Wood County reporter. [volume] (Grand Rapids [i.e. Wisconsin Rapids], Wis.) 1857-1923, 1910-03-24

drive from Juno down the dry Devils
River to Comstock For miles you
follow the winding canyons through
/ a country that seems burnt out, gil
gantic ash heaps that seem to have
been heaVed up, and parched dry, so
dry that the air feels it. And then
without the slightest suggestion, and
when you would think there was not
a drop of moisture within a hundred
miles, the team stops and lowers
their heads to drink from as beautiful
a mountain stream as eser rilled
down the Ahega nies-a big stream of
blue, cold mountain water, fed from
hundreds of springs and filled with
trout and catfish. And here starts
wet Devils River, as beautiful a
stream as ever Knocked a desert. A
long the banks are giant pecan trees
and beautiful groves of shrubbery,
and one can in a degree appreciate
the feelings of the men of 40, when
they reached an oasis in Death Val
ley.
A dozen miles the trail follows this
stream, crossing it a dozen times,
and then it is with genuine regret
that the route breaks thru a canyon
gate and comes out on a divide coun-
try-the up and down rolling coun-
try. And there is open to the eye
a field of green as far as. the eye
can reach-a field of green on which
any horse, cow, sheep, or goat Will
starve to death, a vegetation of a
dozen varieties that cattle cannot
and will not eat. This scene is
paradox, a mockery of starvat ion,
and reminds one of the exclamation
of the ship wrecked sailor, Water,
water everywhere, but not a drop to
drink
Miles and miles, hours and hours
one will drive through this rolling
country of white hills,a lmost strip
ped of every bit of vegetation by the
protracted drowth. But you can see
just as far as you want to, you
con look over into Mexico and see
the outline of the Santa Rosa noun
tains a. full hundred miles
And then you drop down from the
divide, and there almost hidden by
the bluffs is Comstock-that little
desert COW town on the Southern Pa
cific, and one of the pioneers of Sun
set route
There is not and cannot be OBJ
tanned drop Of water in Comstock
or vicinity. For years they have
been trying to find water, and they
are still at it. l went out to a we'll
the railroad is drilling, one of a score
or more that has been forced down
through absolutely solid rock, with
out an inch of dirt, for hundreds of
feet.
into Comstock, and it goes without
telling that baths are barred in this
cow town. The little dump of hotel
so called because it has a sign and
81 a day rate, does not have a pub
lie wash stand. If you want to get
the alkali dust out of your eyes and
ears you must become a two dollar
a day man, when the Mexican boy
will show you to an 8x10 stall and
bring you in perhaps a quart of wa
ter in pitcher.
1 asked a cowboy how they wash
ed their clothes and took baths
there.
Don't know brother. Reckon they
passes it up till it done rains"
Every house in town has its els
tern and eve cutters running into it,
and when it rains, as it sometimes
does, they catch enough water in
these holes in the ground to last two
years. If you are going to stop off,
here, come soon after a rain, for
a year or so after the fluid gets
little thick and is rather hard to
swallow-altho soap makes it spred
beautifully. Would state it has been
eighteen months since a shower has
wet the shingles of Comstock and
you may guess at how many millions
of wigglers are daily boiled into cot
fee. 1t takes fool tenderfoot or
nervy man to drink it straight.
The cowboys in these back towns
have almost a dialect. In localities
where there is very little going or
coming and where a section is large
ly a community of itself many ex-
pressions are used and words coined
that are as Latin to a Yankee. Then
too the accent is, so different, the
words carrying with them the Span
ish idiom, and it is really hard to
understand these full bIooded Amerl-
cans of the saddle, or the little Am
erican children of the homes.
And just below Comstock l came to
the Rio Grande-the muddy, treach-
erous, historic old river that separ-
ates two countries, running shallow
in its yellow bed and across which
l can almost throw a stone into Mexf
co. This is the stream that Next
cans hate because it marks the boun-
dry of a great tract of land that
was the price of defeat in the war
with Texas, and boundry that the
Texan hates because it separates
him from the richest Of grazing
lands, which it coyets.
If it were not for running this in