STRANGENESS OF THE DESERT.

Dunstan Times, Issue 2482, 24 May 1909, Page 8

STRANGENESS OF THE DESERT.

Considerable commotion was caused in the Bois de Boulogne, Paris, by the appearance of Prince Paul Troubetskoi, the well-biown Russian sculptor, accompanied by a fierce-looking wolf. The Prince asserts that the animal is absolutely harmless. When the artist lived in St. Petersburg he possessed a menagerie of pets, ;n----eluding a bear, a Mongolian horse, a dozen Siberian dogs, and a gray wolf reputed to be as inoffensive as a lamb. Prince Troubetskoi is a vegetarian of many real's’ standing, and his animals were all brought up in ignorance of the taste of meat. The wolf used to eat raw potatoes and water melon out of its master’s hand. One day, however, smelling some sausages in the neighbor’s cupboard, it broke in and devoured them. A few days later the wolf died. The Prince declares that it was poisoned by the meat juices, which were fatal to an animal which had been fed exclusively on vegetihles.

Talk about wireless telephones; the Colorado Desert goes science one better in that line, declares a writer in the Travel Magazine. According to travellers in that neck of sand and sagebrush, you can dispense with any kind of telephone, with or without wireless, at least up to a certain distance.

Two men a mile apart can carry on a conversation in an ordinary tone of voice, particularly if there happens to be a small hill behind each. The prevailing silence is so intense that it might be called deafening. Perhaps, after all, the weirdest among many strange features of the desert is the mirage. We have camped, perhaps, and gone to bed early in the evening with the thermometer registering not far below tho ICO mark. We awake shivering with cold beneath our blankets, and look toward the east.

There is the slightest suggestion of light in the sky there, which, as we watch, grows strongly in strength, a grayish haze marks the horizon’s edge, which stands out more sharply at one point from which broad, pale rays creep up and out high above in the sky. These again slowly fade as a point of brilliant light appeal's at their base. This point grows to a half-circle, then breaks and runs along the skyline in a surging golden lake. Upon the shores of this lake cities spring up, towers, spires, and solid blocks; these fade into fields of golden grain; cattle standing in green alfalfa, sheets of water. The mountains near the edge of the lake separate from their bases and float upward, topple over and stand on their heads, their unwieldy feet in the air. Soon our lake begins to contract and collect into a big, round ball of dazzling brilliancy hung just above the horizon. Farms and forest disappear, the mountains, as though abashed at being caught in such unseemb’ attitude by the broad light of day, quickly resume their normal position, while all the stark landscape stiffens into unstirring endurance of the garish light and blazing heat of the desert sun. The mirage is gone like a bubble; only the gray desert remains.

The Colorado Desert is tne name given to some twenty thousand square miles of drifting sand and rocky mound tucked away in the far south-western corner i f the State of magnificent distances. Emerging out of the Mojave on the north, it stretches away, a hundred miles wide, between the Colorado River and the San Jacinto range of mountains, across the boundary lino of Mexico to no definite termination in lower California. What vegetation there is in the desert below is ox a most neculiar type. Cactus is present in all shapes, from a round hall the size of one’s head to tall thin stalks ten feet in height. The balls, when chopped open with an axe, which will sometimes rebound from their tough surface, are found to contain a sponge-like pulp soaked with water. They are said to have been the means of saving the lives of many threatened with death from thirst.

Then there are varieties that grow in links, sausage-like ; the links maturing and dropping to the sand, where they take root to make another plant. They are pi'ovidod with needle-pointed barbed thorns that pierce heavy leather shoes as though they were made of paper. There are small, delicate members of the family which at first sight lead one to believe that at last lie has found a cactus without thorns.

Most cacti are so inflammable that if a lighted match is applied to them they blaze up as u soaked in kerosene. In places are stream beds where, perhaps once in several years, heavy rains in the distant mountains will cause water to flow for a short time. In these dirty watercourses several varieties of stunted tree forms are oTen found. The desert willow, which resembles the willow with which we are familiar, though smaller in size; the val verde, or green tree, a tree which is a bright green from trunk to end of limb and in every twig, and the ironwood, so dense in fibre that it turns an axe’s edge, are the principal varieties. They are rarely above 20 feet high, and, like all desert vegetation, have not a leaf.

To protect documents of a “highly confidential” nature £223 14s 7d was spent on new locks and keys at the Foreign Office during the financial'year ending March hist, according to the Appropriation Accounts, just issued.

Gambling has become such an absorbing passion in St. Petersburg, even women tempting fortune, that the police have been compelled to take action. A women’s gambling dear in one of the chief streets was recently closed, and again a raid was made at the great railway station, whence the express trains leave for abroad. A detective officer, Colonel Ladovski, discovered a gambling club at the station. It is believed that the club was kept by a police inspector named Vassilieff, who was arrested. It is stated that wealthy passengers awaiting the departure or arrival of trains were invited to play, and even ‘ fleeced” of their railway tickets, which the cashier, it is alleged, resold. The police seized £BOO found in the club.