The  land of little rain
By: by Mary Austin
Publisher: Houghton, Mifflin and company
Published: 1903
Place of publication: Boston; New York
Number of pages: 280
Subjects: Natural history -- California; California -- Description and travel
Description: Mary Hunter Austin (1868-1934) moved with her family from Illinois to the desert on the edge of the San Joaquin Valley in 1888. In the next fifteen years she moved from one desert community to another, working on her sketches of desert and Indian life. Spending the last years of her life in Santa Fe, Austin remained a lifelong defender of Native Americans and was recognized as an expert in Native American poetry. The land of little rain (1903), Austin's first book, focuses on the arid and semi-arid regions of California between the High Sierras south of Yosemite: the Ceriso, Death Valley, the Mojave Desert; and towns such as Jimville, Kearsarge, and Las Uvas. She writes of the region's climate, plants, and animals and of its people: the Ute, Paiute, Mojave, and Shoshone tribes; European-American gold prospectors and borax miners; and descendants of Hispanic settlers.
Table of contents: title: The land of little rain
pagenum: 1; title: Water trails of the Ceriso
pagenum: 23; title: The scavengers
pagenum: 45; title: The pocket hunter
pagenum: 61; title: Shoshone land
pagenum: 81; title: Jimville, a Bret Harte town
pagenum: 103; title: My neighbor's field
pagenum: 123; title: The Mesa trail
pagenum: 141; title: The basket maker
pagenum: 161; title: The streets of the mountains
pagenum: 181; title: Water borders
pagenum: 203; title: Other water borders
pagenum: 223; title: Nurslings of the sky
pagenum: 243; title: The little town of the grape vines
pagenum: 263