East Oregonian : E.O. (Pendleton, OR) 1888-current, 1905-10-26
DEATH VALLEY REVEALS ITS
GREWSOME TRAGEDIES.


Death Valley is beginning to give
up It's dead again, says the Denver |
Post.
Every summer it lies there under |
shifting sun and beckons-beckons to /
men to enter and to die, and men |
heed its beckoning and go and never |
come back again.
A few struggling searchers wander |
listlessly out into the terrible heat
and find stricken body or two, al |
most always within crawling distance |
of the water for want of which they |
died, but until the October sting is on
the air even the men who live on the
deserts limits will not venture too
often into the place of death.
They are going now, and they are
| finding the poor fellows who laughed
at their warnings and disappeared in
to the sinister purple of the distance
never to laugh again.
So far it is estimated that at least
/ 80 men have died there of thirst and
fear this summer.
Death Valley lies stretched like a
dying snake along the borders of Ne
vada and California
1t is 80 miles long, 35 miles broad
and it is called Death Valley because
the first white people who ever went
in there were 80 when they entered
and - when they came out, and the
is young, vigorous men died in few
days hideous, haggard wrecks of
what they We're.
Since that time the Valley OF the
Dreadful Thirst, as the Indians named
it long ago. has counted its victims as
devotee counts his beads on a rosary
of coral and pearl.
Peg Leg" Smith found Il ledge rot
ten with glinting gold there one fear
full day. years ago. and when they
found him. running round and round
in the desert, waving his arms, try
ing to swim in the blue water he
thought he saw all around him, he
had his pockets full of the richest
quartz ever seen in California, the
land of rich quartz.
When he spoke the tongue of hu-
man speech again, he tried to tell
where the ledge was but all he could
remember was miles of green and
purple and pink mountains crowdng
, in around him till he went mad from
fear and thirst and loneliness.
From that day to this men have
saddled burros and ridden out into
; the glttering desert, mad with the
, hunger of the gold they know is hid
den there.
The big strikes in the Goldfield and
Bulfrog districts. out there in the al
kali, and the wild CLEAN of shifting
sands. have lured fortune hunters as
moths are lured by the cleaning Of
, lamp.
The little dried up villages on the
edges of the terrible waste have been
alive with eager-eyed men fitting out
= to prospect, and this fall the old
prospectors. who know the moods and
tempers of the great land tiger that
crouches on the border of human life
there in the beating sunlight, are
finding their white bones bleaching
in the green and cleaning sand.
4 a well known judge from Wiscon-
p sin disappeared into the phantom
haunted place a few weeks ago.
"I'll be back in five days" he told
p his friends, who watched him go; "and
e I'll bring you some quartz from the
|. Peg Leg
g He did not come back, and his
friends fitted out an expedition and
started to look for him. They have
e never been heard from.
1t The cold October nights have come
Il even to the desert now, and the
shadows of the early nightfall lie on
the burning sands like a cool hand on
a fevered skin, and the searching
II parties are starting out to look fol
the bones of the men who have diet
in the terrible desert since summer
Ia has smitten it.
At least 1000 men have died there
IL of heat and thirst and terror sine,
Ie it was named Death Valley Yet nevei
10 a summer comes without it's waitnl
is victims eager to try the fearful figh
, for their life for the sake of a littl
more gold to shake in the face of al
IT, Indifferent world.