The daily morning journal and courier., 1902-07-07

struggled on with staring eyes and parched and cracking tongues through the hot and stifling alkali dust, strain ing their eyes across the dreary, dull gray waste for a spot of green that might mark the presence of water. They saw that spot at the foot of the Panamints and headed for it, goading on their dragging. jaded oxen. They reached it and all drank their fill. That was ffty-one years ago and their dry bones have just been found. Pickett found an old Indian who remembered seeing years ago an abandoned, tumble down wagon standing near the spring.
 The woodwork of the wheels had dried and fallen apart and the running gears were held up only by the rusted tires. How many years ago the Indian did not know, he did not measure time by years. Since that time the drifting sand. beaten back by the mountains of basalt and granite as the shore beats back the surf, had buried the evidence of it's crime. It requires no stretch or the imagination to picture that scene or lonely death, the little party of tortured emiyants dying at the moment they thought life had been found.
 That part Of Death Valley lying be- low the level of the sea is only about eighteen miles long and three or four miles in width, but the Death Valley proper is about seventy-five miles long and from five to fifteen miles wide. AS miles go, the distance, with water. is not far; without water, eternity lies be- tween one and the little black dots on the map that marks the location of wa ter. There are true and correct maps Of the valley, but they are scared on the brains of a few hardy prospectors. There have been men who thought they could cross that country alone with the aid of a typographical may. Their bleaching bones offer mute but indispu- table evidence of their error in judg- ment.
 In the cooler seasons men inured to the hardships of the desert have been known to go for several days without water, subsisting on the juice Of the cactus: in the summer season from twenty-four to thirty-six hours is sutti- cient to unsettle their reason. A new conner, a "tenderfoot," will go stark, raving mad in from four to eight hours in hot weather if he has not water. To such men three gallons of water per day are necessary-the hot, dry atmosphere causing a rapid evaporation and phe- nomenal thirst. During the days in the middle of the summer the thermometer stands anywhere from one hundded and twenty-five to one hundred and thirty five degrees in the shade ill the coolest places that can be found. On the sand in the sun the height to which the mer- cury climbs is almost beyond belief. Only the excessive dryness of the at mosphere permits one to live in such heat. Given the humidity of San Francisco in the same temperature ana neither man nor animal could live in it a day. It is this terrible heat that boils the blood of "tenderfoOt" until the steam cooks the brain and drives him. naked maniac, shrieking wildly across the blstering sands. That is peculiar feature always accompanying dementia from thirst in that region-the tearing of all clothing from the body. Men have been found in this condition, and it was necessary to tie them with la riat for a day or two and give them water slowly, few sups at time, until their sufferings were relieved. To per- init them to drink their fill at once would have been little short of murder.
 Those who know" in going from one waterhole to another, always carry enough water to last them there and back in the event the adjective water hole should be found dry. There is wa ter at certain points in Death Valley, but unless one knows the exact loca- tion of these springs or waterholes. it is death from horrible torture to attempt to traverse the valley in the summer months. The daily sameness of the country is such that all mountains and rocks look alike to the stranger and he may pass to his death within a few yards of where he could have found life. The frequent sand storms dbliterate the trail and in that region of constant mir age effects stranger is easily lured to his death.--San Francisco Chronicle.