The California Birthday Book Part 13

APRIL 6.

In the universal pean of gladness which the earth at Eastertide raises to the Lord of Life, the wilderness and the solitary place have part, and the desert then does in truth blossom as the rose. And how comforting are the blossoms of the desert when at last they have come!

When the sun has sunk behind the rim of the verdure-less range of granite hills that westward bound my view, and the palpitating light of the night's first stars s.h.i.+nes out in the tender afterglow, I love to linger on the cooling sands and touch my cheek to the flowers. Now has the desert shaken off the livery of death, and ... is become an abiding place of hope.

CHARLES FRANCIS SAUNDERS, in _Blossoms of the Desert._

APRIL 7.

There had been no hand to lay a wreath upon his tomb. But soon, as if the weeping skies had scattered seeds of pity, tiny flowerets, yellow, blue, red, and white, were sprouting on the sides of the grave. * * * A delicious perfume filled the air. The desert cemetery was now a place of beauty as well as a place of peace. But the silence and solitude remained unbroken, except when a long-tailed lizard scurried through the undergrowth, or a big horned toad, white and black, like patterned enamel, took a blinking peep of melancholy surprise into the yawning ditch that blocked his accustomed way.

EDMUND MITCh.e.l.l, in _In Desert Keeping._

APRIL 8.

To those who know the desert's heart, and through years of closest intimacy--have learned to love it in all its moods; it has for them something that is greater than charm, more lasting than beauty a something to which no man can give a name. Speech is not needed, for they who are elect to love these things understand one another without words; and the desert speaks to them through its silence.

IDAH MEACHAM STROBRIDGE, in _Miner's Mirage Land._

At length I struck upon a spot where a little stream of water was oozing out from the bank of sand. As I sc.r.a.ped away the surface I saw something which would have made me dance for joy had I not been weighed down by the long boots. For there, in very truth, was a live Olive, with its graceful sh.e.l.l and a beautiful pearl-colored body.

JOSIAH KEEP, in _West Coast Sh.e.l.ls._

APRIL 9.

DESERT DUST.

With all its heat and dust the desert has its charms. The desert dust is dusty dust, but not dirty dust. Compared with the awful organic dust of New York, London, or Paris, it is inorganic and pure. On those strips of the Libyan and Arabian deserts which lie along the Nile, the desert dust is largely made up of the residuum of royalty, of withered Ptolemies, of arid Pharaohs, for the tombs of queens and kings are counted here by the hundreds, and of their royal progeny and their royal retainers by the thousands. These dessicated dynasties have been drying so long that they are now quite antiseptic.

The dust of these dead and gone kings makes extraordinarily fertile soil for vegetable gardens when irrigated with the rich, thick water of the Nile. Their mummies also make excellent pigments for the brush.

Rameses and Setos, Cleopatra and Hatasu--all these great ones, dead and turned to clay, are said, when properly ground, to make a rich umber paint highly popular with artists.

JEROME HART, in _A Levantine Log-Book._

APRIL 10.

The mountain wall of the Sierra bounds California on its eastern side.

It is rampart, towering and impregnable, between the garden and the desert. From its crest, brooded over by cloud, glittering with crusted snows, the traveler can look over crag and precipice, mounting files of pines and ravines swimming in unfathomable shadow, to where, vast, pale, far-flung in its dreamy adolescence, lies California, the garden.

GERALDINE BONNER, in _The Pioneer._

APRIL 11.

MIRAGE IN THE MOHAVE DESERT.

They hear the rippling waters call; They see the fields of balm; And faint and clear above it all, The s.h.i.+mmer of some silver palm That s.h.i.+nes thro' all that stirless calm So near, so near--and yet they fall All scorched with heat and blind with pain, Their faces downward to the plain, Their arms reached toward the mountain wall.

ROSALIE KERCHEVAL.

APRIL 12.

The desert calls to him who has once felt its strange attraction, calls and compels him to return, as the sea compels the sailor to forsake the land. He who has once felt its power can never free himself from the haunting charm of the desert.

GEORGE HAMILTON FITCH, in _Palm Springs, Land of Suns.h.i.+ne Magazine._

IN SANCTUARY.

The wind broke open a rose's heart And scattered her petals far apart.

Driven before the churlish blast Some in the meadow brook were cast, Or fell in the tangle of the sedge; Some were impaled on the thorn of the hedge; But one was caught on my dear love's breast Where long ago my heart found rest.

CHARLES FRANCIS SAUNDERS, in _Overland Monthly, July_, 1907.

APRIL 13.

For fifteen months the desert of California had lain athirst. The cattle of the vast ranges had fled from the parched sands, the dying, shriveled shrubs, appealing vainly, mutely, for rain, and had taken refuge in the mountains. They instinctively retreated from the death of the desert and sheltered themselves in the green of the foot-hills.

North, east, south, and west, rain had fallen, but here, for miles on either side of the little isolated station * * * the plain had so baked in the semi-tropical sun until even the hardiest sage-brush took on the color of the sand which billowed toward the eastern horizon like an untraveled ocean.

MRS. FREMONT OLDER, in _The Giants._

APRIL 14.