A certain railway porter, it is said, was once sorely puzzled by a tortoise which the owner wished to send by train. The official was nonplussed by the inquiry as to which head of the tariff the creature should be considered to fall under; but, at last, deciding that it was neither "a dog" nor "a parrot" (the broad zoological classification in use on British railways) pronounced the tortoise to be "an insect," and therefore not liable to charge. This profound decision was prefaced by a brief enumeration of the animals which the railway company call "dogs." "Cats is dogs, and rabbits is dogs, and so is guinea-pigs," said the porter, "but squirrels in cages is parrots!"
But please note particularly the porter's confusion of identity with regard to the rabbit. This excellent rodent is emphatically called "a dog." But the rabbit knows much better than to mistake itself for a dog. It might as well think itself a poacher.
Meanwhile, other attempts have been made to confuse it as to its own individuality; and if the rabbit eventually gives itself up as a hopeless conundrum, it is not more than might be expected. Its fur is now called "seal-skin" in the cheap goods market; the fluke has attacked it as if it were a sheep; while in recent English elections, when the Ground Game Bill was to the front, it was a very important factor. All the same, everybody goes on shooting it just as if it were a mere rabbit. This, I would contend, is hardly fair; for if its skin is really sealskin, the rabbit must, of necessity, be a seal, and, as such, ought to be harpooned from a boat, and not shot at with double-barrelled guns. It is absurd to talk of going out "sealing" in gaiters, with a terrier, for the pursuit of the seal is a marine operation, and concerned with ships and icebergs and whaling line. A sportsman, therefore, who goes out in quest of this valuable pelt should, in common regard for the proprieties, affect Arctic apparel; and, instead of ranging with his gun, should station himself with a harpoon over the "seal's" blow-hole, and, when it comes up to breathe, take his chance of striking it, not forgetting to have some water handy to pour over the line while it is being rapidly paid out, as otherwise it is very liable to catch fire from friction. By this means the rabbit would arrive at some intelligible conception of itself, and be spared much of the discomfort which must now arise from doubts as to its personality. Nothing, indeed, is so precious to sentient things as a conviction of their own "identity" and their "individuality," and I need only refer those who have any doubt about it to the whole range of moral philosophy to assure themselves of this fact. If we were not certain who we were two days running, much of the pleasure of life would be lost to us.
We entered the arid tract somewhere near the station of the Seven Palms. They can be seen growing far away on the left under the "foot-hills." About half way through we find ourselves at the station of Two Palms, but they are in tubs. Of course there may be others, and no doubt are. But all you can see from the cars is a limited wilderness. Yet on those mountains there, on the right—one is 12,000 feet—there is splendid pine timber; and on the other side of them, incredible as it seems, are glorious pastures, where the cattle are wading knee-deep in grass! For us, however, the hideous wilderness continues. The hours pass in a monotony of glaring sand, ugly rock fragments, and occasional bristly cactus. And then begins a low chapparal of "camel-thorn" or "muskeet," and as evening closes in we find ourselves at the Colorado River and at Yuma, where the sun shines from a cloudless sky three hundred and ten days in the year.
And the weather? I have not mentioned it as we travelled along, for I wished to emphasize it by bringing it in at the end of the chapter. Well, the weather. There was none to speak of, unless you can call a fierce dry over-heat, averaging 96 in the shade, weather. And this is all that we have had for the last twelve hours or so; heat enough to blister even a lizard, or frizzle a salamander. A hot wind, like the "100" of the Indian plains, blew across the desperate sands, getting scorched itself as it went, and spitefully passing on its heat to us. It was as hot as Cawnpore in June; nearly as hot as Aden. And then the change at Yuma! We had suddenly stepped from Egypt in August into Lower Bengal in September—from a villainous dry heat into afar more villainous damp one. The thermometer, though the sun had set, was at and, added to all, was such a plague of mosquitoes as would have subdued even Pharaoh into docility. The instant—literally, the instant—that we stepped from our cars our necks, hands, and faces were attacked, and on the platform everybody, even the half-breed Indians loafing outside the dining-room, were hard at work with both hands defending themselves from the small miscreants. The effect would have been ludicrous enough to any armour-plated onlooker, but it was no laughing matter. We were too busy slapping ourselves in two places at once to think of even smiling at others similarly engaged; and the last I remember of detestable Yuma was the man who sells photographs on the platform, whirling his hands with experienced skill round his head and packing up his wares by snatches in between his whirls.
CHAPTER XXVI.
THROUGH THE COWBOYS' COUNTRY.
The Santa Cruz Valley—The Cactus—An ancient and honourable Pueblo—A terrible Beverage—Are Cicadas deaf?—A floral Catastrophe—The Secretary and the Peccaries.
YUMA marks the frontier between California and Arizona. But it might just as well mark the frontier between India and Beluchistan, for it reproduces with exact fidelity a portion of the town of Rohri, in Sind. A broad, full-streamed river (the Colorado) seems to divide the town into two; on the top of its steep bank stands a military post, a group of bungalows, single-storied, white-walled, green-shuttered, verandahed. On the opposite side cluster low, flat-roofed houses, walled in with mud, while here and there a white-washed bungalow, with broad projecting eaves, stands in its own compound. Brown-skinned men with only a waistcloth round the loins loaf around, and in the sandy spaces that separate the buildings lean pariah dogs lie about, languid with the heat. The dreadful temperature assists to complete the delusion, and finally the mosquitoes of the Colorado river have all the ferocity of those that hatch on the banks of the Indus.
Against our will, too, these pernicious insects board our train and refuse to be blown out again by all the draughts which we tax our ingenuity to create. So we sit up sulkily in a cloud of tobacco smoke far into the night and Arizona—watching the wonderful cactus-plants passing our windows in gaunt procession, and here and there seeing a fire flash past us, lit probably by Papajo Indians for the preparation of their abominable "poolke" liquor. But the mosquitoes are satisfied at last, and go to sleep, and so we go too.