f royalty, of withered
Ptolemies, of arid Pharaohs, for the tombs of queens and kings are
counted here by the hundreds, and of their royal progeny and their
royal retainers by the thousands. These dessicated dynasties have been
drying so long that they are now quite antiseptic.

The dust of these dead and gone kings makes extraordinarily fertile
soil for vegetable gardens when irrigated with the rich, thick water
of the Nile. Their mummies also make excellent pigments for the brush.
Rameses and Setos, Cleopatra and Hatasu--all these great ones, dead
and turned to clay, are said, when properly ground, to make a rich
umber paint highly popular with artists.

JEROME HART,
in _A Levantine Log-Book._

APRIL 10.

The mountain wall of the Sierra bounds California on its eastern side.
It is rampart, towering and impregnable, between the garden and the
desert. From its crest, brooded over by cloud, glittering with crusted
snows, the traveler can look over crag and precipice, mounting files
of pines and ravines swimming in unfathomable shadow, to where, vast,
pale, far-flung in its dreamy adolescence, lies California, the
garden.

GERALDINE BONNER,
in _The Pioneer._

APRIL 11.

MIRAGE IN THE MOHAVE DESERT.

They hear the rippling waters call;
They see the fields of balm;
And faint and clear above it all,
The shimmer of some silver palm
That shines thro' all that stirless calm
So near, so near--and yet they fall
All scorched with heat and blind with pain,
Their faces downward to the plain,
Their arms reached toward the mountain wall.

ROSALIE KERCHEVAL.

APRIL 12.

The desert calls to him who has once felt its strange attraction,
calls and compels him to return, as the sea compels the sailor to
forsake the land. He who has once felt its power can never free
himself from the haunting charm of the desert.

GEORGE HAMILTON FITCH,
in _Palm Springs, Land of Sunshine Magazine._

IN SANCTUARY.

The wind broke open a rose's heart
And scattered her petals far apart.
Driven before the churlish blast
Some in the meadow brook were cast,
Or fell in the tangle of the sedge;
Some were impaled on the thorn of the hedge;
But one was caught on my dear love's breast
Where long ago my heart found rest.

CHARLES FRANCIS SAUNDERS,
in _Overland Monthly, July_, 1907.

APRIL 13.

For fifteen months the desert of California had lain athirst. The
cattle