The Arkansaw traveler., 1886-04-03
Winter Among tle Flutes.
By William Nye.

By William Nye.
 have been asked to write something oi an old-tlme experience of travel and ~,journ in certain wild mountain re T cIon which not very long ago was set down on the maps as uneXplored-a re gon which. owing to it's distance from any railway, may be considered, even at his late day, a somewhat secluded cor Fer at what is generally known as the far west Though the scenes and events herein narrated are of the past, and are seen through the mist of twenty-one ,rars yet the recollection of those wild iays still goes with me, on the whole d peasant and never-tading remembrance. Andif this narrative Is d very simple one Yct II at least offers to him who would know his country through and through, ome account of n very peculiar portion ut t, which tourists generally seem to have made but little acquaintance with.
 IL lies in the extreme southeastern part of the state of Nevada with Arizona and Utah on the south and east and the & Nolavc desert in theeXtrcme southwest "a wild country, where what few val leys there are that are blessed with the are luxury of abundant water, were in by gone times the real home of the vari- ol> bands of Piute and Shoshone h. lans It Is region of mountain ranges, txtending north and south with singu- Ar regularity Many of the ranges are Pne-elad mp to their very summits, while others are bare and desolate The in- trvening valleys are many of them Eaterless deserts. It Is stretch of x %~untry of some tragic interest, since 1t embraces the locality~ just beyond the he of Nevada, in Utah, known as Noun #hin Meadows, the scene of that never t-be forgotten, tragical Mountain Mea- dow massacre. From this as a starting z point, about two hundred miles due west lakes Us to Death Valley, crossing on the way many valleys. among which are those spots of fertility known as Clover and Pah-ranagat Valleys, the latter at about forty miles east of Death Valley. Excepting these oascs in the desert, 1t is land where the wild cactus Hettri-hes with no end of fantastic shapes; a land, m summer, of drought, of blazing skies overhead, where occasional streams of hwnv colored, alkaline, and seemingly
 
 ank in the sandy desert to rcappear again in other and far distant localities. Yet in spite of the alkaline and verdurc- ess valleys, there is to the lover of ma lure sort of wild pathos and gran ieur in many of its mountain ranges that is scarcely found elsewhere.
 Among the furrows that natures lloughshare has seemingly drawn broad and deep through the western part of that mountain land. is, have said, he one known as Death Nalley-a broad and waterless sink. which will always emain without living occupant save An occasional travelcr-unlcss, indeed haman enterprise should some day get tAe better of nature. and tear down the lyldes, and thus open way by which xAe waters of the ocean shall be coaXed ar inland, so as to make of that valley great inland sea; for the floor of Death alley has, through scientific investiga- bon, been proved to be one hundred md tifty-nine feet below the level of the cean. And if possibly the deep waters hould ever roll over it. and cover the alley from human sight. as the waters S the D-ad Sea are said said to hide the le of the cities of the plain, even then Ae tragic event of its early history alght well be worth handing down to osterity This tragedy. commemorated 7 the name of the valley, happened airty-seven years ago, in midsummer, nd during the early days of the settle aent of California, when to party of two nndred emigrantS, cn route to southern altornia, it proved to be veritable alley of the shadow of death
 My own acquaintance with the valley appened in the early part of the month
 March. in lS6i, and fortunately il was st after light snowfall in the adja- Fnt mountains, so that our need of ater was fully met by melting snow
 That was a haphazard journey. by a atherto untraveled way. through des- 't wilderness, from our winter camp in De mountains near Pah-ranagat Valley, n in a south-westerly direction, crossing Oeath Valley on the way It was hur- ed journey, for the staff of life had een broken: or, in other words, We had zen eaten out of our camp by half iarved Indians, and thus driven to seek refuge somewhere, to avoid starvation ind the way that we came to be in Pah- naSat diey, anu our acquaintance lth the Indians there, constitute the Hubject of this sketch
 As for the valley of Pah-ranagat, it is ne of the few valleys of that otherwise 1d region that are blessed with fertil- and abundant water The spot we hose for a camping place-a winter ome in the wildern ess-was, however,