Bonners Ferry herald. [volume] (Bonners Ferry, Idaho) 1904-current, 1906-01-27
SINISTER DEATH VALLEY.
Claims It's Annual Toll of Human
Lives Given for Gold.

Claims It's Annual Toll of Human
Lives Given for Gold.
Death valley is beginning to give up
its dead again.
Every summer II lies there under
the shifting sun and becl1ons-beclS9ns
to men to enter and to die, and men
heed its reckoning and 90 and never
come back again, says the Denver
Post
A few struggling searchers wander
llstlessly out into the terrible heat and
find a stricken body or two, almost al
ways 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 des-
ert's 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 into
the sinister purple of the distance new
er to laugh again.
So far 1t is estimated that at east
fifty men have died there Of thirst and
fear this summer.
Death valley lies stretched like a dy-
ing snake along the borders of Nevada
and California.
1t is fifty miles long, thrty-fve
miles broad and 1t is called Death val
ley because the first white people who
ever went in there were thirty when
they entered and twelve when they
came out, and the eighteen young, Wig
orous men died in a few days. hideous,
haggard wrecks of what they were.
Since that time the VALLEY of the
Dreadful Thirst" as the Indians
named 1t long ago, has counted its vic
tins as devotee counts his beads on
rosary Of coral and pearl.
Peg Leg" Smith found ledge rot
ten with glittering gold there one fear
full day, years ago, and when they
found him, running round and round
in the desert, waving his arms, trying
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 human
speech again he tried to tell where
the ledge was, but all he could remem-
Der was miles Of green and purple and
pink mountains crowded in around
him till he went mad from fear and
thirst and loneliness.
From that day to this men have sad
died burrOs and ridden out into the
glittering desert, mad with the hunger
of the gold they know is hidden there.
The big strikes in the Goldheld and
Bullfrog 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 a
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 pros
pcctors who know the moods and tenn
pers of the great land tiger that
crouches on the border Of human life
there in the beating sunlight are find
ing their white bones bleaching in the
, green and cleaning sand.
The cold October nights come even
to the desert and the shadows of the
early nightfall lie on the burning
sands like cool hand on a fevered
/ skin and the searching parties start
: out to look for the bones of the men
who have died in the terrible desert
. since summer has smitten it.
At least a thousand men have died
. there of heat and thirst and terror
= since it was named Death valley. Yet
: never a summer comes without It's
l waiting victims eager to carry the
l fearful fight for life for the sake of q
little more gold to shake in the face OF
, an Indifferent world