The Colorado Desert [pp. 44-50]

THE COLORADO DESERT.
THE COLORADO DESERT.
ROSSING by the San Gorgonio
Pass, the continuation of the Sierra
Nevada range back of San Bernardino,
the traveler leaves the fertile coast valleys, and enters upon what appears to his
astonished eyes the parched and deathstricken remains of some ancient world.
As he came through the broad, rolling
pass, upon his right towered San Gorgonio Peak, a huge unbroken mass, 10,500
feet in height, the great trees up its rugged
sides dwindling to mere shrubs. Upon
the left, forming the other wall of the
pass, pine-clad San Bernardino, more
broken and irregular in outline, reaches
an altitude of II,500oo feet. But leaving
now the mountains behind, he descends
into what seems the scorched, blasted
bed of some old cyclopean furnace, a
wreck of the days when "there were
giants in the land." San Gorgonio and
San Bernardino on this side have lost
their pines, and brown, barren and desolate, frown down upon yet greater desolation. Upon the west, as far as the
eye can reach, stretch the Sierras in
an unending line-a forbidding, rugged
wall. At the north, a spur from this
main chain turns off eastward, and then
curving around bears to the south, parallel to the Sierras, making another abrupt wall, which at last drops down and
is lost near Fort Yuma. Inclosed by
these mountains, open only toward the
south, where 200 miles away it faces
out upon the waters of the Gulf of California, is the Colorado Desert. From
its upper end, the eye lifts mile after mile
toward the southeast over the broad expanse-no trees, no hills, no water, no
life. Only the glare of the never-ending
sand, the deceptive mirage, and the silence of death. Here and there a lone
whirlwind rears its stately column of
sand hundreds of feet in the heated air,
and travels slowly on for hours. At
times fierce blasts of scorching wind
rage for days, carrying the fine sand in
clouds that obscure the sun, and give
to the sky a dull red glare. These are
the dreaded sand-storms of the desert.
What is the Colorado Desert? In
the spring of I867, I crossed its upper
end with troops, on the road to La Paz.
I found the sand white with innumerable sea-shells, some minute, some fragile, such as are only found in sheltered
arms of the sea. For miles and miles
I traced with the eye a strange, welldefined line along the mountain sides,
always at the same level. It was as undeviating as the chalk-line of a carpenter's marking-twine. Riding out to it, I
found it to be the old beach of a sea.
The rocks were worn and rounded up
to that level, as by the constant washing
of water, with coarse coral formations
in their crevices and upon their under
sides. Above that line the rocks were
shlarp and jagged. The worn rocks showed that for ages the water had stood at
that level. No other beach could be discovered. The water consequently, when
it abandoned that level, must steadily
have diminished, until it disappeared.
The surveying party of the Southern
Pacific Railroad, in running the line to
Fort Yuma, struck the present sea-level
the moment their instruments reached
this ancient beach. Further south they
gradually descended, until a depression
of 2I5 feet below the sea was found.
The great basin of the desert, the chief
engineer, Mr. Phelps, estimated to be
at least 350 feet below the level of the
sea. The whole area now below the sea
[JAN.
44