IN DEATH VALLEY

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LI, Issue 148, 13 June 1908, Page 4

IN DEATH VALLEY

THE WORST PLACE IN THE WHOLE WIDE WOULD. Only thirty-Jive miles long and about right miles wide; yet nobody can pass through it. and retain both life ami reason. Such is Death Valley, on the borders of Caiiiornia and Nevada. It is undoubtedly the deadliest place iu the whole wide worm. I have looked down upon this valley several times from the mountain heights which enclose it—the Telescope Range on the west, and the Funeral range on till) east. Hut 1 was never foolish enough to court certain death, as so many others have done, by searching the valley for the rich deposits of gold and silver it. is reputed to contain. 1 visited the works of a borax company on the Calilornian edge of the valley—not actually in the desert itself—ami even there the heat was unendurable. "A man.cannot, go for an hour without water here," one of Ihe officials told me, "or he becomes a raving maniac. One of our nun died from Ihe heat whil,t lying down inside his abode house on the company's properly. Another was actually riding, with'a canteen of water iu his hand, on top of a load of borax, when lie fell over and expired." Death Valley itself, is the bed of a vanished lake, now a desert of sand, salt, and alkali. There are several streams mid pools of water in it. but; they are all impregnated with alkali, and therfore poisonous. Glittering fields of salt alternate with miles of white sand, which is drawn in places into high mounds by the whirling hot winds lliat sweep through the gorge. The surface of the salt, earth in places is very brittle, and a few inches be. neath it there is a sliuip, salt mud, ot unmeasured depht, from which rescue is impossible. There were forty emigrants in the lirst'waggon-train that tried to pass through Death Valley in 18(10. Two men got through, and both were insane. Many oilier bands of emigrants going to California perished, and the place was avoided until gold was found there, and then parly after party of reckless men were lured to death. ' Over fifty Mexicans succumbed in one batch. Death Valley has been the scene of some of the worst tragedies of torture in human history. A lieutenant of the United States Army, on an exploring trip with two soldiers, forced his guide at the point of the rille to take him into the valley on foot. Within two hours or"; of the soldiers staggered back into the camp of the main body, demented, and hardly able to walk. The others had become insane anil wandered away to die. A few rears ago a Frenchman, named Isidore Daunet, reached a ranch where f was tlieu staying. He had come through the valley with a party of six. The rest had perished. Wild with thirst they had cut the throats of their packanimal-, anil drunk the spouting blood. Ijannet li-ul suffered terribly, and was (piile •insane. Two days after reaching the randi he put, a bullet through his brain. The body of a prospector named O'Brien was found near the end of thj valley, with the lingers of both hand* actually worn down to flic bone by ineffectual efforts to dig for pure water in the salt earth. If a man is not quickly killed by heat and thirst, or by falling into the quicksands, he goes mad, and raves of green fields and'bubbling *lreams. in parts of Hie valley there are innumerable pinnacles of salt earth, as sharp as n needle, and as dangerous as bayonet-points. Many a man has been lamed by them, and fallen down to die in delirium. .Even Hie gloomy imagination of Dante could not have conjured up one hall' of the horrors of this real Valley of Death.