The silver state. [volume] (Unionville, Nev.) 1870-1903, 1892-02-06
THE GREAT AMERICAN DESERT.
One of the Strange Corners of Our
Country.


Country.
The Great American Desert was
almost better known a generation ago
than it is to-day. Then thousands OF
the hardy Argonauts 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 car, its real
and still existing-horrors are
largely forgotten. | 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 transcontinental railroad
crosses the great desert which
stretches up and down the Continent,
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 At
/ lantic and Pacific RAILROAD and the
Southern Pacific-pierce some of its
grimest recesses.
The first scientific exploration of
this region was Lieutenant Wheeler's
/ United States survey about 1850; and
he was the first to give scientific as
surance that we had here a desert as
absolute as the Sahara. If its parched
sands could speak their record, what
a story it might tell of sufferings and
death; 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 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 O.
many more who wander back in a
delerium of thirst. Even people al
the railroed station sometimes rove
off, lured by the strange destinations
of the desert, and never come back
and of the adventurous miners who
seek to probe the golden secret OF
those barren and strange-hued ranges,
there are countless 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 flows. A large
part of it is sparsely clothed with the
hardy greasewood; but in places not
a plant of any sort breaks the surface
as far as the eve can reach. The sum-
mer heat is unbearable, often reaching
1856 deg. in the shade; and a piece OF
metal which has been in the sun can
no more be handled than can a red
hot stove. Even in winter the mid
day heat is insufferable, while at
night ice frequently forms on the
watertanks. The daily range of tenn
perature there is said to be the great
est ever recorded anywhere, and a
change of so deg. in few hours Is
not are.-Charles F. La,mmis, an Feb
ruaru 81. Nicholas.
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