Grant County herald. [volume] (Lancaster, Wis.) 1850-1968, 1884-12-11
NUMBER II.

country Whicn lies Contiguous ~ tnal /
am attempting 10 describe, aud Is con-
tinuatlon of tile same desert:
we say the world is instinct with
life. Here, if the phraseology may be
pardoned, is a place instinct with death.
A huge basin whose rim is the ancient
hills. stricken with the barrenness of
eternal desolation; whose bosom. the
blasted waste of the descrt-treeIess.
shrabless. aud waterless, save few
bitter pools like the I've of potash water;
surrounded by mountains that tower
thousands of feet above the sen level,
itself lying three hundred feet below the
sea. Ii is a very Gehenna-a place of
death and bones. Birds do not fly over
it. Animals do not enter it. Vegeta-
ton cannot exist in it. The broad sands
absorb the heat, the bare mountains re-
fleet it, the same unclouded sun daily
adds to il. Ninety degrees in the shade
4 (artiiicial shade-there is no other)
means winter. One hundred and thirty
and one hundred and forty degrees
that's summer.
The hot air grows hotter. waivers,
trembles with heat, until nature, goad-
ed to madness, can endure no more:
and then the burning blast rouses itself
-rouses in its might; rouses as an angry
beast, with hoarsc, ominous roar;
sweeps over the broad reach of the des-
ert, bearing in its black, whirling hos
om-black as the midnight, sand, alkali
and death. Sometimes a murky cloud
gathers upon the mountain above; then
there is rush-a warning sigh on the
winds, "a rumbling in the air; the hills
culver, the earth trembles, and tor
rent, half water, half mud, bounds from
the hills. leaps into the desert, blowing
chasms like river-beds in the loose sand.
The clouds scatter. the sun comes
again, the eternal thirst of The desert is
not quenched.
DEATH ON THE DESERT.
i lin the year 1849 party of emigrants
entered this basin. Day after day they
toiled on-thirsting. dying. The pitiless
mountains walled them in; no escape.
One by one they dropped and died. A
few, abandoning everything, scaled the
mountains and escaped. The others lie
as they tell, dried to mummies
birds even to devour them, no beasts to
prey upon them. Wagon tires unrusted,
gun barrels bright, untarnished.
1T is as though Nature had gathered
all of the eurses-heat, thirst, alkali,
barrenness, death--all in one huge mass
of hatred, and hurled it,a terrible anath-
ema of eternal desolation, upon the
shuddering earth. She hath made of it
! a EOlv0t ha--a nlaaa of ckullc
"Or. it is as though God had repented
Him of His anger when He said, Cur
sed be the earth for thy saker'-as
though He repented Him and withheld
His curse; and yet. that His word might
not be broken, gathered up the bitter
ness of the curse. distilled it, concen-
trated it, grasped the very essence of it
IN His hand, and, raising it aloft, hurled
tone awful bolt of consuming wrath
downward, and it hit The northwest
ern corner of San Bernardino county.
Men call the spot where it struck Death
Valley"
As winter approaches the danger
upon the desert is increased by the fire.
kquency of sand storms or mothers
when not only sand, dust and alkali are
swept along in a sulioeating cloud, but
gravel stones are blown with sufficient
force to pierce the human skin. In such
q storm dumb animals cover and
crouch upon the earth. A noriher that
is somewhat prolonged means death to
beast, bird, or human being that may
chance to be upon the open desert.
TO BE LOST
In such land is to travel on and on
through the tedious sands until energy
has been taxed to its utmost, but to find
still an endless eXpanse of desert
stretching before. To have uncertainty
succeeded by doubt, and doubt by dis
pair. To feel a sickening sense of the
hopelessness OF the situation, and TO
waste the last remaining strength IN
confusedly wandering to and fro. 10
shout for help in wild despair and to
have the voice borne away upon the
desert and not even an echo returned
The utter loneliness and helplessness,
the sense of confusion and terror, the
desperation akin to madness, the mad
ness itself which seizes upon q man in
this frightful emergency heart is
stout enough to withstand i'll
To perish from thirst in such a land
is to drink the last dregs from the mott
ell chalice of hell. TO endure internally
the torture of fire, till the throat is
parched and the membranes afiame; till
the tongue is swollen and protudes from
the mouth; till the visage is darkened
with agony, the eyes starting from their
sockets. Then reason forsakes her
throne, and in wild delirium the poor
wretch falls upon the hot sands and with
writings and contortions, dies. If the
angel of pity came at all it was only to
take away his consciousness and spare
the more than mortal anguish of his last
moments.
And about the PROSTATE body of him
who has just persisted there reigns the
stiffness of chaos. The sun is setting
with diminished glow, and, behold in
the eastern horizon, as if TO mock this
terrible scene of thirst, he paints in mir
age broad sheet of placid waters. The
unruflled surface is dotted here and there
with tree-decked islands, and the distant
mountain chain which forms the farther
bank is bright with verdure TO the wa
ter's edge. In fancy there are long in
lets and broad rivers, ripping brooks
and gushing fountains; there are shady
hooks and cool retreats where the
blessed might delight to dwell. 1t is a
base hallucination, a trayesty on nature.
The placid waters are not, nnless it be
in that other land to which the tortured
spirit has taken its flight
No; men are not very ready to incur
such risks. Even the reward of thou
sand dollars proves but slight tempta-
ton to go in search of poor Tom Cover
remains.
THE CLIMAX OF a LIFE OF ADVENTURE.
, Thos. W. Cover was man fifty-two
years of age, and had led an adyentur-
Gus and eyentful life. He was one of the
pioneers of Montana. In 1868. in com
pany with others, he discovered the ia
mons Alder GuIch nlacpr mines rhasa