The Mystic Mid-Region Part 7

The Liverpool Company felt confident of winning the race, for the company owned a spur track from the main line of the railroad to the salt-fields, and upon this line was placed a hand-car, manned ready to pull for the fields the instant the dispatch should arrive. This car could easily outstrip the fleetest horse, the yielding sands making it impossible for a steed to make rapid progress.

The manager of the Standard Company, however, did not depend upon horse speed, mule speed, or car speed. There are in Southern California an average of 316 cloudless days each year. He pinned his faith to the weather, and his confidence was not betrayed.

At 2.45 o'clock, the afternoon of January 31st, two telegrams arrived at Salton at about the same time. One was for the manager of the Liverpool Salt Company and the other was for the manager of the Standard Salt Company. The contents of the telegrams were identical.

They told that the President had signed the bill which opened the lands in the salt-field to entry. In a moment the hand-car was off, the men pumping for dear life. Before they had gone a dozen rods there shot from the station a blaze of light--a message flashed by mirrors held in such a manner as to catch and reflect the rays of the sun. To the watchers three miles away, who were waiting for the signal, which had been prearranged, it was as though the station had burst into flame. At the sight of this signal the men rushed to the salt-fields and set the stakes and posted the notices required by law. When the hand-car men arrived it was all over, and there was nothing for them to do but to return and swallow their chagrin.

After the triumph of the Standard Company in this peculiar race, a compromise was effected whereby the Liverpool Company, which owned the mills and apparatus and the spur track, and all other equipments for the operating of the field, resumed the owners.h.i.+p of the field, and the Standard Company was granted concessions which placed them on an equal footing with their compet.i.tors in the markets on the coast.

In June, 1891, the laborers at Salton were treated to a surprise. They found the country filling up with water from an unknown source. A great deal of apprehension was felt, as it was thought that the water undoubtedly came from a creva.s.se which had been opened communicating with the sea. If such were the case it was to be expected that Salton would soon be 265 feet under water, for water seeks its level.

The flow of water continued till an area ten miles wide by thirty miles long was covered to a depth of six feet; then it was ascertained that the water was coming in from the Colorado River, which had risen above its banks and was cutting a channel across the desert, threatening to convert a large section of the Coach.e.l.la Valley into an inland sea.

This inundation was caused by the co-equal rise of the head waters of the Colorado and Gila rivers. The waters of the lower Colorado rose five feet above high-water mark and continued to pour its waters into the desert till the flood subsided. After the flood had abated, the sands of the desert and the fiery sun soon drank up the lake thus suddenly formed.

Inquiry brought forth the information that a similar inundation had taken place in 1849. At that time, however, the waters subsided before so large a lake had been formed.

It was these inundations which gave birth to the idea of converting a part of the waters of the Colorado into an irrigating ca.n.a.l for the purpose of reclaiming the lands of the valley.

CHAPTER XIII

DEATH VALLEY

Of the 157,000 square miles of territory which comprise the State of California, 35,000 square miles are desert. Of this area more than two thousand square miles lie below the level of the sea. The lowest point in all this submarine field is found in Death Valley, the most terrifying and forbidding region in the world.

Death Valley has been rightly named. It was christened with blood and has ever lived up to its t.i.tle. Sixty-eight out of the seventy Mormon emigrants who wandered into that dread region, in 1849, gave their lives to the christening. The story of their terrible death from tortures of thirst and agonies of heat is too horrible to print. They came into a nameless region and their bodies were there consigned to unmarked graves. There lie to-day the remains of all that party save two. These two, when they came away, left behind them a region with a name--Death Valley.

[Ill.u.s.tration: TEAMING IN DEATH VALLEY From photograph by C. C. Pierce & Co.]

Since then other names have been given to localities within this terrible region, and they have been, for the most part, names in keeping with the awfulness of the place. The mountains which tower above the fearful sink, shutting it off from the great desert outside, have been named "Funeral Mountains." There is "Furnace Creek," whose waters, bitter, poisonous, and unpalatable, flowing through burning sands, become heated as though literally flowing from a glowing furnace. There are "Ash Meadows," a plain strewn with scoriac debris--a Sodom of the Western world. There is the "Devil's Chair," a gigantic and realistic throne worn by erosion from the huge bluffs which form the portals to the valley, a seat appropriate to his Satanic majesty were he to choose a throne upon earth. Indeed, according to a notice posted by a Government surveying party in the pa.s.s into the valley, the home of the chief of imps is not far distant. The notice reads thus:

DRY PLACE PLEASE KEEP OFF THE GRa.s.s SARATOGA SPRINGS SODA, BORAX, AND NITER MINERAL MONUMENT DEATH VALLEY, 365 FEET BELOW SEA-LEVEL 05 MILES TO RANDSBURG 85 MILES TO DAGGETT 20 MILES TO EVANS' RANCH 30 MILES TO RESTING SPRINGS 10 MILES TO OWL SPRINGS 10 MILES TO SALT SPRINGS 32 MILES TO COYOTE HOLES ERECTED BY THE BAILEY GEOLOGICAL PARTY CHRISTMAS DAY, 1900 20 MILES FROM WOOD 20 MILES FROM WATER 40 FEET FROM h.e.l.l G.o.d BLESS OUR HOME

The pool known as Saratoga Springs, where this monument is erected, is one of the wonders of the valley. From the bottom of the circular crater-like basin, which is about thirty feet across, bubble several springs whose tepid waters are strongly impregnated with sulphur. These springs keep the basin full and overflowing, and the waste waters seek a natural depression near and form a lake several acres in extent. The waters are not fit for use, however, being rank with alkali and other mineral substances.

Death Valley has an area of nearly five hundred square miles. It is fifty miles long and varies in width from five to ten miles. Its greatest depression is 480 feet below sea-level. In this limited area more men have perished than upon any other similar area in the world, the great battle-fields excepted. The remarkable mineral wealth of the region has been a glittering bait to lure men to destruction. There are in the valley golden ledges, the ores of which run in value to fabulous sums per ton. There are vast beds of borax, niter, soda, salt, and other mineral drugs. There is a single salt-field in the valley thirty miles long and from two to four miles wide, where salt lies a foot or more deep over the entire field. Turquoises, opals, garnets, onyx, marbles, and other gems and rocks of value exist in abundance. The valley is a storehouse of wealth, the treasure-vault of the nation, the drug-store of the universe, but Death holds the t.i.tle.

Although Death Valley is the most formidable spot in all the desert region, it is not wanting in beauty. Color effects such as artist never dreamed of are here to be seen. It is not the coloring given by vegetation, however, for verdure is lacking. There are no velvety green meadows, neither are there fields of blooming flowers. The coloring of the mountains and plains of this region are penciled in unfading and unchanging colors. These colors are mineral and chemical and are blended in rare harmony--laid by the Master Hand which carved this remarkable region out of the edge of the Western continent.

Green and blue of copper, ruddiness of niter, yellow of sulphur, red of hemat.i.te and cinnabar, white of salt and borax, blend with the black and gray of the barren rocks and the dark carmine and royal purple and pale green of the mineral-stained granites.

Heat and thirst are not wholly responsible for death in this valley, for some have frozen and some have drowned within its confines.

Thermometers register as high as 140 degrees in the valley, but towering above the region are snow-clad mountains, and it sometimes happens that the winds, which in the day waft waves of furnace-like heat through the valley, bring down, by night, the frigidity of the upper region, chilling to death the unprotected prospector who may chance to be below.

Again, in this thirst-cursed region, which knows not the blessing of the shower, sometimes occur terrible cloudbursts which send solid walls of water tearing down the mountain-sides, carrying death and destruction in its wake.

[Ill.u.s.tration: INDIAN CHIEF LYING IN STATE From photograph by C. C. Pierce & Co.]

Nor are these all of the possible dangers. In this great drug warehouse arise deadly vapors, and the pa.s.sing winds whirl clouds of poisonous dust through the air, which, if inhaled, will eat the vitals and eventually rob one of life.

Notwithstanding the terrible character of this valley, there is an instance where two persons sought it for the express purpose of cheating death. A Brooklyn lawyer named Whittaker, and his wife, were both stricken with consumption. By advice of their doctors they sought the Pacific coast, going to Los Angeles. Physicians there advised them to seek a drier climate; therefore, in a wagon equipped with a camping outfit and a supply of the necessities of life, they sought the Great Mojave Desert. Here, indeed, was air dry enough for their purpose. They drove from oasis to oasis, and soon found themselves growing better and stronger, notwithstanding the privations they were forced to endure.

They determined to make their home somewhere in that vast solitude, but where was a question yet to be decided.

They continued to wander over the barren wastes till one day they came to the gateway to the terrible valley of death. It is not certain that they were aware of the ident.i.ty of the locality. Be that as it may, the horses were directed valleyward and they pa.s.sed through the portals which have admitted so many and discharged so few.

Inside the valley they found a man guarding a borax mine which had been closed down because men could not be found to brave the perils of the valley to operate it. Here Whittaker and his wife rested a few days and then they pressed on into the valley. Their host tried to induce them to turn back, but they would not heed him. Onward they journeyed till they found a little canon in the side of the mountain which formed a portion of one of walls of the valley, and this spot they named home and made there a permanent camp. This was in 1893 or 1894. Seven years later the woman died. Whittaker continued to live in the old home, but the loss of his wife, coupled with the solitude, the heat, and the poisons of the atmosphere, was too much for his reason and he went mad.

In this condition he was found by a prospector--mad, but rich, for the floor of his cabin was thickly littered with golden nuggets.

A great railroad, the San Pedro, Los Angeles and Salt Lake road, is now spanning the desert. This line will pa.s.s within a few miles of the entrance to the valley, and when it is completed the real conquest of the valley will begin. It is predicted that a branch road will shortly be built into the valley from this road. When this is done, and pure water has been piped into the valley, towns and perhaps cities will spring up in the midst of the dread region, even as they are now springing up in the great submarine region of the Colorado Desert.

Then, from a region of terror and death, it may become a valley of life, activity, and prosperity.

CHAPTER XIV

THE MOUTH OF HADES

"The Volcanoes" is the name given to a most peculiar and terrifying region in the lower Colorado Desert. Its character is such as to lead certain of the Indians who inhabit the desert to believe it to be the gateway to the land of evil spirits. Indeed, it would seem to be the very gateway to Hades, and one is reminded, upon visiting the region, of John Bunyan's description of the "Valley of the Shadow of Death"

through which Christian is forced to pa.s.s.

"About the midst of this valley I perceived the mouth of h.e.l.l to be,"

he writes, "and it stood also hard by the wayside. And ever and anon the flame and smoke would come out in such abundance, with sparks and hideous noises."

One can almost imagine that Bunyan wrote those lines from the Colorado Desert, after viewing the "Volcanoes."

Over an area of more than a mile square are scattered hundreds of cone-like mounds, from one foot to one hundred feet in diameter and of various heights, all of which are busily engaged in spitting forth sulphurous vapors, black ooze, boiling mud and water, and other volcanic matter. Over the region eternally hang dense clouds of steam and hot vapors, and strange sounds emanate from this diabolical region.

There are hissings, as of monster serpents; strange and ominous rumblings which come from the bowels of the earth; sharp explosions, singly or in mult.i.tudinous concert, like the running fire of armies engaged in battle; moaning noises, as of animals or human beings in distress; thuds and jars, as of heavy bodies falling,--all these and a mult.i.tude of other unusual and unnatural sounds are not rea.s.suring to timid hearts.

The region is treeless and herbless. Sulphurous soil and sulphurous air have proven fatal to vegetable life. Not even the cactus or desert sage can survive the poisons of the soil. Animal life is equally scarce, and the very birds of the air avoid the locality.

There is a peculiar sensation experienced upon entering this volcanic region after hours of travel over the desert in the glare of the sun, which here ever s.h.i.+nes from a cloudless sky. As one approaches the eruptive cones he pa.s.ses into a shadow which is almost startling after the brightness so long experienced. The steam-clouds shut out the sun from this mile of gruesome region, but the heat from the numerous craters more than makes up for the absence of the fiery rays of the sun.

In one portion of the volcanic territory is a body of water a quarter of a mile long, which is known as Lake Juala or Black Lake. Its waters, which are extremely warm, are inky-black, and the hands, when dipped therein, are stained. It is not known what minerals or chemicals are held in solution. It is probable that the waters are poisonous. It may be, however, that they have wonderful medicinal properties, and that they are destined to heal the ailments of humanity. However that may be, this somber sea is in keeping with the region--a fitting lake for the suburb of Hades.

Earthquakes are of frequent occurrence in the vicinity of the "Volcanoes." They are in line of the so-called "earthquake belt," which extends up and down the coast, California being the most frequently disturbed of the coast States.

Since 1850, when the record of these disturbances was begun, more than four hundred shocks have been felt in the State. Some of these have been slight and others have been severe. The earthquake, Christmas evening of 1900, destroyed the village of Hemet over against the western side of the desert and caused the death of six persons. In the year 1812, the mission of San Juan Capistrano was destroyed by an earthquake, and half a hundred lives were lost.

Certain changes are taking place in this region. Some portions of the land are slowly sinking and other points are rising. The same subterranean fires which keep active the hundreds of miniature volcanoes heat the waters of the Caliente and Matajala hot springs, and are doubtless responsible for the frequent s.h.i.+verings of Mother Earth.

There was a time in the history of the earth--long before man was here to record the history--when a chain of volcanoes extended from Alaska on the north to Mexico and beyond, on the south. These monster spouters left their ineffaceable record upon the continent in the way of vast beds of lava and numerous craters, which the centuries have not been able to hide. The region known as the "Volcanoes" may be the remnant of that mighty volcanic period, or it may be the dawning of a new eruptive season. It is, in either case, a locality to be shunned.