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down we went into the maze

image

Carrizo Creek / Canyon sin nombre, looking east. December 1990.
same vicinity as shown in here was our water.

“Every quarter-mile brought some novelty to light... Stumbling over lumps of some brittle material, I found that they were compact clods of oyster shells (we were a few hundred feet above sea-level).It was a region to charm the geologist, though not the botanist. A few wretched creosotes and ocotillos alone held on to life, shrivelled, leafless, and half ossified...”

“Before us stretched a tangle of gullies and washes, braided together like one’s interlaced fingers... Down we went into the maze.”

ex J. Smeaton Chase (1864-1923 *), California Desert Trails (1919) : 276 (Stanford copy)
 

4 August 2013

tags: Carrizo Creek; deserts; sea level; water; J. Smeaton Chase, California Desert Trails (1919)