The copper country evening news. [volume] (Calumet, Mich.) 18??-1907, 1896-05-16

or cold, not from recognized disease,
and not from violence, comes TO men
where the ribbon of salt, whittier even
than the white sand, runs down to the
sinkhole, $50 feet below the sea.
Death Valley is only strip itself
eight TO sixteen miles wide, but the
man who could walk across 1t at It's
worst has never been born. With the
fierce sunlight blazing down, being cast
back from the sand, so that even IN the
shadow the thermometer registers
nearly 40 degrees, with the air full OF
salt and the sand giving under MS
tread. he'd die half way. You can
drink water enough to Stake your
thirst. and travellers are found dead
with canteens of water beside them
The only fresh water in the valley
comes from the gloomiest feature Oh
all. the spotted, strange-stained ru-
neral Mountain. The single employe
of a borax enterprise has managed 10
make alfalfa grow on little piot-'ne
only green place in Death Valley. Back
from this there are hills as white as
aour mountains. covered as Clearly Dy
borax as II it had fallen like snow.
Around the base of the Funeral
Maintain curves the Amargosa river
Nobody has ever seen water noWlns
upon the surface of this river bed' put
the ghost of great river, miles Wlue'
is there between great perpendicular
banks. hundreds of feet high. Nopouy
has followed the river bed TO us source
mr. traced il to its disappearance. Some
wbere down under the bed the water
flows. the scientists say. but wnether
II is a yard or mile down even they
Az NOT know. Even when the skies
crack and let the cloudbursts through,
M water runs over the Amargosa
river sands. The thirsty earth can
drink il ND faster than it can fall.
Death Valley is beautiful, but the
man who explores it and the uncanny
mountains about it comes back, II ne
comes at all. gaunt and wasted. In MS
blistered eyes are the images OF the
mirror-like sea of salt, the blur OF the
blazing sun. the heaped-up MOUNDS
that tell where somebody has found a
dead man and put him out OF sight
the bleached skeleton, not whittier than
the earth on which it lies, and not the
cav colors of the Funeral peaks, the
picturesque rounded tops of the Monts
Blanco. the quaint crags OF the dead
rivers banks.
About the valley lives almost every
venomous thing that crawls IN the
west. Rattlesnakes, tarantulas, cent?
nodes scorpions. even ella monsters
those hideous slow lizards that every
sc;entist saws are harmless and every
f,ontiersman says are deadly.
The valley never lacks for victims
There Is gold there-gold enough Tor
many fortunes. and year after year
men seek IL, even where the sun scorcn-
es and sets them mad.
The gold has been found, not once,
hut many times. This frightfui place
has more tales of lost mines than any
other. The Pegleg, the Breyfogle' tne
Mansfield claim. the Lost Padre nine
and many more have tempted pros
nectors back to the pit OF glaring at
lali These are real mines. In South
arm California towns they VIII snow
Won ore brought back by the original
discoverer. rock all a-glitter with the
,recious points. but in the whole lis'
~ one has rewarded its finder. The
! peeleg dlscoverer, the first and rien'