f it were not so there would be little
told of it.

This is the country of three seasons. From June on to November it lies
hot, still, and unbearable, sick with violent unrelieving storms; then
on until April, chill, quiescent, drinking its scant rain and scanter
snows; from April to the hot season again, blossoming, radiant, and
seductive. These months are only approximate; later or earlier the
rain-laden wind may drift up the water gate of the Colorado from the
Gulf, and the land sets its seasons by the rain.

The desert floras shame us with their cheerful adaptations to the
seasonal limitations. Their whole duty is to flower and fruit, and they
do it hardly, or with tropical luxuriance, as the rain admits. It is
recorded in the report of the Death Valley expedition that after a year
of abundant rains, on the Colorado desert was found a specimen of
Amaranthus ten feet high. A year later the same species in the same
place matured in the drought at four inches. One hopes the land may
breed like qualities in her human offspring, not tritely to "try," but
to do. Seldom does the desert herb attain the full stature of the type.
Extreme aridity and extreme altitude have the same dwarfing effect, so
that we find in the high Sierras and in Death Valley related species in
miniature that reach a comely growth in mean temperatures. Very fertile
are the desert plants in expedients to prevent evaporation, turning
their foliage edgewise toward the sun, growing silky hairs, exuding
viscid gum. The wind, which has a long sweep, harries and helps them. It
rolls up dunes about the stocky stems, encompassing and protective, and
above the dunes, which may be, as with the mesquite, three times as high
as a man, the blossoming twigs flourish and bear fruit.

There are many areas in the desert where drinkable water lies within a
few feet of the surface, indicated by the mesquite and the bunch grass
_(Sporobolus airoides)._ It is this nearness of unimagined help that
makes the tragedy of desert deaths. It is related that the final
breakdown of that hapless party that gave Death Valley its forbidding
name occurred in a locality where shallow wells would have saved them.
But how were they to know that? Properly equipped it is possible to go
safely across that ghastly sink, yet every year it takes its toll of
death, and yet men find there sun-dried mummies, of whom no trace or
recollection is preserved. To underestimate one's thirst, to pass a