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Show LOWER CALIFORNIA. Various Growths Atmospherical Deceptions De-ceptions Effects of the Atmosphere on Metals and Animals "La Pra-dera Pra-dera Hondra" a Land of Wonders Inhabited by Poisonous Reptiles Marvelous Beauty of Desert Flowers Present an Object Lesson of Death and the Resurrection Guano Islands Interesting Information, - i (Special Cor. Intermountain Catholic.) (Copyrighted.) From my first article on Lower California "E may have left the impression on the minds of my readers that the entire peninsula is a waste of desolation des-olation or that an anathema of sterility has withered with-ered tho whole country. This would not be the truth. As we near the southwestern coast the land begins to shed more vegetation and we begin to experience ex-perience a mild, soft and almost langurous air. The palo verde, the mesquite. the giant sahuaros and many varieties of the cacti gradually appear. Along the eastern coast the land is yet more covered with mesquite trees, and malma and bunch grass above which looms the columnar pihahaya. The mesas or table lands of sand have here and there groo and gramma grasses. Here, as we climb the mountains we meet scrub oak and hill juniper, till at an elevation ele-vation ! 6,000 feet we enter the pine lands. Owing Ow-ing to the peculiarity of the river beds which run through loose quaternary deposits the water whi.-h flows down the mountains during the rainy seasons disappears in the porous earth, converges to underground under-ground channels, and after following its subterranean subterran-ean course for many miles, is lost entirely or comes again to the surface where the older formation rises or is crossed by a dyke forming a natural dam. By reason of the clearness of the atmos- phere and the absence of all foreign substances in the air distances are deceptive and appearances 1 delusive. Small objects as the outlines of an iso- lated mound, the face of a projecting rock or a I browsing steer loom large and stand out sharp and well defined. At a distance of fifteen miles foot- j hills seem but one or two miles off. From the top j of Para hill, fifty miles inland, I have seen the j panorama of the shores and bay. the town of La . Paz. the hills and valleys, all clearly outlined. The I escarpment of the San Juan mountains, 100 miles j to the north of the hill on which I was standing, I seemed but twenty miles away, and from the high- est peak of the Cerita range, on a fine, clear day, I they tell me, a circular panorama 350 miles in di- ameter, inclosing the most varied scenes of tower- I ing mountains, sunken deserts of yellow, shifting i sands, patches of cultivated land and rolling ocean, I are plainly .visible. This diaphonou3 condition of the atmosphere is so deceptive that a stranger will sometimes begin a walk for a neighboring hill, thinking it only a few miles off, when, in reality it is twenty miles away. In certain stretches of this wonder- f ful land currents of air of widely different j temperature, and hydrometric layers of atmosphere I Lving one over the other produce an electric condi- f tion like what we are told occurs on the high Peru- j yian Andes. Owing to extreme dryness the ground. I is a very poor conductor, so that the superabund- since of electricity in tho air corrodes metallic im- plernents or objects exposed and left upon the ground for any length of time. At times when f desert storms sweep across the face of the land the ! air is so abundantly charge'd with electricity that f the hair of the head will stand out like that of a boy on an insulating stool. The hair on horses j tails and manes become like the bristles on a brush, j but seemingly no annoying effects follow. There are regions of this extraordinary land where rheu- I matism is unknown. Leather articles, books and goods which mildew in other coast lands, may here remain exposed night and day without injury, I showing the harmless character of the climate, in- j 'striking contrast with that of the Madeira and Canary Islands where leather molds, salts deliquice I unprotected metal rusts, botanical specimens spoil- f and musical instruments cannot be kept in tune. j Mulberry trees in Italy and Southern France re- j quire constant care and vigilance, but here, onco f planted, they demand no further attention. There f are here stitches of land where in the dry, hot and rarified air meats, eggs, fish and fowl remain uri- I tainted for days. I Back of the ancient and historic town of Lo- I retto with which I will deal in another article I (Continued on page 5.) f ' I j . .1 LOWER CALIFORNIA. (Continued from page 1.) there is a valley of contradiction, full of fascination fascina-tion to the eye today, and tomorrow a land of desolation des-olation and of horror. It is called "La Pradera Honda," the deep meadow, from its marvelous wealth and coloring of vegetation at certain seasons sea-sons and times. The Pradera reposes between two menacing ranges of barren mountains which yet retain the ancient marks left by the waters when the desert was an inland lake. When I saw "La Pradera" a few days ago it was under a shroud of sand, and of ashes that the angry volcanoes of the mountains had, long ago, vomited upon it. Turning to my Mexican companion and extending extend-ing my hand toward the Prada, I asked: "Is there any life there?" "Si, senor," he answered, "there is life there, but it is life that is death to you and me. You see these intermittent and miniature forests for-ests of bisnoga and cienga cacti ? They shade and protect from the fierce rays of a burning sun the deadly rattlesnake, the horned snake that strikes to kill, the kangaroo rat, the tarantula, the cha-walla, cha-walla, the white scorpion, the arana centipede, lizards liz-ards and poisonous spiders." The sun beat down upon the deadly silence, upon the dull gray floor of the desert where the bunched blades of the yucca brittled stiff in the hot, sandy waste. But before coming here I had heard of another and more wonderful life than the reptile existence dwelt upon by my friend. There are times when torrential torren-tial storms of rain rage fiercely among the mountains moun-tains bordering this arid land or a drifting cloud loaded with water strikes a towering peak. When these things happen, rivers of water flow madly down the furrows worn in the face of the great hills, and, hitting the desert, separate into sheets of liquid refreshment which gives life and beauty to desolation and aridity. They come, says the inspired in-spired writer, by the command of God, "to satisfy the desolate and waste ground and to cause the seed in the parched earth to spring forth." Then the ashen white waste is all aglow with myriad bios- I soms, and the desert sands are covered with a most ' beautiful carpet of wonderful flowers for many of which the science of botany has no name. J Of all these plants that bloom in this vale of ! Hinom, perhaps, the most pleasing to the eye are the flowers of the cacti, and the rapidity with which their dry and the apparently dead stalks throw out beautiful blossoms after their roots are watered, is one of the marvels of the desert. The cacti of La Pradera are an annual manifestation of the real ism of death and resurrection and, as the plants come into fullest bloom in early spring, this desert at the time of Easter is one vast circular meadow where the rarest and most beautiful flowers have risen from their graves as if to glorify the resurrection resur-rection of their Lord and Master. The largest and most wonderful flower of them all grows, I am told, on an ugly, short, misshapen cactus which, for eleven months of the year is to all outward seeming, seem-ing, dead, but when its roots are watered, blooms with supremely delicate and waxy petals. There is another cactus, a low creeping plant of round trunk and pointed stem, repellant as a snake, and ugly to look upon that, at about the time of the vernal equinox, is covered with large pink flowers, beautiful beauti-ful .as orchids and fragrant as the fairest rose in my lady's garden. Then by the sides, and between the Mexican agaves and the white plumed yuccas with trembling seriated leaves, are scattered in luxuriant lux-uriant prodigality columbines, phloxes, verbenas and as many as twenty or thirty varieties of flowering plants for which my limited knowledge of botany supplies no names. Unfortunately, for the present, the names of many of these rare species are not known even to our professional botanists, and the common varieties of those which are classified, and found in other parts of California bear no such facinating and gorgeous array of flowers as those indigeneous to the "Pradera" desert. GUAXO ISLANDS. . . The Islands of St. George off the east coast of the 'Peninsula of California are a singular group of squeezed or lifted rocks on which the dew never settles and where rain never falls for years. These are the famous "rookery islands" where, for uncounted un-counted years, enormous numbers of birds of the sea and of the land have built their nests, deposited their eggs and hatched their young. By some mysterious mys-terious law of instinct and selection the birds, from the beginning, alloted small islands and sections on the larger islands to the different species of the feathered race, so that the sea birds, like the fri gate pelicans, the gulls, petrels and the like have their own allotments and the land birds theirs, and between them there is no friction or intrusion on each others' premises. With the first sign of daw.n they begin the flight for their feeding grounds, and for hours the heavens are intermittently obscured ob-scured by the countless members of the aerial host. They fly in battalions, or in orderly detachments, reach the feeding grounds on land or water fifty or a hundred miles away and at once scatter and separate in search of food. An hour before twilight, twi-light, and timing their distance, they rise again, converge to an aerial center and wing for home. As the birds approach the rookeries they announce their coming by cries, calls or shrieks and are answered an-swered by those on the nests or by the young but lately hatched. The cry of the birds is heard far out at sea, and to the. ship that sees no land the effect is weird and ghastly, if not ghostly. The decomposing de-composing bodies of dead birds, of feathers, bones, flesh and entrails, the disintegration of shells and the droppings from millions of birds for thousands of years have superimposed upon the primitive surface sur-face of the islands a deposit of 0eat commercial value, and in places eighty feet deep. This deposit, de-posit, saturated with ammonia and phosphorus, is called guano and, wherever found, is dug out, chiefly chief-ly by Chinese coolies, loaded on ships and freighted to the sea ports of Europe, where it is bagged or I barreled and sold to gardeners and farmers for fertilizing fer-tilizing their lands. On islands like Rotunda off Antigue, where the rock is porous and friable, atid on which rain occasionally falls, the guano liquefies, lique-fies, percolates through the porous stone and decomposing de-composing the rocks form what is known as mineral min-eral phosphates. Sta Margarita, L. C. |