I. So by this fashion of
naming I keep faith with the land and annex to my own estate a very
great territory to which none has a surer title.

The country where you may have sight and touch of that which is written
lies between the high Sierras south from Yosemite--east and south over a
very great assemblage of broken ranges beyond Death Valley, and on
illimitably into the Mojave Desert. You may come into the borders of it
from the south by a stage journey that has the effect of involving a
great lapse of time, or from the north by rail, dropping out of the
overland route at Reno. The best of all ways is over the Sierra passes
by pack and trail, seeing and believing. But the real heart and core of
the country are not to be come at in a month's vacation. One must summer
and winter with the land and wait its occasions. Pine woods that take
two and three seasons to the ripening of cones, roots that lie by in the
sand seven years awaiting a growing rain, firs that grow fifty years
before flowering,--these do not scrape acquaintance. But if ever you
come beyond the borders as far as the town that lies in a hill dimple at
the foot of Kearsarge, never leave it until you have knocked at the door
of the brown house under the willow-tree at the end of the village
street, and there you shall have such news of the land, of its trails
and what is astir in them, as one lover of it can give to another.

NOTE ON THE ILLUSTRATIONS

The Publishers feel that they have been peculiarly fortunate in securing
Mr. E. Boyd Smith as the illustrator and interpreter of Mrs. Austin's
charming sketches of the "Land of Little Rain." His familiarity with the
region and his rare artistic skill have enabled him to give the very
atmosphere of the desert, and graphically to portray its life, animal
and human. This will be felt not only in the full-page compositions, but
in the delightful marginal sketches, which are not less illustrative,
although, from their nature, it is impracticable to enumerate them in a
formal list.

CONTENTS:

THE LAND OF LITTLE RAIN

WATER TRAILS OF THE CERISO

THE SCAVENGERS

THE POCKET HUNTER

SHOSHONE LAND

JIMVILLE--A BRET HARTE TOWN

MY NEIGHBOR'S FIELD

THE MESA TRAIL

THE BASKET MAKER

THE STREETS OF THE MOUNTAINS

WATER BORDERS

OTHER WATER BORDERS

NURSLINGS OF THE SKY

THE LITTLE TOWN OF THE GRAPE VINES

East awa