that fall to the
generation of today.

What San Bernardino is now to the west-bound traveler, Wilmington was
then--the end of the desert. From Wilmington eastward stretched one
tremendous ocean of sand, interspersed here and there by majestic
mountains in the fastnesses of which little fertile valleys with clear
mountain streams were to be discovered later by the pioneer
homesteaders. Where now are miles upon miles of yellow-fruited orange
and lemon groves, betraying the care and knowledge of a later generation
of scientific farmers, were then only dreary, barren wastes, with only
the mountains and clumps of sagebrush, soapweed, cacti, creosote bushes
and mesquite to break the everlasting monotony of the prospect.

Farming then, indeed, was almost as little thought of as irrigation, for
men's minds were fixed on the star of whitest brilliancy--_Gold_. Men
even made fortunes in the diggings and returned East and bought farms,
never realizing that what might be pushed above the soil of California
was destined to prove of far greater consequence than anything men would
ever find hidden beneath.

The march to Arizona was both difficult and dangerous, and was to be
attempted safely only by large parties. Water was scarce and wells few
and far between, and there were several stretches as, for instance, that
between what are now known as the Imperial Mountains and Yuma, of more
than sixty miles with no water at all. The well at Dos Palmas was not
dug until a later date. Across these stretches the traveler had to
depend on what water he could manage to pack in a canteen strung around
his waist or on his horse or mule. On the march were often to be seen,
as they are still, those wonderful desert mirages of which so much has
been written by explorers and scientists. Sometimes these took the form
of lakes, fringed with palms, which tantalized and ever kept mockingly
at a distance. Many the desert traveler who has been cruelly deceived by
these mirages!

Yuma, of which I have just spoken, is famed for many reasons. For one
thing, the story that United States army officers "raised the
temperature of the place thirty degrees" to be relieved from duty there,
has been laughed at wherever Americans have been wont to congregate. And
that old story told by Sherman, of the soldier who died at Yuma after
living a particularly vicious existence here below, and who soon
afterwards telegraphed from Hades for his blankets, has also done muc