Iuka reporter. (Iuka, Miss.) 1888-1894, 1892-03-24
THE AMERICAN DESERT.
One OF the Strange Corners of Our
Country.


Country.
The Great American Desert was al
most better known generation ago
than it is to-day. Then thousands of
the hardy Argonauts on their way to
California had traversed that fearful
ox-team, and hundreds of them left
their bones to bleach in that thirsty
land. The survivors of those deadly
journeys had a very vivid idea of what
that deadly desert was; but now that
we can roll across it in less than
day in Pullman palace-cars, it's real
and still existing-horrors are largely
forgotten. | have walked its hideous
length alone and wounded, and real
ize something more of it than great
many railroad journeys across it have
told me. Now every transcontinental
railroad crosses the great desert which
stretches up and down the continent,
west of the Rocky Mountains, for
nearly 1900 miles. The northern
routes cut it's least terrible parts; but
the two railroads which traverse it's
Southern half-the Atlantic and Pa
cific railroad and the Southern Pacific
pierce some of its grimmest re-
ceSSes.
The first scientific exploration Of
this region was Lieutenant Wheeler's
United States survey about 1850; and
|, he was first to give scientific assur-
ance that we had here a desert as alb
solute as the Sahara. If its parched
sands could speak their record, what
a story they might tell of sufferings
and death; of -plodding caravans,
whose patient oxen lifted their feet
ceaSelessly from the blistering gravel;
Of drawn human faces that peered at
some lying image Of a placid lake, and
toiled frantically on to sink at last,
hopeless and strengthless, in the hot
dust which the mirage had painted
with the hues and the very waves of
water.
No one will ever know how many
have yielded to the long sleep in that
inhospitable land. Not year passes.
even now, without record of many
dying upon that desert, and of many
more who wander back, in delirium
of thirst. Even people at the rail-
road station sometimes rove off, lured
by the strange fascination of the des-
ert, and never come back; and of the
adventurous miners who seek to probe
the folden secrets of those barren and
strange hued ranges, there are count
less victims.
A desert is not necessarily an end
less, level waste of burning sand.
The Great American Desert is full of
strange, burnt, ragged mountain
ranges, with deceptive, sloping broad
valleys between-though as we near
its southern end the mountains be-
come somewhat less numerous, and
the sandy wastes more prominent.
There are many extinct volcanoes
upon it, and hundreds of square miles
of black, bristling lava-hows. A large
part Of it is sparsely clothed with the
hardy crossword; but in places not
plant of any sort breaks the suface,
as far as the eye can reach. The
summer heat is unbearable, often
reaching 36 degrees in the shade;
and a piece of metal which has been
in the sun can no more be handled
than can red-hot stove. Even in
winter the midday heat is insuffer-
able, while at night ice frequently
forms on the water-tanks. The daily
range Of temperature there is said to
be the greatest ever recorded any
where; and change of so degrees in
a few hours is not rare.-St. Nicholas.