into the thicket of rank, bitter-leaved arrowwood which surrounds the bitter and nauseous alkaline springs of the Palma Seca, drank of the slimy waters, filled my canteen afresh, and pushed on again down into the plain, with a walk of twenty-five miles through alkaline dust, in the hottest valley on the surface of the earth—seventy feet below the level of the sea at that—before me. About ten o'clock, a ranchero from San Bernardino, who had been out to the new old mines of Arizona with a drove of beef cattle, came up and joined me. His horse, a noble, fine-haired half-breed, far too good an animal to be brought out into this accursed desert to die of heat, thirst and starvation, was so weak that he could no longer bear the weight of his master, and jogged mechanically on, with his eyes closed and his ears hanging down, like two frost-bitten tobacco-leaves, as his late rider limped before him, packing his blankets on his shoulder, and pulling sadly at the halter. Noble—such was the name of my friend from San Bernardino—had been a jaunty-looking young fellow when I saw him starting out for the mines from home six weeks before. When I met him that day he was a fit subject for the pencil of Hogarth. His coat had dried up and vanished, piece by piece, in the thorny thickets beyond the Colorado, and his vest had followed suit; his hat was a wreck, his pants in ruins, and the uppers and soles of his boots having parted company, he had, in a fit of desperation, parted company with both. To replace his boots, he had split his lower nether garment in twain, and bound the sections around his
