Is a depression in Southern California through which the road runs which reaches at Salton, two hundred and sixty-three feet below the level of the sea. Only a few miles away, across the mountain range, is the Pacific ocean and here at Salton they have great salt works, where the waters of the Salt Springs, found in the neighborhood, are evaporated. All this region was once covered by the ocean, no doubt, and the probabilities are that it will be again some day. Here, they say, in this atmosphere, is the place for consumptives and there are very many to be seen. At Indio, twenty feet below sea level, there is a good hotel and neat little cottages, fitted up especially for the accommodation of invalids.
THE MIRAGE.
I thought I saw it going out, but was mistaken. I am not prepared yet to say it was not a lake of water or mud, for they say the Salt Springs and the Volcanic Springs of mud are hereabouts. One dares not approach too near the latter. It spreads itself out over many acres and maybe many miles. If it is dangerous to explore, who knows but the so-called mirage is a real lake of mud and water! But there it is out a few miles from the railroad, and for miles you can see it. You see distinctly the shadows from the other bank and little knolls and islands, all through it, cast their shadows distinctly on the face of the water. Yet they say it is all a delusion, there is no water there! Maybe so, but I am a skeptic.
In a former letter I spoke of the four wire fences on either side of the road and suggested that it was more than 3,000 miles long; but I discovered in the Colorado desert, which I passed at night while going, there is no fence for hundreds of miles, nothing but bare sand, and of course, there are no cattle to get on the track.
OLD FORT YUMA
Is a historic spot on the Colorado river. This was the crossing place in the early days of all the thousands of gold hunters from the East. If its history could be written what stories of adventure and suffering would it contain! It was here my brother, in 1849, caught the first glimpse of California after a long and perilous trip across the plains from Ft. Smith in Arkansas. If he would write the story of his ups and downs before and after getting to California it would make mighty interesting reading.
The town of Yuma is not far from the Gulf of California—I saw two little steamboats tied up there. If anyone has been trying to do anything in the way of teaching and evangelizing the Yuma Indians, a company of whom we saw, they certainly have reason to be discouraged. I have seen nowhere more wretched specimens of humanity. The government policy of continuing the Indians as "Wards of the Nation," supplying them with a living without any effort on their part, and the efforts of the Catholics to Christianize them, have been, alike failures.
Now my trip is ended. I have traveled 205 miles in Alabama, 63 in Mississippi, 300 in Louisiana, 947 in Texas, 249 in New Mexico, 414 in Arizona, 728 in California, making in all 2,906 miles. It has been a great pleasure for me to write these letters. I doubt not they seemed very commonplace to many who are used to travel. I haven't had that class in mind at all. I have thought of the many hundreds who were "Shut-Ins" by reason of circumstances, and will in all probability never make this trip or anything like it. I will be glad if the letters have proven helpful to any.
It is proper that these letters of travel should close with something about