Wauwatosa news. [volume] (Wauwatosa, Wis.) 1900-1948, 1909-04-02
WONDERS OF THE
COLORADO DESERT
CONVERSATION BETWEEN MEN A
MILE APART CAN BE CARRIED
ON IN ORDINARY TONE.
VEGETATION is PECULIAR.
Cactus Grows in ALI Forms from Small
Balls to Stalks Ten Feet in
Height.
TREES HAVE TURNED TO STONE.

Talk about wireless telephones, The
Colorado desert goes science one better
in that line. According to travellers in
that neck of sand and sagebrush, you
can dispense with any kind of telephone,
with or without wires, at least up to a
certain distance.
Two men mile apart can carry on
a conversation in an ordinary tone of
voice, particularly il there happens to
be small hill behind each, writes Har-
vey Hall Kessler in the Travel Maya
zine. The prevailing silence is so in
tense that it might be called deafening
The Mirage of the Desert.
Perhaps, after all, the weirdest among
many strange features of the desert is
the mirage. We have camped perhaps
and gone to bed early in the evening,
with the thermometer registering not far
below the hundred mark. We awake
shivering with cold beneath our blankets,
and look toward the east.
Ihere is the slightest suggestion of
hight IN the sky there, which as we watch
grows slowly in strength; a grayish haze
marks the horizons edge, which stands
out more sharply at one point from
which broad, pale rays creep up and out
high above in the sky. These again
SLOWLY Jade as a point of brilliant light
appears at their base. This point grows
TO half circle; then breaks and runs
along the skyline in a surging, golden
lake.
Upon the shores of this lake cities
spring up, towers, spires and solid
blocks; these fade into fields and forests
and farming scenes; fields of golden
grain, cattle standing in green alfalfa,
sheets of water. The mountains near
the edge of the lake separate from their
bases and. float upward, topple over and
stand on their heads, their unwieldy feet
in air.
Soon our lake begins to contract and
collect into big, round ball of dazzling
brllllance hung just above the horizon
arms and forest disappear; the noun
talns, as though abashed at being caught
IN such an unseemly attitude by the
broad light of day, quickly resume their
normal position, while all the stark land
scape stiffens into unstirring endurance
OF the garish light and blazing heat of
the desert sun. The mirage is gone
like bubble; only the gray desert re-
mains.
Desert Is a Real One.
The Colorado desert is the name given
to some twenty thousand square miles
OF drifting sand and rocky mound tucked
away in the far southeastern corner
of the state of magnificent distances.
Emerging out of the Mojave on the
northy lit stretches away a hundred miles
vide between the Colorado river and
the San JacintO range of mountains.
across the boundary line of Mexico to no
definite termination in lower California
1t IS as true desert as absence of
water, animal and vegetable life and the
present of shifting sand and scorching
heat can make. To the west it is barred
from fhe fertile coast lands by ranges of
mountains which turn to the desert such
rugged and PERCEPTIONS faces that there
are but three places in hundred miles
where wagon can lind a way down.
What vegetation there is in the desert
below is of a most peculiar type. Cactus
is present in all shapes, from a round
ball the size of ones head to tall thin
stalks ten feet in height. The balls when
chopped open with an axe, which will
sometimes rebound from their tough
surface, are found to contain sponge
like pulp soaked with water. They are
said to have been the means of saving
the lives of many threatened with death
from thirst.
Then there are varieties that grow in
links, sausage-like; the links maturing
and dropping to the sand, where they
take root to make another plant. They
are provided with needle pointed barbed
thorns that pierce heavy leather shoes
as though they were made of paper.
There are small delicate members of the
family, which at first sight lead one to
believe that at last he has found a cac-
tus without thorns. They are soft and
valvety to the touch, but when one ex-
amines his hands after handling them he
win find the skin full of microscopic
thornS.
Most cacti are so inhammable that #
"a lighted match is applied to them they
blaze up as if soaked with kerosene.
Preservative Power of Air.
When an animal dies here the carcass
does not decay, but dries up and shrivels
to the bones. Tibet mummifying art of
the ancient Egyptians is surpassed by
nature using as agent this wonderfully
dry, thin air. The meat of deer or an
telope becomes jerky - dried meat-the
day after the animal 10 killed. As
consequence it is impossible TO have fresh
meat in camp for long-although it never
spoils.
In places are stream beds where per
haps once in several years heavy rains
in distant mountains will cause water
to flow for short time. In these dry
Watercourses several varieties of stunt
ed tree forms are often found. The des-
ert willow, which resembles the willow
with which we are familiar, though much
smaller in size; the val verde, or green
tree. a tree which is a bright green from
trunk to TIP of limb in every twig; and
the irOnwood. so dense in fiber that il
turns an axes edge; are the principal va
rieties. They are rarely above twenty
feet high, and, like all desert vegetation.
have not n leaf.
They are apparently outcasts from the
two great tree divisions. deliduous and
citrus, for they have leaves neither to
lose nor to keep. These may be called
the living dogs of the tree family; we
will find here also the dead lions.
Not far from the mountain range we
will come upon the remains of what
were once extensive forests of gigantic
trees, now turned TO stone and lying as
they fell centuries ago. The great trunks.
perfect in grain, knot and bark fiber.
cumDer the ground in tangled confusion
in those places which have been pro-
tected from the drifting sand. giving evil
dence that what is now a desert was
once upon a time tropical Wilderness
New York Sun.
Lawson PinkS Running Out?