Gloucester County Democrat. (Woodbury, N.J.) 1878-1932, 1904-06-23
GENERAL CONFERENCE T0URI
TO THE PACIFIC COAST.

Mr., EDIToR:-
The desert has its moods, its comedies
and, alas, its tragedies. Along the river
courses and wherever irrigated the sage
brush disappears, the deep:tinted grasses
form a covering of green and trees grow
luxuriantly. Next each other are grayness
and greenness, death and life.
We are not to think of the desert as a
place where nothing grows. The Mojaye
desert comes nearest our idea of sandy
waste without any growth whatever, but
even there the stunted sage-brush grows and
the giant cactus looms up misshappen
gnarled, woody formation sometimes reach :
inc a height of fifteen or even twenty feet
As thereare few streams in N. Mexico and
Arizona and very little irrigated land, these
sections will give US the best examples of
what we understand by the American des-
ert. ), and even there conditions are not the
same in all localities.
On the western foothills of the Great Di-
vide in New Mexico a sort of dry grass
grows which bears a nutritious seed and
cattle thrive upon it. This grass varies
somewhat in color and at distance the
hills seem clothed with a carpet in which
rich yellows and browns predominant. But
on the desert proper no grass grows. On the
baked sands are the sage brush, soapweed,
different species of cacti, and here and there
1:441. 5ooo,+ Ao1z,orS xuauo their rin1x
or yellow heads in gleeful defiance of the
arid conditions. After awhile one begins
to have growing respect for the sage-brush
which is bent upon covering the nakedness
of the land. In many places it is dwarfed to
a tiny bush only few inches in height, in
other more favored localities it reaches a
height of two or three feet; but whatever
its size it is the growth which does not fail
1t sometimes rains upon the desert but in
the form of cloudbursts, and does very little
good except in low places where fair sized
Villages are sometimes seen and water is
procured by boring artesian wells. In such
villages there are about as many windmills
as residences. River beds, perhaps hum
dred feet in width and eight or ten feet deep,
have been ploughed by the rushing waters.
These river beds are generally perfectly dry,
but the railroads have to span them with
costly bridges. Cloudbursts usually occur
during May and June; and, while they
sometimes fail I'VE were told that in some
places no rain had fallen for two years.,
every pgecaution has to be taken against
the mighty torrents of water.
Particularly in Arizona during recent
years venturesome cattlemen presumed up
on their ability to procure water for their
herds. but the wells failed and the heart
rending story of starvation is told in the
thousands Of clustering white skeletons
which dot the desert and line the dry river
beds where the instinct Of the dying creat-
ures had taken them.
There are no roads on the desert, but trails
are numerous, and there is always one rum
ming nearly parallel with the railroad.
Where we would get hopelessly lost the
Mexican and Indian ride with assurance
day or night The dry atmosphere and
cloudless sky of the desert plateau make the
night much lighter than with us and the
moonlight appeared so bright we could hard
ly believe the morning were not at hand.
We do not remember an instance of mir
age on the American desert; but few days
later while travelling north from Los Angel
es over broad stretches of the Mojave desert
were constantly beholding beautiful vis-
tas Of water, at times fringed with trees and
grasses. and we could hardly believe that
we were simply looking upon pictured areas
OF the broad Pacific. And this reminds us
that on the desert where the horizon is not
broken with mountains, the earth and sky
seem to met in strata Of pale blues and greens
hat give a rem arkable resemblance to the
seashore, when seen from distance.
The desert is crossed and recrossed by
mountain ranges presenting formations of
very size, shape and color, and here and
there are peaks which loom up again and
are seen for hours. They become familiar
and, when obsoured by other mountains, we
wonder whether we shall see them again,
but they reappear and we greet them as old
friends.
Oil burning. engines are used as coal is
scarce, and the millions of sparks flying from
the smokestacks make very pretty pyro-
technic display. On account Of the extreme
dryness of the, atmosphere oil for domestic
purposes iscarried in iron tanks instead Of
wooden barrels.
The chief Indian reservations are some
istance north Of our line Of travel 50 we
did not see the Moqui nor the Navajo with
his brilliant blanket, but some Of the tribe
encroach upon the desert as far as the arid
ity will allow. At Albuquerque they i'm