The Albany register. [volume] (Albany, Or.) 1868-18??, 1874-11-06
Eternal Desolation.


In the northwest corner of San Ber-
nardino county, lying partly also in Inyo
county, and, by the newly surveyed line,
partly also in the State of Nevada, is a
region paralleled by few other spots on
the face of the earth. We say the world
is instinct with life. Here, if the phra-
seology may be pardoned, is a place
instinct with death. A huge basin,
whose rim is the ancient hills, stricken
with the barrenness of eternal desola-
ton, whose bosom is the blasted waste
of the desert-treeless, shrubless and
waterless, save a few bitter pools like
the lye of potash water surrounded by
mountains that tower thousands of feet
above the sea-1evel, itself lying three
hundred feet above the sea. It is very
stGehenna "a place of death and
bones. Birds do not fly over it. Ami
mails do not enter it. Vegetation can
not exist in it. The broad sands absorb
the heat, the bare mountains reflect it,
the unelouded sun daily adds to it.
Ninety degrees in the shade (artifcial
shade, there is no other) means winter.
One hundred and thirty and one hun
dred and forty degrees, that is summer.
The hot air grows hotter, wavers,
| trembles with heat, until nature. goaded
to madness, can endure no more; and
then the burning blast rouses itself in
its might; rouses as an angry beast,
with a hoarse, ominous roar; sweeps
mile after mile, ON, ever on, over the
broad reach Of the desert, bearing in
/ its black, whirling bosom-black as the
midnight-dust, sand, alkali and death.
Sometimes a murky cloud gathers upon
| the mountains above; then there is a
rush-a warning sigh on the winds-a
low rumbling in the air the hills
quiver, the earth trembles, and a tor
rent, half water, half mud, bounds from
the hills, leaps into the desert, plowing
chasms like river beds in the loose sand.
The clouds scatter, the sun comes
again, the eternal thirst of the desert is
not quenched. The raging river was
only dream.
In the year 1849 party of emigrants
entered the basin. Day after day they
toiled on, thirsting, dying. The pitt
less mountains walled them in; no es-
cape. One by one they dropped and
died. A few, abandoning everything,
scaled the mountains and escaped. The
others lie as they fell, dried to mum
mies-no birds even to devour their
flesh no beasts to prey upon them.
Wagon-tires unrusted gun-barrels
bright, untarnished. Such is the place.
Mile after mile silence reigns silence
| and death.
| a Walled by the mountains, doomed with brazer
League after league the never-endng sand
Spreads like the ocean, to the lifting eye,
An aged, weary, long-forgotten land
As cursed i'll wrath, and sInit with Gods fierce
hand,
No cooling mist quenches the endless thirst
That rules supreme the boundless stretches
over its broad expanse no storn-clouds burst
With hurrying feet. 1t is a land accursed."
Railway Mortality.
Railway servants lead life full OF
risk. The numbers of this class of per-
sons wounded and killed each year is
/ appaIling-so appalling that the rail-
/ way companies manifest the utmost
anxiety to keep the statistics bearing
ON the subject from the public. In
England the railway companies are re-
quired by statute to furnish annually a
return of the railway accidents attended
with loss of life or personal injury.
| The companies, it would seem from a
report sent to the London Times by
Mr.. NJ. I. Bass, have made returns as
! required. but most inaccurate ones.
| The companies are subjected to a fine
| for any error in their statistics, and so
numerous have these errors been that
the aggregate of fines has reached the
immense figure of $2,00O,000. Thus
the Lancashire and Yorkshire Company
reported that thirty-nine of their SER
wants were killed and seventy-th in
jured in 1872. The fact is, that fifty
four were killed and l 1867 injured. So at
least Mr.. Bass report says. On all the
railways in England there were returned
killed during the same year 632, and in
jured 1896. Mr.. Phillips, agent OF
Mr.. Bass, argues that the number OF
killed was 1 1,080, and of injured 27, $40.
This last year the accidents on English
railways have been even more numer
Gus than in 1872. It is estimated that
during the last year 1900 railway SER
wants were killed on English railways,
and $1,000 injured. The number OF
injured. according to the returns. was
only LII, an error of 25, S29 Eight
railway companies have made erroneous
returns last year. The number of killed
returned by the Lancashire and York.
| shire Railway Company, for instance, was
| only thirty-nine. The real number it
seems was l,317. Some of these non
official statistics are only inferential.
There is, however, every reason to be-
lieve that they are much more reliable
than those furnished by the railway
companies themselves.
It seems probable that legal proceed
ings against the defaulting companies
will be instituted by the British Board
of Trade. It is to be hoped that, in the
interest of the security of life and limb,
such proceedings will be begun. The
prosecution of the companies which
have failed to send in accurate returns
| of the number of their servants killed
and wounded will have tendency to
make them more respectful of human
life. Hence its advisability.- Chicago
Tribune.