river-water, and go again out on deck, where we could always get
a cup of black coffee from the Chinaman.

And thus began another day of intolerable glare and heat.
Conversation lagged; no topic seemed to have any interest except
the thermometer, which hung in the coolest place on the boat; and
one day when Major Worth looked at it and pronounced it one
hundred and twenty-two in the shade, a grim despair seized upon
me, and I wondered how much more heat human beings could endure.
There was nothing to relieve the monotony of the scenery. On each
side of us, low river banks, and nothing between those and the
horizon line. On our left was Lower * California, and on our
right, Arizona. Both appeared to be deserts.

*This term is here used (as we used it at Ehrenberg) to designate
the low, flat lands west of the river, without any reference to
Lower California proper,--the long peninsula belonging to Mexico.

As the river narrowed, however, the trip began to be enlivened by
the constant danger of getting aground on the shifting sand-bars
which are so numerous in this mighty river. Jack Mellon was then
the most famous pilot on the Colorado, and he was very skilful in
steering clear of the sand-bars, skimming over them, or working
his boat off, when once fast upon them. The deck-hands, men of a
mixed Indian and Mexican race, stood ready with long poles, in
the bow, to jump overboard, when we struck a bar,and by dint of
pushing, and reversing the engine, the boat would swing off.

On approaching a shallow place, they would sound with their
poles, and in a sing-song high-pitched tone drawl out the number