticed and unknown. Scott, Byron, Hugo,—not one of the old romanticists ever knew Nature except as in some strained way symbolic of human happiness or misery. Even when the naturalists of the last half of the nineteenth century took up the study they were impressed at first only with the large and more apparent beauties of the world—the Alps, the Niagaras, the Grand Canyons, the panoramic views from mountain-tops. They never would have tolerated the desert for a moment.

The Nature-lover of the present.

But the Nature-lover of the present, who has taken so kindly to the minor beauties of the world, has perhaps a little wider horizon than his predecessors. Not that his positive knowledge is so much greater, but rather where he lacks in knowledge he declines to condemn. He knows now that Nature did not give all her energy to the large things and all her weakness to the small things; he knows now that she works by law and labors alike for all; he knows now that back of everything is a purpose, and if he can discover the purpose he cannot choose but admire the product.

Human limitations.

That is something of an advance no doubt—a grasp at human limitations at least—but there is no reason to think that it will lead to any lofty heights. Nature never intended that we should fully understand. That we have stumbled upon some knowledge of her laws was more accident than design. We have by some strange chance groped our way to the Gate of the Garden, and there we stand, staring through the closed bars, with the wonder of little children. Alas! we shall always grope! And shall we ever cease to wonder?