Show IN THE COUNTRY the M lights or of life and und the III as idreno ol 01 i trip through ern CONCLUDED rn IN Y so away from los angeles ils groups of idle brown faced in their flat brimmed mexican leaning against a the posts thin cigar and its group of listless d dark ark eyed women with kerchiefs round their heads or necks sitting on the doorsteps away th through rough valleys of corn broken up by orange ries ries and vine vineyards ards where tho tile river flows through i a tangle of willows I and elder oder and ina skeet past the sin san gabriel mission overtaken poor P idle frag fragment merit of the past by tho the railroad civilization of the present and arid already isolated in ats sleepiness end and antiquity from front the busier b ajer younger young ge r world word about abou t it on through A a scone scene of perpetual fertility orange range groves aud and lc lemon iiron field fields of f vegetables and corn with ponc gra gradates nates cs all aglow with scarlet go flow era and eucalyptus tre treca in their ragged foliage of blue and brown elic squash grows here to a very great size I have haveE seen cen them sir said a passenger weighing b as much as yourself tho impertinence im pertinence erti nence of ill think of a squash venturing to turn the scale against ft A mo lot perhaps it will pretend that it has cs as good a scat seat on a horse or will it play me a single wicket match at cricket I should not have minded eo ro much if it had bad becu a watermelon or a 11 or some other refined variety of the f family amily but a squash t the he poor r relation elation of the pumpkin should But bu t enough let us bo generous even to squashes but some ono one ought to write the psychology of the squats there is a very ver y large human family of the came same name and character if you ask what the bulky tasteless tiling thi is good for people always say aib ob for a pie now that is the only form farm in w which bich I have tasted it and I can say from personal experience therefore fo e that it is not good for that it never hurts or speaks ill of any one an tedious stupid person too commonplace to be either liked or disliked economical parents say quashes are very al on ali I i air they may be but they f aro are not conducive to the formation matian fr of character some one too ought to visit these old frarick franciscan can missions in southern california some ono one who could write about them and sketch ketch them they are very deight ight ful the more delightful per 11 laps bee because ause they aro are in states on the abc same continent as live towns as chicago and omaha and leadville and tombstone stone scattered about among the rolling grassland land arc are hollows filled IV with ith orchards orchard in which old settlements and new are fairly ered while tha the missions themselves ar aro i singularly picturesque and san gabriels church they say has a pretty peal of bella bells wh which ich the monks carried overland from mexico in the old spanish days and which still chime chim e f for or vespers as prettily as ever what a wonder it must have been to the wandering indians to hear that most beautiful of nf all melodies the chime of bjelis ascending with the evening evenin mists t from under the feet of the t te hilll b no wonder they had bad campanile legends these poor poets of the hlll prairie irie or that they still speak of valleys V of E enchantment where music may be heard beard at past savanna and monte with its swine droves and its settlement of men who live on ho he and hominy pas past st puente and and P pomona amona into colton where we dine and wll well for half a dollar enjoying for dessert a chat with a very pretty t y girl she elie tella tells us of the beauties of san bernardino nardino aud I could easily credit even more than eho she bays for san bernardino nardino was settled ed by cormons mormons Mor mons some fifty years ago and has all the charms of jf salt lake city with those of natural u ral fertility and find a profusion of nat ural vegetation added so no won der our belle waa so rapturous but tho the track docs does not pass it and I can say nothing A of san bernardino and then our train reinforced by another engine a dumpy engine of all work sort of help clambers up the san gorgonio pass all along the road I notice tice a yellow ellor threadlike thread like epiphyte or air blant P ilant tangles itself round the rous mus keet acet trees and kills them they call it the tile here but it is the same curious plant that strangles the orange q trees in indian gardens ens and the J jujubes in the jun jungles les that cobwebs the aloe hedges and ban hangs its pretty retty little white bells of flower alp alf over the undergrowth on oa the bare sandy ground a wild gourd with will and sharp pointed spearhead spear head loaves leaves throws out long strands that creep flat along the ground with a curious curious snakelike snake like appearance clumps of wild oleander find a frugal subsist tence and here and there an elder or a walnut manages to thrive but the profuse fertility of california is fast fasts disappearing and so to gor genio at the top of the pass and thence we begin to go down down down till we are astonished to to that we are feet below the level leyel of the seal seat the cactus has on cemore reasserted itself and to right and left are forests of th this s grotesque ro tesque candelabra like vegetable ble with stiff arma arms covered apparently with some me wooly sort of kluft the sou soil beneath them ia is a desperate looking desert sand and hero here and there are bare levels of white glistening sterility but waterworks water works uch such wonders that th there ere is ia no saying what may happen at present however it is pu pure re unadulterated desert wilderness enough to delight a camel were it not f for or the quantity of stones that bestrew the waste and that would make it an abomination to that fastidious beast camels were once im imported arted into tho the countr country Y but the Meri experiment ment failed and no wonder imagine the modem american americ an trying t crying to drive A camell the mexicans cais do it but I doubt if any other race in all america could be found with sufficient contempt foe for time sufficient cl L nt patience in id lenea sufficient nem in fact to personally conduct a camel train thereasa there is a tradition by the way that somewhere in arizona wild camels the dese cud anta ants of the discarded brutes are to be met with to abil 41 day yv enjoying joy aug a life jiro without occupation we entered this arid and track esaies where near the station of the seven palms they can be seen growing rowing far away on the left under afe the foothills and about halfway half balf way through we found ourselves at tho the station of two palms but they are in tubs of course there may be others and no doubt are but all you can bee from the cars is a limited wilderness yet on oil those mountains there on iho the right one is feet there 18 is splendid pine timber and on the other side of them incredible as it seems ar are glorious eglorious pastures where tho the cattle are wading knee deep in grass for us however the hideous wilderness continues the lower pass ia is a monotony of glaring sand ugly rock fragments and occasional bristly cactus and then begins a it low chaparral of camel thorn or luskeet mu niu skeet and as evening closes in we ve find ourselves at the colorado river and at yuma where the thieun bun shines tram from a cloud cloudless luss sky three hundred and ten days in the year aa tc r l T inen mentioned A ta n c it as we t act along T for I wished to emph emphasize alize it by bringing it in at the end of my letter ineil well the tu weather wea lher there was nc none ne to speak of afy unless you can call cal I a fierce dry oven heat averaging ciuc ninety ty six degrees in tho the shade shad eweather and thia this is all that we have had for the last twelve hours or so heat beat enough to blister even a lizard or frizzle a salamander A hot lot wind like the loo of the indian plains blew across abo desperate sands getting cco reo robed itself as it went and spitefully passing on its heat beat to us it wafaa hot as Cawn pore ir in i june nearly near ly as a hot as aden and then the change at yumal yu mal we had suddenly stepped frome from egypt agypt in august into lower bengal in september from villair ous dry heat beat into a afar far more villainous c damp one the thermometer thou though gh the sun un had set bet was at 92 and added added to all was such suck a plague of mosquitoes as would have bave subdued even pharaoh into docility the instant literally the instant that we stepped stepped from our can cars our necks ban hands Is and faces wire we re attacked and on the platform everybody evea the halfbreed half breed indians loafing outside the dining room were hard bard at work with both hands defending themselves from the mall small miscreants cants the effect would have been ludicrous enough to any ar mor plated onlooker but it was no laughing matter wo we were too busy slapping ourselves ours elvea in m two places at once to think of even smiling at others r similarly imil arly enz engaged aged and the last la I remember of detestable yu ina was the man who sells photographs on the platform whirling his h u Is hands buds with experienced skill round his head and packing up his wre wares by suat snatches ches in between the whirls |