Tales of lonely trails

elicitous name from the earliest days of the gold strike in California, when a caravan of Mormons, numbering about seventy, struck out from Salt Lake, to cross the Mojave Desert

re mine of minerals; and since then hundreds of prospectors and wanderers have lost their lives there. To see

her places of the southwest, and knew the prospecting game. Somewhere he had run across my story Desert Gold in which I told about a lost gold mine. And the point of his letter was that if I could give him some idea as to where the lost gold mine was located he would go find it and give me half. His name was Sievert Nielsen. I wrote him that to my regret the lost gold mine existed only in my imagination, but if he would come to Avalon to see me perhaps we might both profit by such a meeting. To my surprise he came. He was a man of about t

all our party from a most uncomfortable and possibly hazardous situation-but these are tales I may tell elsewhere. In January 1919

ilroad, runs northward from the Santa Fe over the barren

led by train from some twenty miles over toward the valley, and was dumped from a high trestle into shutes that fed the grinders. For an hour I watched this constant stream of borax as it slid down into the hungry crushers, and I listened to the chalk-faced operator who yelled in my ear. Once he picked a piece of gypsum out of the borax. He said the mill was getting out twenty-five hundred sacks a day. The most significant thing he said was that men did not last long at such labor, and in the mines six months appeared to be the limit of human endurance. How soon I had enough of that choking air in the room where the borax was ground! And the place where the borax was roasted in huge round revolving furnaces-I found that intolerable. When I got out into the cool clean desert air I felt an immeasurable relief. And that relief made me thoughtful of the

oor. When we reached the pass between the Black Mountains and the Funeral Mountains we left the road, and were soon lost to the works of man. How strange a gladn

s. Zigzag veins of black and red and yellow, rather dull, ran through the great drab-gray mass. This end of the range, an iron mountain, frowned down upon us with hard an

scant vegetation, greasewood, and few low cacti and scrubby sage struggled for existence. Not a bird or lizard or living creature in sight! The trail was getting lonely. From time to time I looked back, because as we could not see far ahead all the superb scene spread and towered behind us. By and bye our wash grew to be a wide canyon, winding away from under

not mind hard work, but I wanted to avoid over-exertion. When I am extremely wearied my feelings are liable to be colored so

e me for a Yaqui?" I comp

ke at once for the nearest ranch below the border, a distance of one hundred and fifty miles. He could carry only so much of his outfit, and as some of it was valuable to him he discarded all his food except a few biscuits, and a canteen of water.

er and cream and cinnamon and green, all exquisitely vivid and clear. This bright spot appeared to be isolated. Far above it rose other clay slopes of variegated hues, red and russet and mauve and gray, and colors indescribably merged, all running in veins through this range of hills. We faced the west again, and descending this valley were soon greeted by a reg

white-mantled mountain range on the left and the dark-striped lofty range on the right I could see far down into a gulf, a hazy void, a vast stark valley t

d not, however, change the first stunning impression. Immense, unreal, weird! I went on down the widening canyon, looking into that changing void. How full of color! It smoked. The traceries of streams or shining white washes brightened the floor of the long dark pit

r-away, lonely and terrible places of the earth were the most beautiful and elevating. Life's little day seemed so easy to understand, so pitiful. As the sun began to set and the storm-clouds moved across it this wondrous scene darkened, changed every moment, brightened, grew full of luminous red li

a mantle of gray, and a slumberous sulphurous ruddy haze slowly darkened to purpl

which would serve for firewood. We unpacked, fed the mules some grain, pitched our little tent and made our bed all in short order. But it was dark long before we had supper. During

! Dead, vast, sepulchre-like, dreaming, waiting, a silence of ages, burdened with the history of the past, awful! I strained my ears for sound of insect or rustle of sage or drop of weathered rock. The soft cool desert wind was soundless. This silence ha

med different from other camp-fires. No cheer, no glow, no sparkle! Perhaps it was owing to scant and poor wood. Still I thought it was owing

d and rose in the east. A hard wind, eager and nipping, blew up the canyon. At si

d of a rank coarse kind of grass, and arrowweed, mesquite, and tamarack. The last named bore a pink fuzzy blossom, not unlike pussy-willow, which was quite fragrant. Here the deadness of the region seemed further enlivened by several small birds, speckled and gray, two ravens, and a hawk. They all appeared to be hunting food. On a ridge above Furnace Creek we came upon a spring of poison water.

rail. It led toward the ridges of clay, and when I had climbed it a little ways I began to get an impr

barren, yet wonderfully beautiful in their stark purity of denudation; until at last far down between two widely separated hills shone, dim and blue and ghastly, with shining white streaks like silver streams-the Valley of Death. Then beyond it climbed the league-long red slope, merging into the iron-buttressed base of the Panamint Range, and

to retain its own color, yellow or cinnamon or mauve. But they were always dominated by a higher one of a different color. And this mystic region sloped and slanted to a great amphitheater that was walled on the opposite side by a mountain of bare earth, of every hue, and of a thousand ribbed and scalloped surfaces. At its base the golds and russets and yellows were strongest, but ascending its slopes were changing colors-a dark beautiful mouse color on one side and a strange pear

-the wearing down, the devastation of the old earth. How plainly that could be seen! Geologically it was more remarkable to me than the Grand Canyon. But it was the appalling meaning, the

y had its mystic pall of color. I lost no time climbing out. What a hot choking ordeal! But I never would have missed it even had I known I would get lo

denser, down to the valley, reaching it at dusk. We followed the course of Furnace

eaming light over the Funeral Range heralded the sunrise. The tips of the higher snow-capped Panamints were rose colored, and below them the slopes were red. The bulk of the range showed dark. All these feat

d there, and raised this alfalfa for the mules of the borax miners. He lived there alone and his was indeed a lonely, wonderful, and terrible life. At this season a few Shoshone Indian

m. The Indians spent the summers up on the mountains. Denton said heat affected men differently. Those who were meat eaters or alcohol drinkers, could not survive. Perfect heart and lungs were necessary to stand the heat and density of atmosphere below sea level. He told of a man who had visited his cabin, and had left early in the day, vigorous and strong. A few hours later he was found near the oasis unable to walk, crawling on his hands and knees, dragging a full canteen of water. He never knew what ailed him. It might have been heat, for the thermometer registered one hundred and thirty-five, and it might have been poison

e. He liked to talk to his burros. He was exceedingly interesting. Once he nearly died of thirst, having gone from noon one day till next morning without water. He said he fell down often during this ordeal, but did not

and I visited them, taking an armload of canned fruit, and boxes of sweet crackers, which they received with evident joy. Through this overture I got a peep into one of the tents. The simplicity and frugality of the desert Piute or Navajo were here wanting. These children of the open wore white men's apparel and ate white men's food; and they even had a cook stove and a sewing mac

he was about to depart, on the way to his labor in the fields, he put his hand in his ragged pocket and drew forth an old beaded hat band, and with calm dignity, worthy of any gift, he made me a present of it. Then he went on his way

st defy detection. The color resembled sage-gray and it had the fragrance of sage. Hard to find and wonderful to see-was its tiny blossom! The small leaves were perfectly formed, very soft, veined and scalloped, with a fine fuzz

ads flitting around in zigzag flights-as

Graves! One had two stones at head and foot. Another had no mark at all. The one nearest me had for the head a flat piece of board, with lettering so effaced by weather that I could not decipher the inscription. The bones of a horse lay li

below shone a whorl of dusky, ruddy bronze haze, gradually thickening. Dim veils of heat still rose from the pale desert valley. As I watched all before me seemed to change and be shrouded in purple. How bold and desolate a scene! What vast sca

h men in their folly and passion, had sought to dig forth golden treasure. The air held a solemn stillness. Peace! How it rested my troubled soul! I felt that I was myself here, far different from my habitual self. Why had I longed to see Death Valley? What did I want of the desert that was naked, red, sinister, sombre, forbidding, ghastly, stark, dim and dark and dismal, the abode of silence and loneliness, the proof of death, decay, devastation and destruction, the majestic su

d from the wood-pile nearby and flew right in my face. They had no fear of man or fire. Their wings made a soft swishing sound. Later I heard the trill of frogs, which was the last sound I might have expected to hear in Death Valley. A sweet high-pitched melodious trill it reminded me of the music made by frogs in the Tamaulipas Jungle of Mexico. Every time I awakened

nd delicate on long thin stem with scarcely any leaves. Another was a yellow flower, with four petals, a pale miniature California poppy. Still another was a purple-red flower, almost

Not that the heat was intense at this season, he explained, but there were other dangers, particu

. The heat lifted in veils, like thin smoke. Denton had told us that in summer the heat came in currents, in waves. It blasted leaves, burned trees to death as well as men. Prospectors watched for

the salty crust made it hard to place a foot on the level. This crust appeared fairly strong. But when it rang hollow under our boots, then I stepped very cautiously. The color was a dirty

sed my note-book as a means to conceal from the tireless Nielsen that I was fatigued. Always I found this a very

flats. A valley-wide mirage shone clear as a mirror along the desert floor to the west, strange, deceiving, a thing both unreal and beautiful. The Panamints towered a wrinkled red grisly mass, broken by rough canyons, with long declines of talus like brown glaciers. Seamed and scarred! Indestructible by past ages, yet surely wearing to ruin! From this point I coul

solid, not stable. At pressure of a boot it shook like jelly. Under the white crust lay a yellow substance that was wet. Here appeared an obstacle we had not calculated upon. Nielsen ventured out on it and his feet sank in several inches. I did not like the wave of the crust. It resembled thin ice under a weight. Presently

attempt at lightness. "You weigh one hundred

im-and stayed beside him. I could not have walked behind him over that strip of treacherous sink-hole. If I could have done so the whole adventure would have bee

have been upwards of two hundred feet below sea level. The lowest spot, called the

ngly toilsome and painful place to travel, and for all we could tell, dangerous too. I had all I could do to watch my feet and find surfac

I had thought it seemed much less than that. But after I had toiled across it I was convinced that it was

kly hauled me out. I got one foot wet with some acid fluid. We peered down into the murky hole. Nielsen quoted a prospector's saying: "Forty feet from hell!" That broken sharp crust of salt afforded the meanest traveling I had ever experienced. Slopes of weathered rock that slip and slide are bad; cacti, and especially choya cacti, are worse: the jagged and corrugated surfaces of lava are still more hazardous and painful. But this cracked floor of Death Valley, with its salt crusts standing on end, like pickets of a fence, beat any place for hard going that either Nielsen or I

aves were rustling; bees were humming in the tamarack blossoms. I lay in the shade, resting my burning feet and achiag bones, and I watched Nielsen as he whistled over the camp chor

d been set apart for the hardy diggers for earthen treasure, and for the wanderers of the wastelands-men who go forth to seek and to find and to face their souls. Perhaps most of them found death. But the

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