Nielsen and I visited them, taking an
armload of canned fruit, and boxes of sweet crackers, which they
received with evident joy. Through this overture I got a peep into one
of the tents. The simplicity and frugality of the desert Piute or Navajo
were here wanting. These children of the open wore white men's apparel
and ate white men's food; and they even had a cook stove and a sewing
machine in their tent. With all that they were trying to live like
Indians. For me the spectacle was melancholy. Another manifestation
added to my long list of degeneration of the Indians by the whites! The
tent was a buzzing beehive of flies. I never before saw so many. In a
corner I saw a naked Indian baby asleep on a goat skin, all his brown
warm-tinted skin spotted black with flies.

Later in the day one of the Indian men called upon us at our camp. I was
surprised to hear him use good English. He said he had been educated in
a government school in California. From him I learned considerable about
Death Valley. As he was about to depart, on the way to his labor in the
fields, he put his hand in his ragged pocket and drew forth an old
beaded hat band, and with calm dignity, worthy of any gift, he made me a
present of it. Then he went on his way. The incident touched me. I had
been kind. The Indian was not to be outdone. How that reminded me of the
many instances of pride in Indians! Who yet has ever told the story of
the Indian--the truth, the spirit, the soul of his tragedy?

Nielsen and I climbed high up the west slope to the top of a gravel
ridge swept clean and packed hard by the winds. Here I sat down while my
companion tramped curiously around. At my feet I found a tiny flower, so
tiny as to almost defy detection. The color resembled sage-gray and it
had the fragrance of sage. Hard to find and wonderful to see--was its
tiny blossom! The small leaves were perfectly formed, very soft, veined
and scalloped, with a fine fuzz and a glistening sparkle. That desert
flower of a day, in its isolation and fragility, yet its unquenchable
spirit to live, was as great to me as the tremendous reddening bulk of
the Funeral Mountains looming so sinisterly over me.

Then I saw some large bats with white heads flitting around in zigzag
flights--assuredly new and strange creatures to me.

I had come up there to this high ridge to take advantage of the bleak
lonely spot commanding a view of valley and mountains. Before I could
compose myself to wa