The daily morning journal and courier., 1895-02-14
SURVEYORS IN ARIzoNA.
Frequent Deaths from Thirst-suffering of Those Who Go Longer Than Few Hours Without Mater.

| AhoHG W iAD Oo .OAlSbI AiAsili st bN AAohAp Without Water.
 | [M Y. Beach in the Los Angeles Times.l
 San Diego, Nov. 3. Special Cores
 pondence).-Th International Bound-
 ary commission, consisting of Colonel J..
 w. Barlow. U. S. A., A. T. Mosman,
 United States coast and geodetic sur
 vey, and Lieutenant D. D. Gaillard, U.
 s. A., commissioners for the United
 States, and Senor Blanco, commissioner
 for Mexico. are about leaving this city
 for their permanent stations, having al-
 most completed the important work of
 resurveying the boundary line between
 the two countries from El Paso, Tex, to
 the Pacific ocean, a distance of about | 700 miles.
 For two years and a half the com | missioners and staff of eighty engineers
 and helpers have been working their
 way westward from Fl Paso, placing | monuments, made of iron or masonry, in positions several miles apart The fifty-two original monuments, establish
 ed by the first survey under Engineer
 
 1 that now the line is marked by a series of monuments so near together that from one monument another can be | seen, and sometimes several monu-
 ments. As far as possible these nlonu-
 ments have been placed on mountain tops or other promontories. So thor oughly and carefully have the monu-
 ments been made and placed that they ought to remain intact for centuries.
 They are mainly plain iron shafts bolt ed to rock or cement foundations, and weigh about eight hundred pounds each.
 During the march of seventy-fiye miles on one desert the surveyors count ed $50 graves along the trail of the vic tims of thirst. At one point family of eight were buried. These foolish people carried their water in large demijohns. The bottles were broken. The precious food was swallowed by the sand Moth CT, father and children lay down be- meath a mesquite bush and died the most horrible of deaths. The bodies, broken water bottles and dead horses were found just where they fell It is the custom on the desert to bury all the bodies and mark the graves with cross es of stone embedded in the sand. Cur iously enough the few animals of the desert appear to exist without any reg ular water supply. Coyotes, antelope and gophers have been seen eating the fruit and leaves of the prickly cactus, which are full of minute spines These little thorns are painftlll It is wonder ful, therefore, how these little animals with delicate tongues can eat the fruit. From it much moisture is obtained. There was much speculation by Dr. Edgar A. Mearns, U. S. A., naturalist of the expedition, as to how the giant cactus, a plant eighteen to twenty-four inches in diameter and forty to fifty feet high, obtained the moisture in its large trunk. Fully fifty per cent of these plants is water. Their roots are but three feet long, branching literally from the base of the trunk instead of shooting straight down. A well near one of the cactus was driven TAO feet be- fore water was struck. The sun tenn perature was TAO degrees to 16O degrees daily. No dew fell at night. Air and soil were almost absolutely dry
 The intense dryness of the desert air causes rapid evaporation from the body 1 Observation proved that nine quarts of water daily was needed per man to | prevent the blood from thickening and | becoming feverish. Each mule required | twenty gallons daily. One surveyor was without water for several hours. | He became feverish and Ight-headed. | Lack of water for a few hours longer would have killed him. This was in a shade temperat ture of 120 degrees, where the air was absolutely dry, so dry that fresh meat, instead of putrefying, sim ply dries up. At one place the survey ors found the bodies of three prospec- tors within 100 feet of natural water tank formed in the rocks To get to this water the poor fellows had to climb upward twenty feet or so. Their was exhausted. They had been too long without water And here, with the life-giving fluid just a few feet beyond them, they died. Thirst on the desert is horrible. The victim feels pain between the shoulders. The tongue and feels filled with needle points. The eyes become painful, and finally any movement of the body caus- es excruciating pain. As the blood thickens the brain gives way, and the | maniac. Death soon ends the horrible suffering.
 No serious differences were found be- tween the newly surveyed boundary md that of the original survey. In New Mexico thirty-eight square miles, would lnder the new line, be in Mexico. But he treaty stipulates that such errors should not be corrected. At Nogales he boundary line runs through the main business street. Houses of Amer cans have foundation lines exactly on he boundary line. The front steps of hese houses are in Mexico. A store ( reeper has his store in the United I States, while his cigar stand, on the . ront porch is in Mexico. His custom IFS, when buying cigars, stand in this and reach into the case on ' he Mexican side of the line and select z heir weed. They thus avoid paying i uty on foreign cigars.
 THE NEIV JYO1T4N