Arizona republican., 1919-06-29

is now opening the northern cross continent route via the Yellowstone 1 and the Bad Lands.
 1 Everybody who understands any thing about crossing the continent in motor car. knows that none of the roads are open before the middle Of June. But the Desert Rat "hopped off from Los Angeles, Cal, March 23 and headed East across the deadly Gila i Desert, while the mud was still hub deep and the cloud bursts were playing havoc along the Mexican border.
 The seemingly impossible venture was the result of a dare thrown out to Scout King Stanley and James M. Drake. King Stanley is one of those western pioneers who never took a dare in his life. He is now past sixty years of age and nearly half a cen l tury ago he crossed the continent on the back of a pony. He prospected all Noyer the Pacific slope and roamed the plains with Buffalo Bill
 Two years ago the old scout gave up his pony and climbed into a 1917 Max well touring car. Since then he and his young partner have been beating up the desert, having done 19000 miles, in his Maxwell, dubbed the Desert Rat. On March g, according to informal ton received here yesterday the Desert Rat was fitted with an extra gasoline ! tank, a five gallon water bag. piece | of rope, frying pan and a single ac- ton Colt. which Buffalo Bill gave Mir. Stanley just before he left the west. The back of the front seat was hinged. i so it would drop down and form a bed few army blankets were thrown into  went.
 On one of those soft spring mornings last week a bunch of yellow mud rolled mp to the Maxwell Chalmers sales ! rooms in New York. How in the world do you ever run it in that condi- ! tion?' asked the New York dealer 1 Well" said the old scout. may be she does need a bath, but we just thought we would wait until we got back to the Little Colorado river and ! let her soak for a few days. We did stand her in the Mississippi as we came across but the water was so dirty it only made her worse.
 We came through without stopping at a garage or a hotel and naturally she is a bit dusty.
 : We struck trail for Yuma on March 23. There was a cloud burst in the desert that day but we did not know | it until Tuesday when ran on a bunch of eight cars which had been caught
 They were all stuck fast and we pulled them out one by one. We were ten hours making fifteen miles that day.
 After leaving Tucson, Arizona, we
 hit the Mustang Mountains. We were
 bound for Bisbee but Old Mac hasn't a bit of use for a regular highway. In ! Texas, we went through San Antonio, ] Houston, Beaumont, orange across the | Sabine river to Winton, La, where
 we faced $15.00 trip on the canal to get back to hard ground or a run across the mud dumps of two and one half miles. old Mac refused to go on the canal boat and away she went for the mud, and when we hit dry land
 they told us that car had not crossed the mud for six months. There was a good road from Lake Charles to the
 A;chafalva river, but when we reached the cypress swamps we heard that no car had gone through in nearly year
 We tackled the job, however, and ran for 37 miles on low gear.
 "The total distance to New York via Jacksonville, Fla, was 5321 miles and we used just 275 balloons of fuel, giv- lllS US d gOOu average or more than l9 miles to the gallon. As we did not stop at a garage or hotel during the entire trip we had to carry bedding and cooking outfit. We did not stop a minute for mechanical reasons. When we ran out of money we stopped and painted few signs. Having dec orated the store fronts along the Mexi- can border pretty well, we are now go- ing back by the northern route and | scatter a bit more art
 1 Without wasting any time in the canyons of New York City. King Stan ley immediately pointed the radiator of the Desert Rat toward Niagara Falls He expects to spend the rest of the summer negotiating the Northern trail, touching ct Yellowstone and the Bad 1 Lands.
 "As soon as we land home, he said, we're going to come east again, in an airship. You see, I have made over a thousand balloon ascensions and hay ing crossed the continent on horse- back and by motor I want to finish the job by air"
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