The daily morning journal and courier., 1906-09-29
DEATH VALLEY A GARDEN.
Gorgeous Flowers of the Cactus Aftel
 the Spring Rains,

Gorgeous Flowers of the Cactus After the Spring Rains,
 Think, if you will, of long, low valley, lying between two lofty ranges of barren mountains-a white, glisten- ing sink for a miserable desert river the whole overlaid with thick black pail of wind and sand and ashes from the dead craters that fringe It's bor- ders, add all the heat and horrid fumes of Gehenna, and you have some idea of Death Valley in summer.
 Wash the mountain clean with three months of almost continual cloudbursts and rain, rim in their feet and the whole edge of the valley with foot deep grasses, lush and green as any that ever hoored Sierran cienega, sprinkle the white waste with green punches of mesquite all aglow with myriad blos- sons, arch over all an Adriatic sky cooled with the balmiest of .breezes, and | you have pictured Death Valley at the beginning of spring. On the face of the green earth lies no more terrible bit of world in summer; no more beautiful one in spring.
 | And over the graves of many Ptute and desert tramp, teamster and lonely prospector-who have lain down to rise no more beneath It's heartless skies, glows the most beautiful carpet of wild flowers to be found in this bloom-famed land of California. Not half the plants of Death Valley are known to scien- lists, most of those that are known are little more than names, and will never be more until the prying arm of the railroad shall have laid bare some of the secrets of this Vale of Hinnom.
 Most beautiful and most plenty, of coutse, of all these plants that bloom Irsi the desert are the cacti and the ra- pidity with which they dry and appa- rently wlthered stalks put out blossoms under the touch of the rains is wonder full, The life of any one of the cacti is the personiflcation of death and resur- rection and as they come into fullest bloom on or about Easter, the whole desert, far as the eye can reach, seems l like one vast cathedral, arched with turquoise, floored with emerald and gayly garbed in giant Easter lilies.
 The largest and showiest blossom of them all grows on a short, stocky stem, which, during the summer, does not seem to have life enough to pro- duce the magnificent wavy f1owerse which are often as much as five inches across. A cactus much larger than ! this-the barrel cactus-has a very small and magnificent bloom, while the tirlest of all, a low, creeping, round stemmed, jointed growth, has an im- mense pink flower, beautiful as any or enid and rivalling the fairest rose of Persia in It's odor
 1 Unfortunately, the name of these rare species are not well known, and the commoner varieties, Which are also found on the coast slope, bear no such gorgeous array of blossoms. Old friends greet the traveller on the rim of Death Valley, too however. There is the cholla (pronounced choyalD, which, while large and many branched, pro- duces few or no flowers, reproducing it. self by Slipping" as our grandmothers were wont to say of their choice gera- Iniums Wherever an unusually long branch falls to the ground it seems al- most to work it's way into the earth, so soon do the shifting sands cover it. Then a process of roofing takes place, so that soon an entirely separate plant comes up a few feet from the parent. So it is that the great beds of cacti are formed throughout the desert,
 One noticeable thing about all the lplants in and around Death Valley is that they grow low in the ground-for no living thing can stand against the lsimoons that sweep this level floor for two hundred miles or over into the Nevada desert. These low growers lprotect themselves from the drifting sand in a wonderfully ingenious man. lner. When the plant first breaks from the ground it comes up not ir one stem, as do the taller cacti, but ir Imany tiny branching stalks, so that what solid earth and rocks there are among the sand clouds fall between these stalks and form a sort of open IWOIh DdIIiCdues ASdlISL lHlS lHe SdllC drifts, but does not choke out the life Iof the plant The winds of the desert lalways blow from the same direction so that the barricade is always availa-
 ble whether it be a rain, wind or sant storm that is blowing.
 And many prospector, driver through the gates of insanity to the very verge of death itself, has beer brought back, saved by miracle, as | were, by noting in the distance a fores of barrel cacti rising like huge, leaf1es. tree trunks, miles away across tht vale of shifting sands, To them h, has crept often over weary miles. or bleeding hands and knees from whicl the protecting corduroy had long beer worn. Reaching them. just strength enough left to plunge his knife int, their pulpy trunks, he has lain beneatl the cut, the syrup juice trickling int his mouth it's life saving stream. lPiute Indian can live for many days ol