I left the description of the journey when in the desert, and now return there. As the line enters the State of Arizona it begins to descend. It had ascended previously, which had made the heat bearable. But a few hours of descent made a woful change. Coats, waistcoats were discarded by the men, while the female passengers followed suit as far as they could. No use! we all gasped and panted and used many pocket-handkerchiefs. The temperature rose higher and higher, and the night was the worst, for we were then at the lowest point. Between Tucson and Yuma the heat was simply infernal. I believe this tract is the bed of what, ages ago, was an inland sea; anyhow it had all the appearance of it, and I was later told geologists thought so too. It is, to say the least, very likely, for Yuma, I heard, is several hundred feet below sea-level. The latitude is 32½° north, a warm latitude in any case, but with desert for hundreds of miles all round, with perhaps as low an elevation as exists on earth, shut in on all sides so that not a breath of air can get at it, what wonder that Yuma and all about there is hot? I have experienced great heat in many parts of the world, but Suez, the Red Sea, the hottest parts of India, are a joke to what I felt there. I have since heard it has the reputation of being the hottest place on earth! Between Yuma and the head of the Gulf of California is about eighty miles. It would not therefore be difficult to let the water of the ocean into this dry bed, and make a large sea there, the same as they propose to do in Northern Africa. Yuma is on the boundary-line between the States of Arizona and California, but it is some six hours further west by rail ere you leave this supposed dry sea bed and begin to ascend. California had been painted to me in such bright colours, both in England and America, I could not, when daylight came the following morning, and there was still nothing but desert, believe we were really there. But so it was. We ascended for some hours, and the climate bettered as we did so, until at last we could breathe once more, but the desert was still there, and it was not till we came near Los Angeles, which is some 150 miles beyond Yuma, that we began to encounter vegetation. Los Angeles (the Angels) was so named by the Spaniards who founded it. It is on the barren Pacific coast alluded to, but the soil is of desert kind number two, that is, it has vitality in it, and water makes it fertile. Thus by artificial means (for of rain there is very little) the environs of the town are highly cultivated. Fruit is the main product. The grapes are magnificent, so are the peaches, in appearance at least, but they lack flavour. This defect is common to that fruit all over California; but I need not enumerate each kind of fruit grown, all that thrives both in temperate and semi-tropical regions is found there, and, the peaches excepted, all first rate of their kinds.