From the cluster of spiked leaves, which attain a height of four or five feet, springs a pole ten to twelve feet tall, which bears large clusters of small yellow flowers filled with a sickishly sweet syrup. The maguey furnishes the native Indian with both food and clothing. From the fibers of the leaves he weaves coarse cloth, and the inner leaves, when stripped and cooked in the earth ovens by surrounding them with stones heated on coals, are considered a delicacy. Snake-weed is the name given a low-growing plant with a pulpy leaf, because when the leaves are crushed and applied to the wound, in case of snake-bite, they serve as an antidote to the poison. [Illustration: ONE OF THE DESERT BLOOMERS From photograph by C. C. Pierce & Co.] Pectis, or creosote bush, is another desert plant, with odor not unlike the essence of lemon. It is prized by the Indians for its medicinal properties. There are a number of other varieties of plants--mostly of the cactus family--which contribute to the sustenance of the Indians of the desert, but it is in the fibrous tissues of the giant cactus and the yuccas that they find their material for the weaving of garments, plaiting ropes, and making baskets and other articles of use and ornament. Of late years the squaws of the several desert tribes have found the making of baskets and other trinkets for sale to curio hunters a very profitable undertaking. One squaw of the Mojave Indians received more than three thousand dollars in a single year for work of that sort. And the desert, which flaunts the banner of death in the face of the stranger, hands out its treasures to its children, and they live and thrive and love it. There is a little flower found growing in certain portions of California's deserts, which fulfills the poet's statement embodied in the couplet: "Full many a flower is born to blush unseen And waste its sweetness on the desert air." The little yellow blossom has, so far as the writer knows, no name in the text-books on botany. It is a tiny blossom, growing very close to the ground, and it opens only at night. Then, whoso chances to pass through a patch of these flowers is treated to incense such as never exhaled from the most redolent orange orchard. [Illustration: A YELLOW DIAMOND-BACK RATTLER From photograph by C. C. Pierce & Co.] The perfume is given off in vast quantities, and is sweet beyond the power of language to describe, yet it is not the sickening, overpowering perfume of some plants. One does not need to lift the flower to the face to get the fragrance,--the air is fairly saturated with the sweet odor. The daylight, however, puts an end to both blossom and perfume. There is not a sign of the blossom to be found when the morning sun lights up the desert plain. It is only the night traveler who is favored with the sweet experience arising from an acquaintance with this strange plant. CHAPTER IV STRANGE DWELLERS OF THE DESERT