OCR Text |
Show Hip Beire . rtarttr f fentii ' , c . " at - , '" t ' " l " H " j , ONE f the Camps THE Coast Range culminates In the peaks of San Gorgonio and San Bernardino of the San Bernardino mountains, with San Antonio and San Jacinto only a little lower on either side. Then the range makes a decided drop to the south and shows heights of quite a different character, with blunt tops instead of sharp peaks. Palomar and Cajon u.ountains are bold and conspicuous but not high, as mountains moun-tains on the coast go. Still farther south, however, in the peninsula of Lower California, the range makes another an-other lunge upward and produces the great San Pedro Martlr mountain, more than nine thousand feet high. That is Its last great effort, for in its more southern reaches It is much broken, with plenty of peaks,- to be sure, but no high ones. While some of the mountains of the upper part of the range are higher than San Pedro Martlr, none other presents so huge a bulk. Seen from San Telmo, It is an unbroken wall forty or fifty miles long, which at the, north end Is first cut down sharply and then beyond is almost completely demolished, as mountains rank; and at the south end is torn into gaps and has had its crest knocked off. There are two picachos, sharp, needlelike, of pure white granite, but they are so near the eastern side of the mountain that they cannot be seen at. all from the west, and not from the bouth till one has reached San Juan De Dios, then they appear pointing heavenward, shining white like great Icebergs. Almost Perpendicular. The western side of the mountain Is abrupt, with very few places where It may be climbed, but the eastern side Is still more so and makeB an almost perpendicular drop to the desert. On that side one may descend, in scarcely more than an hour's time, from snow and freezing temperature to a spot where the sun is warm and birds are nesting. And thn from beneath the feathery crowns of tropical palms he may look back to where, almost directly di-rectly overhead, stand the rugged pines he has just left. It is miles across the top from east to west, and with its great length the dimensions of the mountain are such as to almost entitle it to be called i high tableland, with hills and valleys and streams of its own. As It is high enough to catch wintar snows and summer rains, the pasturage on the top is always good, and when the low-r low-r lands between the mountain and the Pacific are parched with drought here is a haven for starving nerds. They come fn-m as far away as San Juan De Dios and grow fat on the sweet grasses and the delightfully cool summer air. When winter grips the mountain, however, the herds must descend, for then the climate is too rigorous to be borne without sufficient suf-ficient shelter. The cattle and horses are not the only ones that grow fat from a summer sum-mer residence on San Pedro; the herders herd-ers also are in clover, for the great forests are the home of innumerable deer, and bighoru as well, though not in so great numbers as the deer. Two Mexican friends of mine who were tending a herd of cattle on the summit, sum-mit, in two weeks shot fifty deer and might easily have shot more. Another man had a standing offer from a San Francisco firm of $25 for cverj brad of a male bighorn, and be I shipped a good many. That traffic of course was stopped when Mexican law declared a closed season for mountain sheep. It was high time, too, for they were wantonly destroyed, sometimes not even for their heads and skins, but merely for the pleasure of slaughter. slaugh-ter. I think if American nimroda had understood how easily those marvelous marvel-ous hunting grounds might be reached by boat to San Quintin, where an effl- Plont Marfan n.irl, nvnnllnnt saddle and pack mules was to be procured, pro-cured, the slaughter would have proceeded pro-ceeded more merrily still. I heard of one American, and he from distant Boston, who had discovered this hunter's hunt-er's El Dorado, and who made periodical peri-odical trips to it. That was before Mexico, in fear of insurrectos, forbade the Importation of firearms into the peninsula. It Is not strange that San Pedro should harbor so much game, for it Is the only really wooded mountain on the peninsula, and the timber here is very fine. Deer and bighorn are not the only game; other animals there are, not so harmless, and that may even play the roll of hunter Instead In-stead of hunted. Mountain lions are so numerous that young colts, which they consider the most delicious of tidbits, have a hard time trying to he-come he-come horses. A man living on the western slope of the mountain showed me a corral fully five feet high from which a mountain lion took a three-year-old filly, leaping the fence with ease with the colt in his mouth, and dragging the carcass a mile up the side of the mountain before he stopped for his meal. Raging Torrents. On the eastern side there are streams that start bravely from the mountain, but they are immediately sucked up by the sands of the desert. Canyon Diablo is an excellent example of this; in the time of rains the water rushes from the mouth of the extremely ex-tremely narrow, rocky canyon, which is a mere slit In the mountain wall, in a tumultuous flood. It entirely fills the narrow opening so that the canyon can-yon cannot be ascended beyond its mouth, and it cannot be crossed, such a raging torrent Is It. Yet in less than a mile it has disappeared, and not only is there no stream, but the rounded arroyo . sides are of smooth sand as though years had passed since water flowed between them. Many streams of abundant flow start out in this way. but all promptly disappear. And as the mountain acts as a barrier to check the rains that come in from the Pacific, the strip of land between San Pedro and the (Suit of California remains absolute desert. On the western slope, however, the streams flow with greater assurance. One of them is turned from its channel chan-nel and is carried along the skirt of the mountain for twenty miles to wash the gold from the soil of Socorro. Socor-ro. San Antonio creek is a fairly typical mountain stream, a rushing little river, flowing through its own dense growth of alders and alamos. It proves the mountain quality of its water, too, by sheltering speckled trout that reach the very respectable size of twelve inches. In one fertile little cove in its deep, rocky canyon it nourishes an oasis of really tropical verdure, a tiny half-moon half-moon of land set thick with fig, grapa and peach, where Jack Frost nevef intrudes. |