I dreaded the passage of the Desert to Yuma; and indeed the heat was intense. No wonder that with the thermometer ranging from 100° to 104°, all the blinds in the car were pulled down, and we sprawled listlessly on the cushions. Our excellent attendants put forth all the resources of art in the shape of ice and preparations of limes and cocktails; but the temperature would not be baffled. We could just read, and were aware that we were living, and some of us had strength enough now and then to execute forays against flies with napkins to drive them out of the carriages. How could people live out in the open, and work in the mines, or pursue any out-of-door employment in such torrid heat? Nevertheless, there was a marked distinction between it and the heat to be endured with the mercury at an equal height in India. The speed of the train was very respectable--somewhat over twenty miles an hour--and at that rate we ran from San Gorgonio and Banning on to Cabazon, through a flat plain, dry and burnt up, very like the desert around Suez, and fringed, like it, with rocky and rugged hills, save that there was a great growth of Spanish bayonets and cactuses of all kinds among the stones and sand, and that snow was to be seen on all the hill-tops in the distance. For 107 miles there was no water to be met with going along this plain; but the mirage, of which I have spoken in the account of our journey to San Francisco, was frequent and beautiful; and again I was fascinated by the sight of lovely lakes embowered in trees, with stately cities on their shores, changing and shifting and melting away, only again to assume apparent substance to cheat the senses. Once the train stopped to allow the passengers to visit the mud-geysers, which were not more than 150 yards on the left of the line, and with commendable curiosity most of us got out and walked over the baked earth to the spot. There was no mark whatever of smoke or vapour to indicate the place; and it was almost startling to come suddenly upon a kind of pond of semi-liquid mud, fifty or sixty feet in diameter, on which huge bubbles, varying in size from an orange to a hogshead, were continually forming and bursting. There was a faint sulphurous smell, and the ground around the liquefied portion of the surface, where the bubbles were breaking, was hot and cracked. The conductor said that all attempts to reach the bottom of the holes through which the bubbles arose had failed. Two of these geysers were in active operation, and the plain away to the left of the rail was said to contain a great number of them. After all it was very unsatisfactory to see this ebullition going on without being able to account for it; and, generally, I think we thought less of each other and of our information after visiting them, and finding out that not one of us had any theory on the subject which would bear either fire or water.