Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1889-11-02
IN THE PAINTED DESERT.
What DR.. Merriam Saw On His Expedi-
ton to San Francisco Mountain.

What DIR. Merriam Saw On His Expedi-
ton to San Francisco Mountain.
THE WONDERS OF THE COLORADO C,SyoS--s,SD
wnIRLs IN THE DESERT NEW AND QUEER
DEAsrs-TEE TERRIBLE JOURNEY THROUGH TIE
HUGE GORGE.
The story of adventure told by DIR. Merriam,
who returned a few days ago from his wonder
tul expedition to the san Francisco mountain
whittier he was sent by the Agricultural depart
ment to study the animal and vegetable life of
that gigantic extinct volcano in Arizona-re-
minds one of Il tale by some such writer of ex-
travagant romance as Jules Verne or Rider
Haggard He not only assembled the precipi-
tous cliffs of this solitary peak, passing in the
journey of $4,000 perpendicular feet through
ali the floral and faunal zones of the earth
from the semi-tropics at the base to the arctic
apex towering, snow-laden, into the sky, but,
incidental to the trip, he witnessed many mar
wells in the grand canyon of the Colorado
and spent weeks in the awful painted desert.
amid such weird surroundings as death itself
might select for its abode
Imagine" he said yesterday, ian endless
waste of sand glaring yellow in the ever-shin-
=
not single sign Of vegetation anywhere. The
dust of the plain is SO finely powdere that your
feet sink into 1t two or three inches at each
step, while. to relieve the eye, there is nothing
but hill here and there, shaped invariably
like an inverted pot, with its sides scooped out
by the action of the elements so as to expose
the strata OF mari and sandstone in the cliffs,
cleaning IN brilliant hues of red. yellow
purple, brown and blue, which give the Painted
desert its name. On the tops of these hills are
to have been foated there when tue desert was
an inland sea long ages ago. Much of this
wood Is agatized, exhibiting the most beautiful
colors. Once in a while you come across
pool of muddy water, so strongly favored with
the alkal crusted around it that only the i'm
possibility of getting any other water to drink
could induce you to taste it. The temperature
during the day is commonly 40 degrees in the
shade. Fahrenheit and it is only at night that
any symptoms of animal life are discoverable.
Then the desert barrens swarm with scorpions,
centipedes of fatal bite, and great spiders in
Vulnerable.
DEATH IN THE SAND.
snow and then, while on the march you
see objects like enormous giants moving across
the waste swiftly. They are sand whirls, re-
sembling water-spouts in their formation, 200
or 300 feet in diameter, perhaps, and many
hundreds of feet in height On one occa-
ously. all whirling in different directions and
threatening death with their approach. If one
strikes you there is nothing to do but lie down
as nat as possible on the ground with your face
IN the sand; otherwise you will be swept away
or suffocated. These sand whirls are generated
by currents of ascending heat; they are varied
by sand blasts, 80 called, which sweep great
bodies OF loose sand across the desert with such
force that 1t bites into the very rocks; YOU can
imagine its effect upon the traveller. The only
q al n ha IN, flA nLal1 -
horse and the heat in the sun is so intense that
the glass of a thermometer exposed to it
breaks almost Immediately. So rapid is the
evaporation that the juices of ones body are
dried up, the blood becomes thickened and the
consequent suffering is intense"
NEW AND QUEER BEASTS.
"Did you find many new kinds of animals in
the desert?' asked The STAR reporter.
"Quite number that are new to science, re-
piled the doctor. "But the most curious of all
was little beast that shall name the 'scor-
plon mouse, because it appears to feed upon
scorpions exclusively. l don't know how it
manages to catch its food without being stung,
for you know how big and dangerous even to
man the scorpion is in that torrid region-butI
caught number Of them and scorpions were
found In the stomachs of them all. also found
queer sort OF kangaroo rat, a mouse with
jackass ears, and another kind of mouse with
pockets In its cheeks. The kangaroo rat has
very long tail and jumps like kangaroo. l
caught all these. except the scorpion
mouse, in the grand canyon ALSO That is
a weird place enough. 1t is simply the chan
mel of the great Colorado river, worn by the
erosion OF running water to depth of 5000 to
5000 feet The sides are perpendicular cliffs.
with Is miles between them; at the bottom
runs the river, over cascades and rapids, with
tremendous velocity. Owing to the difference
of altitude, l found the temperature 81 degrees
at the bottom while the water l had left in
bucket at the top was freezing. We were
camped at the bottom, alongside the stream,
when the survivors of Majors Browns party,
which had started to go through the canyon in
boats, turned up.
HORRORS OF THE CANYON.
You read about the accident, 1 suppose, in
the newspapers. Maj. Brown and one other
man were drowned, and, of the four who
reached our camp, one was already hopelessly
insane from fright. The only human being
who ever went through the grand canyon and
lived to tell the tale was Maj. Powell of the
geological survey. The three men who were
with him got frightened early in the journey
and climbed out over the cliffs, only to be
killed by the Indians in southern Utah few
days later The talk of running railway
through the canyon is the sheerest nonsense;
for stretches of the distance the river occupies
its whole width, and in seasons of food it
rises from 80 to 70 feet. 1t was very in
tereStlnR 10 observe that the animals
of the tropical belt had made their way up
thousands Of miles through this warm canyon
from the far south, so that the fauna in the
canyon was entirely different from the fauna
of the country round about. The vegetation
too, was tropical. There was not much room
for animal life on the rivers very brink, but
shelves miles in extent along the cliffs, high up
in the air and overgrown with cactus, afforded
plenty OF space for such beasts as were good at
climbing. l shot an owl in the canyon of a
kind SO rare that only five or six specimens
have ever been secured before; l also got @
new species OF skunk, with beautiful spotted
coat"
''And on the San Francisco mountain?"
MORE STRANGE SPECIMENS.
81 found more new kinds of mice there:
eight novel varieties Of mouse, discovered alto
gether on my trip. There was also q queer
gopher with cheek-pockets and seed-eating
squirrel that exhibited an interesting adapta-
ton Of coloring to environment On the dark
lava OF the mountain side it was dark and
speckled like the lava; from the mountain to
the desert it became steadily lighter, until,
when the latter was reached, it was the very
yellow of the sand. The horned toads, like
wise, were black as ink when found on the
lava, while those Of the desert were nearly
white. There were humming birds in swarms
ON the mountain, too, many of them and Of
other birds also that got; some are new to
science, / believe; but / must have time to
study the specimens at leisure before venture
upon too many statements in this regard.
One interesting animal that found on the