The Bennington banner. [volume] (Bennington, Vt.) 1858-1894, 1892-03-11
THE GREAT AMERICAN DESERT
And It's Famous and Dreadful Death
Valley.


Valley.
The Great American Desert was almost
better known generation ago than it is
to-day Then thousands of the hardy Ar
gonauts on their way to California had
traversed that fearful waste on foot with
their dwadling OK teams, and hundreds
of them left their bones to bleach in that
thirsty land. The survivors of those
deadly journeys had very vivid idea of
what that desert was; but now that we
can roll across it in less than a day in
Pullman palace Gals, its real-and still
existing-horrors are largely forgotten.
l have walked its hideous length alone
and wounded, and realize something
more of it from that than a great many
railroad Journeys across it have told me.
Now every trans-cOntinental railroad
crosses the great desert which stretches
Up and down the continent, west OF the
Rocky Mountains, for nearly two thous-
and miles. The northern routes cut its
least terrible parts; but the two railroads
which traverse its southern half-the At
lantic and Pacific railroad and the South
ern Pacific-pierce some of its grimmest
recesses.
The first scientific exploration of this
region was Lieutenant Wheelers United
States survey about 1850; and he was
first to give scientific assurance that we
had here a desert as absolute as the
Sahara. If its parched sands could
speak their record what astory of death
and suffering they might tell; of slow
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, 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 inhos-
pitable land. Not year passes, even
now, without record of many dying upon
that desert, and of many more who wan
der back in a delirium of thirst. Even
people at the railroad station sometimes
move off, lured by the strange fascina-
ton of the desert, and never come back
and of the adventurous miners who seek
to probe the golden secrets of those bar
rem and strange hued ranges, there are
countless victims.
A desert is not necessarily an endless,
level waste of burning sand. The Great
American Desert is full of strange, burnt,
ragged mountain ranges, with deceptive
slopng broad velleys between-thOugh
as we near its southern end the noun
tains become somewhat less numerous,
and the sandy wastes more prominent.
There are many extinct volcanoes upon
it, and hundreds of square miles of black
bristllng lava-hows. A large part of it
is sparsely clothed with the hardy grease
wood; but in places not plant of any
sort breaks the surface as far as the eye
can reach, The summer heat is unbear-
able, often reaching 1862 in the shade;
and piece of metal that has been in the
sun can no more be handled than red
hot stove. Even in winter the midday
heat is insufferable, while at night ice
frequently forms on the water tanks.
The daily range of temperature there is
said to be the greatest ever recorded
anywhere; and change of so in one
hour is not rare.
The most fatally famous part of the
Great American Desert is Death Valley
in California. There is on all the globe
no other spot more forbidding, more des-
olate, more deadly. 1t is concentra-
ton of the horrors of that whole hideOus
area: and it has bitter history.
One of the most interesting and
graphic stories | ever listened to was one
related to me several years ago by one
of the survivors of the famous Death
Valley party of 1S59-the Rev. J. w.
Brier an aged Methodist clergyman now
living in California. A party of five
hundred emigrants started on the last
day of September, 1S49, from the south
ern end of Utah to cross the desert to
the, then new, mines of California.
There were one hundred and five canvas
topped wagons, drawn by sturdy oxen,
beside which trudged the shaggy men,
rife in hand, while under the canvass
awning rode the women and children.
In short time there was division of
opinion as to the proper route across
that painless waste in front; and next
day five wagons and their people went
east to reach Santa Fe (whence there
were dim Mexican trails to Los Angeles),
and the rest plunged boldly into the de-
sert. The party which went by way of
Santa Fe reached California in Dec
ember, after vast sufferings. The larger
company travelled in comfort for a few
days until they reached about where
Phoebe now is. Then they entered the
Land of Thirst; and for more than three
months wandered lost in that realm of
horror. 1t was almost impossible to get
wagons through a country furrowed with
canons; so they soon abandoned their
vehicles, packing what they could upon
the backs of the oxen. They struggled
on to glitterng lakes, only to find them
deadly poison, or but a mirage on barren
sands. Now and then wee spring in
the mountains gave them new life. One
by one the oxen dropped, day by day the
scanty flour ran lower. Nine young
men who separated from the rest, being
stalwart and unencumbered with fam
lilies, reached Death Valley ahead of the
others, and were lost. Their bones
were found many years later by Gov
Blaisdell and his surveyors, who gave
Death Valley its name. ....
The valley lies in Inyo county, and il
about one hundred and fifty miles long
In width it tapers from three miles at its
southern end to thirty at the northern
1t is over two hundred feet below the
level of the sea. The main party crossed
it at about the middle, where it is but a
few miles wide, but suffered frightfully
there. Day by day some of their mum
Der sank upon the burning sands never
to rise. The survivors were too weak tC
help the fallen.
The stronest of the whole party was
nervous, little Mrs. Brier, who had come
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