"Dutch Jake," illustration for Under the Sky in California, 1913. Larger.
Not everyone's cut out to be a desert rat, but spend time in California's desert regions and maybe you'll see how its subtle charms offer some hardy souls a healthy antidote for city living.
Charles Francis Saunders had a keen appreciation for the open vistas of California's desert stretches, possibly, he thought, an inborn characteristic and one more enjoyable when shared.
We once met at a little desert post-office an old prospector who had "packed" his burros up and down the barren rocks of the desert ranges for thirty years and who now held an open letter in his hand. His brother, a well-to-do bachelor in New York, had just died, and a firm of lawyers there had written the prospector to come East, as his presence was needed to settle the estate to which he was sole heir.
"Gosh!" he said disgustedly, "I reckon I'll have to go but you bet your life I'll be back p.d.q. New York! Say, I was there once, and if it come to choosin' between livin' in that place with a million to spend, and prospectin' the desert with old Jack and Jinny on a grubstake, me for the desert!"
"A Camp in Yosemite," photograph for Under the Sky in California, 1913. Larger.
Spend a summer camping in Yosemite Valley and you'll likely be sharing the place with thousands of your closest friends, all of whom think that they're just as tough and rugged as you are.
The most independent and least expensive way to see the Yosemite Valley is to camp there, and every year thousands spend their vacations thus in this enchanting wonderland, seeing its magnificences as the dweller within hotel walls can never hope to see them. Along the sunny meadow lands skirting the Merced River as well as in the shady pine woods, both below and above the little village of Yosemite, are hundreds of camp sites absolutely free to visitors who may wish to pitch their tents upon them, subject only to certain simple regulations imposed by the United States Government.
Charles Francis Saunders wrote several books with California themes, many of which were illustrated, as was Under the Sky in California, with his own photographs.
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