The daily morning journal and courier., 1905-06-24
ON THE PLAINS OF YUHA.
WONDERFUL CURIOSITIES FOUND IN DEADLY DESERT.

Strewn With Strange stones-RemarI&-
 able Mountains Composed Entirely of
 shens-A Place of NameIess Graves.
 There is a section of the Colorado Desert where Nature has left some re- markable records. She has visited the region, alternately, with fire and water, and has left it with neither. It is the most desolate, wild, barren, for bidding part of the desert, says the Los Angeles Times, and 1t is summed alike by man and beast.s That there is good and sufficient reason for avoiding this locality is attested by numbers of graves-nameless, for the most part found in the terrible, region
 These graves are simple affairs,
 merely mounds of earth with a border of stones about each and a pile of rocks two or three feet high at the head.
 Each tells the story of tragedy Of heat thirst and death. Those items are about all that is eyer known of the stories of those who perish. Their mummified bodies or bleached bones are found long after the struggle is over, and the finder, respecting the memory of the unknown. scoops a hole in the earth, lays the ghastly relic
 within, and piles up the only monument
 available in that wild region.
 As recently as December 1S, 1904, the
 bones of thirst victim were laid in one of these lonely, fiowerless, turfless graves on the plains of Yuha.
 The plain now lies nearly 100 feet be-
 low the level of the sea, and the rocks
 of the plain and the bases of the noun
 tains are washed and coroded in a
 wonderful manner. Mingling with the burnt stones and volcanic debris are
 rocks worn by the waves and shaped linto hundreds of fantastic forms. There
 are many acres of these stone curiosi- ties and certain sections of the field seem devoted to certain shapes and I figures. ..- 'l For instance, one passes through a region which he at once names the cabbage. patch, for it presents the ap- tpearance of field of those vegetables which have turned to stone. The
 waves have worn the rocks into round
 powders about the size of the vege- I table which they so much resemble,
 and have cut into the globes, lami-
 mating them in perfect imitation of the J leafy layers of the garden vegetable. q Another locality is devoted almost Eexclusively to dinner plates. Thous-
 and of rounded, thin disks are scatter
 ed over the place or are piled scores
 deep in singular piles each piece
 shaped exactly like the crockery which
 adorns our tables, and quite as thin l; and symmetrical. ..=..
 Another section of this truly wonder :, ful ration is given almost wholly to
 dumbbells. These vary in size from pieces weighing. one or two pounds ur to those seemingly calculated for exer-
 cising the muscles of giant and :. weighing 30 or 40 pounds each. Tn . almost every instance these natural dumbbells are we'll balanced, the balls X at either end of the connecting piece ] being of the same size and weight. i. being of the same size and weight.
 T There is in this plain an arsenal, also
 While guns and swords and bayonet. and powder were not there to be found there are thousands of cannon ball:
 varying in size from 2 and inch ball.
 to those fit for the big 13-inch guns O modern warfare; and all are of stone : all formed in natures workshop.
 : There are other objects innumerable :. There are stone lilies, stone tulips stone leaves, stone birds, stone ami , mals, stone quoits, stone ornaments il .* varied and unique designs, stone cane -in fact, almost everything conceivabl
 in nature or art initiated in stone ol
 the plain of Yuba. ...t.. ...
 In one portion of Yuha rise two hills
 Or small mountains. One might mis take them in the distance for ancien craters. but when he approaches tn eminences he discovers them to b
 monuments to an ancient life-the re
 cords of species now extinct, They ar shell mountains, great beds of pre- , historic bivalves, which were lief stranded from that ancient sea swep !, back from the region and left a dr ! and desolate land. l 2. s-
 One of these mountains-the larg l one--is composed wholly of large, rougl : shells, much larger, but less elongate : than the shells of the modern oyster / which in some respects they so mucl !, resemble as to lead to the suspicion , that they are the remains of the an : cestors of our much prized bivalve.
 E The lesser hill is composed of tin ; shells of a prehistoric type of brachio poda. Like the larger shells they ar 2 found, except on the surface in an un ! disturbed state, both valves of nearI every shell being found in position U Although the mollusk dwellers of thes , shells vanished several centuries age ] so perfect are the shells one almost ex !, poets, when he opens the valves of tn ! shell, to find the living creature within SPORT WILL BE KEEN.