Vermont phÅ“nix. [volume] (Brattleboro, Vt.) 1834-1955, 1892-03-04
The Great American Desert
Aud Its Famous and Dreadful Death
Valley.

Aud Its Famous and Dreadful Death
valley.
The Great American Desert was almost
better known a generation ago than il is
today. Then thousands of the hardy Ar
gOnauts on their way to California had
travcrsed that fearful waste on foot with
their dawding oX-teams, and hundreds of
them left their bones to bleach i'm that
thirsty land. The survivors Of those
deadly journeys had a very vivid idea of
what that desert was but now that we can
roll across it in less than day in Pullman
palace-carS, its real-and still existing
horrors are largely forgotten. | have
walked its hideous length alone and wound
ed, and realize something more of it from
that than great many railroad journeys
across it have told me. Now every trans
continental railroad crosses the great des-
ert which stretches up and down the con-
tinent, west of the Rocky Mountains, for
nearly two thousand miles. The northern
routes cut its least terrible parts but the two
railroads which traverse its southern half
the Atlantic and Pacific railroad and the
Southern Paciiic-perce some of its grim
NEST recesses.
The first scientific exploration of this re-
States survey about 1850; and hc was first
to give scientific assurance that we had
here desert as absolute as the Sahara
If its parGhed sands could speak their rec
ord, what a story they might tell of suffer
ings and death; of slow-plodding caravans,
whose patient oxen lifted their feet cease
lessly from the bistering gravel; of drawn
human faces that pecred at some lying i'm
age of placid lake and toied franticaly
on to sink at last, hopeless and strength
less in the hot dust which the mirage had
painted with the hucS and the very waves
of water.
No one will ever know how many have
yielded to the long sleep in that inhOspita-
bic land. Not year passes. even now.
without record of many dying upon that
desert, and of many more who wander
back in Il dcirum of thirst. Even people
at the railroad station sometimes rove off,
lurcd by the strang fascination of the des-
ert, and never come back and Of the adven-
turOus miners who seek to probe the gold
en- secrets of those barren and strange
hucd ranges, there are countless victims.
\ 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
Sloping broad valleys betwecn-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 hun
dreds of square miles of black, brstling
lavatlows. 4 large part of it is sparscly
clothed with the hardy greasewOod: but in
places not a plant of any sort breaks the
surface, as far as the eye can reach. The
summer heat is unbearablc, often reaching
1876 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 insufferable,
while at night ice frequently forms on the
water tanks. The daily range of temper
ature there is said to be the greatest ever
recorded anywhere; and a change of s0o in
a few hours 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 desolate,
more deadly. 1t is a concentration 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 that related
to me, several years ago, by one of the sur
yivorS of the famous Death Valley party
of 1S49-the Rev. j. w. Brier, an aged
Methodist clergyman now living in Cali
forna. A party of five hundred emigrants
started on the last day of September, 1919,
from the southern end of Utah to cross the
desert to the, then new, mines of Caifor-
mia. There were one hundred and five
canvas-tOpped wagons, drawn by sturdy OK
en-, beside which trudged the shaggy men,
rifle in hand, while under the canvas avn
ings 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
FG (whence there were dim Mexican trails
to Los Angeles), and the rest plunged bold
ly into the desert. The party which went
by way of Santa Fc reached California in
December after vast suifcrings. 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 country furrOwed with canOns;
SO they soon abandoned their vehicles,
packing what they could upon the backs of
the oxen. They struggled on to gittering
lakes, only TO find them deadly poison, or
but mirage on barren sands. Now and
then a wee spring in the mountains gave
them new life. One by one the oxen drop
ped, day by day the scanty flour ran lower.
Nine young men who separated from the
rest, being stalwart and unencumbered
with families, reached Death Valley ahead
of the others, and We're lost. Their bones