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THE WHITE HEART 
 OF MOJAVE 
 
 An Adventure with the Outdoors 
 OF THE Desert 
 
 EDNA BRUSH PERKINS 
 
 BONI AND LIVERIGHT 
 
 Publishers New York 
 

 Copyright, 1922, by 
 
 BONI AND LiVERIGHT, InC. 
 
 PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA 
 
 HPViS'?2 
 
 ©CUG86877 
 
To 
 
 my friend 
 
 CHARLOTTE HANNAHS JORDAN 
 
 who shared this adventure 
 
 in the wind and sun 
 
 of big spaces 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 Chapter 
 
 
 Page 
 
 I. 
 
 The Feel of the Outdoors . 
 
 9 
 
 II. 
 
 How We Found Mojave . 
 
 20 
 
 III. 
 
 The White Heart . . . 
 
 ' 51 
 
 IV. 
 
 The Outfit 
 
 71 
 
 V. 
 
 Entering Death Valley . 
 
 87 
 
 VI. 
 
 The Strangest Farm in the 
 
 
 
 World 
 
 112 
 
 VII. 
 
 The Burning Sands . . . 
 
 128 
 
 VIII. 
 
 The Dry Camp .... 
 
 . 141 
 
 IX. 
 
 The Mountain Spring . . 
 
 155 
 
 X. 
 
 The High White Peaks . 
 
 180 
 
 XI. 
 
 Snowstorm and Sandstorm 
 
 195 
 
 XII. 
 
 The End of the Adventure 
 
 219 
 
 
 Appendix 
 
 225 
 
ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 A Desert Road Frontispiece 
 
 Facing Pagb 
 
 Some Half-wild Burrows Around Silver Lake 54 
 
 Beatty, at the Base of a Big Red Mountain . 80 
 
 The Outfit 90 
 
 The Camp Behind the Barn 102 
 
 The Alkali Bottom of Death Valley . . . 130 
 
 The Desert 150 
 
 A Pack-Train Crossing a Dry Lake . . . 166 
 
The Feel of the Outdoors 
 
 BEYOND the walls and solid roofs of 
 houses is the outdoors. It is always on 
 the doorstep. The sky, serene, or piled 
 with white, slow-moving clouds, or full of wind 
 and purple storm, is always overhead. But 
 walls have an engrossing quality. If there are 
 many of them they assert themselves and domi- 
 neer. They insist on the unique importance of 
 the contents of walls and would have you be- 
 lieve that the spaces above them, the slow pro- 
 cession of the seasons and the alternations of 
 sunshine and rain, are accessories, pleasant or 
 unpleasant, of walls, — indeed that they were 
 made, and a bungling job, too, and to be disre- 
 garded as a bungling job should be, solely that 
 walls might exist. 
 
 Perhaps your lawyer or your dentist has his 
 
 [9] 
 
White Heart of Mojave 
 
 office on the nineteenth floor of a modern sky- 
 scraper. While you wait for his ministrations 
 you look out of his big window. Below you the 
 roofs of the city spread for miles to blue hills or 
 the bright sea. The smoke of tall chimneys 
 rolls into the sky that fills all the space between 
 you and the horizon and the sun; the smoke of 
 hustling prosperity fans out, and floats, and 
 mixes with the clouds, and becomes at last part 
 of a majestic movement of something other than 
 either smoke or clouds. Suddenly the roofs that 
 covered only tables and chairs and power ma- 
 chines cover romance, a million romances rise 
 and mingle like the smoke of the tall chimneys. 
 They mix with the romance of the clouds and 
 the hills. You are happy. Nothing is changed 
 around you, but you are happy. You only know 
 that the sun did it, and those f ar-oflf hills. When 
 the man you are waiting for comes in you con- 
 gratulate him on his fine view. Then the jealous 
 walls assert themselves again; they want you to 
 forget as soon as possible. 
 
 But you never quite forget. You visit the 
 woods or the mountains or the sea in your vaca- 
 
 [lO] 
 
The Feel of the Outdoors 
 
 tion. You loaf along trout streams, or in red 
 autumn woods with a gun in your hands for an 
 excuse, or chase golf balls over green hills, or 
 sail on the bay and get becalmed and do not 
 care. For the pleasure of living outdoors you 
 are willing to have your eyes smart from the 
 smoke of the camp fire, and to be wet and cold, 
 and to fight mosquitoes and flies. You like the 
 feel of it, and you wait for that sudden sense of 
 romance everywhere which is the touch of some- 
 thing big and simple and beautiful. It is 
 always beyond the walls, that something, but 
 most of us have been bullied by them so much 
 that we have to go far away to find it; then we 
 can bring it home and remember. 
 
 Charlotte and I knew the outdoors a little. 
 Though we were middle-aged, mothers of fami- 
 lies and deeply involved in the historic struggle 
 for the vote, we sometimes looked at the sky. In 
 our remote youth we had had a few brief experi- 
 ences of the mountains and the woods; I had 
 some not altogether contemptible peaks to my 
 credit and she had canoed in the Canadian wilds, 
 so when we decided that a vacation was due us 
 
White Heart of Mojave 
 
 we chose the outdoors. Our labors had been 
 arduous, divided as they were between the 
 clamorings of the young and our militant mis- 
 sion to free the world; we were thoroughly 
 habituated to walls and set a high value on their 
 contents. It was our habit to tell large and 
 assorted audiences that freedom consists in cast- 
 ing a ballot at regular intervals and taking your 
 rightful place in a great democracy; nor did it 
 seem anomalous, as perhaps it should have, that 
 our chiefest desire was to escape from every 
 manifestation of democracy in the solitariness 
 of some wild and lonely place far from city halls, 
 smokestacks, national organizations, and streets 
 of little houses all alike. For some time the 
 desire had been cutting through our work with 
 an edge of restlessness. We called it "Need for 
 a Vacation," not knowing that every desire to 
 withdraw from the crowd is a personal assertion 
 and a protest against the struggle and worry, the 
 bluff and banality and everlasting tail-chasing 
 which goes on inside the walls of the stateliest 
 statehouse and the two-room suite with bath. Our 
 real craving was not for a play hour, but for the 
 
 [12] 
 
 •\ 
 
The Feel of the Outdoors 
 
 wild and lonely place and a different kind of 
 freedom from that about which we had been 
 preaching. 
 
 Our choice of the wild and lonely place was 
 circumscribed by the fact that we had been 
 offered the use of an automobile from Los 
 Angeles. The automobile was a much appre- 
 ciated gift, but we regretted that Los Angeles 
 had to be the starting point because southern 
 California is the blissful goal of the tired east 
 and the tired east was what we needed to escape 
 from. We left home without plans — too many 
 plans in vacation are millstones hung around 
 your neck — sure only that such places as Santa 
 Barbara, Redlands, Riverside, and San Diego 
 would be for us nothing more than points on the 
 way to somewhere else. An atlas showed a 
 great empty space just east of the Sierra Nevada 
 Range and the San Bernadino Mountains 
 vaguely designated as the Mojave Desert. It 
 was surprising to find the greater part of south- 
 ern California, the much-advertised home of 
 the biggest fruit and flowers in the world, in- 
 cluded in it. A few criss-cross lines indicated 
 
 [13] 
 
White Heart of Mojave 
 
 mountains; north of the Santa Fe Railroad, 
 which crosses the Mojave on the way to the 
 coast, the words Death Valley were printed be- 
 tween two groups of them; in the south a big 
 white space similarly surrounded was the Impe- 
 rial Valley; the names of a few towns sprangled 
 out from the railroad — nothing else. Was the 
 desert just a white space like that? The word 
 had a mixed connotation, it suggested monotony, 
 sterility, death — and also big open spaces, gold 
 and blue sunsets, and fascination. We recol- 
 lected that some author had written about the 
 "terrible fascination" of the desert. The white 
 blank on the map looked very wild and lonely. 
 We went to Los Angeles on the Santa Fe in 
 order to see what it might contain. 
 
 We looked at it. After leaving the high pla- 
 teau of northern Arizona the railroad crosses the 
 Colorado River and enters the lowlands of the 
 Mojave Desert. That is the first glimpse the 
 tourist has of California, but he hardly realizes 
 that it is California, for it is so different from the 
 pictures on the time-tables and hotel folders. 
 At Needles he usually pulls down the window 
 
 [14] 
 
The Feel of the Outdoors 
 
 shades against the too-hot sun and forgets the 
 dust and heat in the pages of the last best seller, 
 or else he goes out on the California Limited 
 which spares its passengers the dusty horrors of 
 the desert by crossing the Mojave at night. His 
 California, and ours when we left Chicago, con- 
 sists of the charming bungalows with date palms 
 in their dooryards and yellow roses climbing 
 their porches, the square orange groves all 
 brushed and combed for dress parade, the pic- 
 turesque missions, and the white towns with 
 streets shaded by feathery pepper trees west of 
 the backbone of the Sierras, not the hundreds of 
 miles of desolation east of them. Hour after 
 hour we pounded through it in a hot monotony 
 of yellow dust. Hour after hour great sweeps 
 of blue-green brush led off to mountains blue 
 and red against the sky. We passed black lava 
 beds, and strange shining flats of baked clay, and 
 clifflike rocks. It was very vast. The railroad 
 seemed a tiny thread of life through an endless 
 solitude. The train stopped at forlorn stations 
 consisting of a few buildings stark on the coarse, 
 gravelly sand. Sometimes a gang of swarthy 
 
 [IS] 
 
White Heart of Mojave 
 
 Mexicans stopped work on the track to watch 
 us go by, sometimes a house stood alone in the 
 brush, sometimes a lonely automobile crawled 
 along the highway beside the railroad. It was 
 empty and vast, and over it all the sun poured 
 a white flood. 
 
 In spite of the dust and glare a fascinated curi- 
 osity kept us looking out of the dirty windows 
 all day. Occasionally dim wagon tracks led 
 toward the mountains, some of which were high 
 and set on wide, solid foundations. They were 
 immovable, old, old mountains. Shadows cut 
 sharply into the smooth brightness of their sides. 
 Their colors changed and the sand ran between 
 them like beckoning roads. "Come," it seemed 
 to say, "and find what is hidden here." Once 
 we saw a man with three burros loaded with 
 cooking utensils and bedding. He was traveling 
 across country through the sagebrush. Where 
 could he be going? 
 
 Unconsciously I asked the question aloud and 
 Charlotte answered: 
 
 "He is a prospector looking for a gold mine. 
 Don't you see his pick on the second mule?" 
 
 [.6] 
 
The Feel of the Outdoors 
 
 "Please say burro," I pleaded. "It gives a 
 better atmosphere. Besides it is not a mule, it's 
 an ass." 
 
 "Those are the Old Dad Mountains over 
 there, those big rosy ones. That's vv^here he is 
 going, up the long path of sand. He will camp 
 there. Perhaps he is not a prospector, he may 
 have a mine already." 
 
 "Of course he has one," I assented. "All the 
 prospectors are dead. They died of thirst in 
 Death Valley." 
 
 "My prospector did not. He is going to his 
 mine. He tries to w^ork it himself but it does 
 not pay very well because he can't get enough 
 out, and he can't sell it because too many booms 
 have failed, and nobody will invest. So he goes 
 up and down in the sun and has a good time." 
 
 Perhaps you could have a good time going up 
 and down in the sun through those empty spaces 
 that stretched so endlessly on either side of the 
 track. I wondered if we might not go to the 
 Imperial Valley and see that strange thing, the 
 new Salton Sea, a lake in the desert; but Char- 
 lotte objected because that part of the white 
 
 [17] 
 
White Heart of Mojave 
 
 blank was partially under irrigation, too near 
 the coast, and would be too civilized and full of 
 ranches. I doubted much if the tired east went 
 there for I thought that it was the desert like 
 this, only hotter, worse. She declared that the 
 tired east went everywhere that it could get to. 
 Evidently it could not reach Mojave, for cer- 
 tainly it was not rushing around in automobiles 
 trying to be happy, nor pouring the savings for 
 its short holiday into the money bags of con- 
 scienceless hotel companies. Mojave was indeed 
 a blank, a wild and lonely place. 
 
 "I think," Charlotte remarked after a time, 
 "that we will go to Death Valley." 
 
 'Why?" 
 
 "Because I am tired of looking at the Twenty 
 Mule Team Borax boxes and wondering what 
 kind of place they came from that could have a 
 name like that." 
 
 I thought it was not a sufficient reason for me 
 to risk my life. 
 
 "I think," she said, "that it is the wildest and 
 loneliest place of all. Nobody goes there except 
 your prospectors, and you say they are all dead. 
 
 [i8] 
 
The Feel of the Outdoors 
 
 Think of the gold and jewels they did not find 
 lying around everywhere. Think of the hot- 
 ness and brightness. It must be an awful, lone- 
 some, sparkling place." 
 
 It must be! Those reasons appealed to me, 
 but the idea was a bit upsetting considering that 
 we had started for a happy-go-lucky vacation, a 
 little like playing with a kitten and having it 
 turn into a tiger. Mojave was like a tiger, terri- 
 ble and fascinating. From the windows of the 
 Santa Fe train it was a savage, ruthless-looking 
 country, naked in the sun. It repelled us and 
 held us, we could not keep our eyes off it. They 
 ached from straining to pierce the distances 
 where the beckoning roads were lost in bright- 
 ness. Mountains and valleys full of outdoors, 
 nothing but outdoors! What was the feel of 
 being alone in the sagebrush? How free the 
 sweep of the wind must be, how hot the sun, how 
 immense the deep night sky! 
 
 Thus the wild and lonely place was selected. 
 A strange outdoors for a holiday truly, and we 
 had an adventure with it. 
 
 [■9] 
 
II 
 
 How We Found Mojave 
 
 WHEN the automobile was delivered 
 into our hands at Los Angeles we 
 wanted to turn around immediately 
 and drive back through the Cajon Pass into the 
 Mojave Desert, but our inquiries about direc- 
 tions met with discouragement on every side. It 
 seemed to be unheard of for two women to 
 attempt such a thing; the distances between the 
 towns where we could get accommodations were 
 too great and the roads were apt to have long 
 stretches of sand where we would get stuck. 
 Our friends drew a dismal picture of us sitting 
 out in the sagebrush beside a disabled car and 
 slowly starving to death. 
 
 "You could not fix it," they said, "and what 
 would you do?" 
 
 We suggested that we might wait until some- 
 body came along. 
 
 [20] 
 
How We Found Mojave 
 
 They assured us that nobody ever came along. 
 
 We went to the Automobile Club; they re- 
 ceived us with enthusiasm and told us about all 
 the places California is proud of and how to 
 get to them, but California seems not to be proud 
 of the desert, for when we mentioned it our 
 advisers became gloomy. They seemed to have 
 no very definite information and were sure we 
 would not like it. In the face of so much dis- 
 couragement we hardly dared to ask about Death 
 Valley and when we did, hesitatingly, the ques- 
 tion was ignored. We simply could not get 
 there, nobody ever went. The Imperial Valley 
 seemed to be almost as bad. One of the maps 
 they gave us showed a main highway from San 
 Diego over into it, but they said that it was only 
 a gravel road, mountainous and steep, and that 
 we had better stick to the main routes. Evidently 
 they had no faith in our skill as drivers, nor 
 belief in our purpose, so we soon gathered up 
 the maps and innumerable folders about resort 
 hotels, thanked them, and went our way. 
 
 The collection contained no map of the Mo- 
 jave. She had called us, but not loudly enough 
 
 [21] 
 
White Heart of Mojave 
 
 as yet, and now that we no longer saw her we 
 remembered her terribleness more than her fas- 
 cination. We would content ourselves with the 
 Imperial Valley, at least for a beginning; but 
 we said nothing more about it and started down 
 the coast with every appearance of having a 
 ladylike programme. In our then mood we hated 
 the coast and were guilty of speeding along the 
 fine macadam between Los Angeles and San 
 Diego in our eagerness to leave it. We turned 
 due east from the green little city on the shores 
 of its beautiful harbor and headed for the desert. 
 Our unsatisfactory interview at the Automobile 
 Club had led us to believe that the Imperial 
 Valley, irrigated or not, was a wild and lonely 
 place, the desert itself, for it seemed to be sur- 
 rounded by difficulties. 
 
 The road from San Diego proved to be good, 
 presenting no hindrances not easily surmounted, 
 and as we drove along it we told each other what 
 we thought about the Automobile Club. Grad- 
 ually the character of the country changed. A 
 little of the prickly, spiky desert vegetation with 
 which we were to become so familiar appeared. 
 
 [22] 
 
How We Found Mojave 
 
 The round hills gave way to piles of bare, col- 
 ored rock, the soil became a gravelly sand on 
 which scrub oak and manzanita grew. The 
 houses became fewer. In one place we had to 
 detour and found deep, soft sand, nothing to 
 the sand of a real desert road, but we did not 
 know that then. The change was subtle, yet we 
 felt it. The country took on the harshness that 
 had repelled us from the train-windows. Being 
 alone in it was at first a little dreadful. 
 
 After a day or so of leisurely driving we came 
 suddenly to the edge of the valley. The ground 
 fell before us, cut into rough canyons and foot- 
 hills, two thousand feet to a blue depth. It was 
 like a great hole full of blue mist, surrounded 
 by red and chocolate-colored mountains. Noth- 
 ing was clear down there though the mountains 
 were sharply defined and had indigo shadows on 
 them. The valley was a pure, light blue, of the 
 quality of the sky, as though the sky reached 
 down into it. We lingered a long time eating 
 our lunch on a jagged rock, trying to pierce the 
 blue veils and see the Salton Sea, a big salt lake 
 which we knew was there with the tracks of the 
 
 [33] 
 
White Heart of Mojave 
 
 Southern Pacific beside it, the sand dunes we had 
 heard of, and the town of El Centro where we 
 were to spend the night. We could see nothing 
 of them, only a phantasy of changing color, an 
 unreality. 
 
 We found the whole desert full of drama, but 
 the Imperial Valley is perhaps the most dra- 
 matic spot of all, except Death Valley, that 
 other deep hole below sea-level which is so much 
 more remote and so utterly lonely. The great 
 basin of the Imperial Valley was once a part of 
 the ocean until the gradual silting up of its 
 narrow opening separated it from the Gulf of 
 California. The bottom of the valley then be- 
 came an inland sea which slowly evaporated 
 under the hot sun, leaving as it receded a thick 
 deposit of salt on the sand. At last the valley 
 was dry, a deep glistening bowl between choco- 
 late-colored mountains, a white desolation un- 
 disturbed by man or beast, covered with silence. 
 For ages it lay thus while morning and evening 
 painted the hills. 
 
 Then the railroad came with its thread of 
 life, connecting Yuma with San Bernadino and 
 
 [24] 
 
How We Found Mojave 
 
 Los Angeles. Soon a salt-works was built in 
 what had once been the bottom of the ocean, and 
 later an irrigation-system for the southern end 
 of the valley from the Colorado River which 
 flows just east of the Chocolate Mountains. The 
 white desolation was made to bloom and, in 
 spite of the intense heat of summer, has become 
 one of the richest farming districts of California. 
 But the drama is still going on. A few years ago 
 the untamed Colorado River that had fought 
 its way through the Grand Canyon and come 
 two hundred miles across the desert turned wild 
 and flooded into the Imperial Valley. It was 
 shut out again, but it left the new Salton Sea in 
 the old ocean bed. Its yellow waves now break 
 near the irrigated area; it drowned the salt 
 works. The Salton Sea is slowly vanishing as 
 its predecessor did; in a little while the valley 
 will again be dry and white and glistening. 
 
 The road descended before us in jigjags to 
 the blue depth. It was a good road but narrow 
 in places, dropping sheer at the edge, and steep. 
 Very carefully we drove down, emerging at last 
 through a narrow, rough canyon onto the sandy 
 
 [25] 
 
White Heart of Mojave 
 
 floor of the valley. A macadam road led like a 
 shining band through the sagebrush. This evi- 
 dence of civilization was strange in the sur- 
 rounding wilderness, for as yet we could see no 
 sign of life in the valley. The sand came up to 
 the edge of the road and was blown into dunes 
 between us and the new sea. There was nothing 
 but sunshine and sagebrush and flowers. The 
 flowers amazed us, for why should they grow 
 there? There was a yellow kind that outshone 
 our perennial garden coreopsis, and numberless 
 little flowers pressed close to the sand with 
 spread-out velvet, or shining, or crinkled blue 
 or frosted leaves. We had to get out of the car 
 to see them, and whenever we got out we felt 
 the heat blaze around us. We were below sea- 
 level and even in February it was very hot. The 
 light was almost blinding, and a silver heat- 
 shimmer swam between us and the mountain- 
 walls. The mountains seemed to be of many 
 colors which changed as the afternoon advanced. 
 The sun set in a more vivid purple and gold than 
 we had ever seen. 
 
 We lingered so long looking at the strange 
 
 [26] 
 
How We Found Mojave 
 
 plants and flowers that twilight found us still 
 alone with the desert. Only the white macadam 
 band promised any end to it. Realizing that 
 night was coming and we had an unknown num- 
 ber of miles before us we stepped on the accel- 
 erator with more energy than wisdom. The re- 
 sult was a loud explosion of one of the brand- 
 new rear tires. We found the tire so hot that 
 we had to wait for it to cool before we could 
 change it, and the road hot to touch though the 
 sun had been down for some time. We called 
 ourselves all manner of names for being such 
 fools as to try to drive fast on that sizzling sur- 
 face. It was the first practical lesson about 
 getting along on the desert. 
 
 Soon after that we came to an irrigation-ditch. 
 Instantly everything was changed and we were 
 in a farming country. El Centro is a hustling 
 town with a modern four-story hotel. We 
 wished it were not four stories when we learned 
 that part of it had recently been shaken down by 
 an earthquake, and especially when we experi- 
 enced three small shocks during that night. The 
 earthquakes themselves did not seem surprising, 
 
 [27] 
 
White Heart of Mojave 
 
 they were a fitting part of the weird experiences 
 of the day. We felt as though we had been 
 very near to the elemental forces of nature; we 
 had been with the bare earth and volcanic rocks 
 and strange plants that flourish in dryness, and 
 felt the unmitigated beat of the sun. It was 
 like seeing the great drama of nature unveiled, 
 fierce and beautiful. 
 
 We stayed several days in the Imperial Val- 
 ley, visiting the Salton Sea, figuring out the 
 beach lines of that other more ancient sea, and 
 walking among the sand dunes. We found that 
 we always went away from the farms into the 
 desert. She was calling us loudly enough now. 
 We heard her and were determined to find more 
 of her. When we tried to go on, however, we 
 met with the same universal discouragement. In 
 El Centro they said that the road out through 
 Yuma to the desert east of the Chocolate Moun- 
 tains was very bad, and the road up the Valley 
 through Palm Springs and Banning no road at 
 all. Besides, there was no water anywhere. 
 Later we found out that none of these things 
 were exactly true, but it probably seemed the 
 
 [28] 
 
How We Found Mojave 
 
 best advice to give two lone w^omen w^ith no 
 experience of desert roads. Our appearance 
 must have been against us. Certainly it w^as no 
 lack of persistence, for we interviewed every- 
 body, hotel-managers, ranchers, druggists and 
 garage-men. They all looked us over and gave 
 the same advice. As far as we could learn, the 
 Mojave Desert which we tried to go to in the 
 first place was where we should be. We sus- 
 pect now that they wanted to get rid of us. 
 
 We returned to Los Angeles and attacked the 
 Automobile Club again. As before we had to 
 listen to arguments about the roads and the sand 
 and the distances and the accommodations, but 
 this time we listened unmoved. With a defiant 
 feeling very reminiscent of youth we purchased 
 a shovel and two big canteens to fasten on the 
 running-board because we had observed that all 
 the cars in the Imperial Valley were thus 
 equipped. These implements gave us a feeling 
 of preparedness. We also bought some blankets 
 and food lest we should break down on a lonely 
 road. We knew what we wanted now and the 
 Automobile Club found a map. It was an in- 
 
 [29] 
 
White Heart of Mojave 
 
 spiring map covered with a network of black 
 roads and many towns in bold type. We studied 
 it and found that we could never get more than 
 thirty miles from somewhere, and we thought 
 we could walk that if we had to. For some 
 reason no one told us to beware of abandoned 
 towns and abandoned roads, perhaps they did 
 not know about them. One of the black lines 
 led straight toward Death Valley. Once more 
 we said nothing about our destination, and 
 started. 
 
 A good road led through the Cajon Pass to 
 Victorville and thence over sand dotted with 
 groves of Joshua palms to Barstow. A Joshua 
 palm is a grotesque tree-yucca which appears 
 wherever the mesas of the Mojave rise to an ele- 
 vation of a few thousand feet. It becomes twenty 
 feet high in some places and its ungainly arms 
 stick up into the sky. It has long, dark green, 
 pointed leaves ending in sharp thorns like the 
 yucca. It attains to great age and the dead 
 branches, split ofif from the trunk or lying on 
 the ground, look as though they were cov- 
 ered with matted gray hair. Charlotte and I 
 
 [30] 
 
How We Found Mojave 
 
 never liked them much, they seemed like mon- 
 sters masquerading as trees; but in that first 
 encounter, when we drove through them mile 
 after mile in a desolation broken only by the 
 narrow ribbon of the gravel road, they were 
 distinctly unpleasant and we were glad when 
 we left them behind at Barstow. 
 
 There seemed to be a choice of routes from 
 that town so we had an ice cream soda and inter- 
 viewed the druggist, having discovered that 
 druggists are among the most helpful of citizens. 
 He proved to be an enthusiast about the desert, 
 the first we had met, and we warmed to him. He 
 brought out an album full of kodak-pictures of 
 the Devil's Playground where the sand-dunes 
 roll along before the wind. He grew almost 
 poetic about them, but when we spread out the 
 map and showed him the proposed route to 
 Death Valley he grew grave. He said the road 
 was so seldom traveled that in places it was 
 obliterated. We would surely get lost. Silver 
 Lake, the next town on it, was eighty-seven miles 
 away. There was one ranch on the road but he 
 was not sure any one was living there. He was 
 
 [3il 
 
White Heart of Mojave 
 
 not even sure we could get accommodations at 
 Silver Lake. Yes, it w^as a v^onderful country; 
 you went over five mountain ridges. He forgot 
 himself and began to describe it glowingly when 
 a tall man who was looking at the magazines 
 interposed with: ^'Surely, you would not send 
 the ladies that way!" 
 
 The two words "get lost" were what deterred 
 us. We felt we could cope with most calamities, 
 but already, coming through the Joshua palms, 
 we had sensed the size and emptiness of Mojave. 
 At least until we were a little better acquainted 
 with the strange land where even the plants 
 seemed weird, we needed the reassurance of a 
 very definite ribbon of road ahead. We decided 
 to go to Randsburg, then to Ballarat and try to 
 get into Death Valley from there. The drug- 
 gist doubted if we could get into the valley at 
 all. We began to suspect that it might be diffi- 
 cult. 
 
 Randsburg, Atolia and Johannesburg are 
 mining towns close together about forty miles 
 north of Barstow. The road there was no such 
 highway as we had been traveling upon; often 
 
 [32] 
 
How We Found Mojave 
 
 it was only two ruts among the sagebrush, but 
 it was well enough marked to follow easily. 
 Great sloping mesas spread for miles on either 
 side of the track, rising to rocky crowns. All 
 the big, open, gradually ascending sweeps are 
 called mesas on the Mojave, though they are in 
 no sense table-lands like the true mesas of New 
 Mexico and Arizona. The groves of Joshua 
 palms had disappeared; we were lower down 
 now where only greasewood and sagebrush grew. 
 The unscientific like us, who accept the word 
 *'mesa," lump together all the varieties of low 
 prickly brush as sagebrush. The little bushes 
 grew several feet apart on the white, gravelly 
 ground, each little bush by itself. They 
 smoothed out in the distance like a carpet woven 
 of all shades of blue and green. The occasional 
 greasewood, a graceful shrub covered with small 
 dark green leaves, waved in the wind. Unob- 
 structed by trees the mesa seemed endless. We 
 stopped the car to feel the silence that enveloped 
 it. The place was vast and empty as the 
 stretches we had seen from the railroad, and 
 now we found how still they all had been. The 
 
 [33] 
 
White Heart of Mojave 
 
 strong, fresh wind pressed steadily against us 
 like a wind at sea. 
 
 Atolia was the first town, golden in the setting 
 J5un, on the shoulder of a stern, red mountain. 
 Before it a wide valley fell away in whose bot- 
 tom gleamed the white floor of a dry lake. All 
 the mountain tops were on fire. The three towns 
 were very close together, separated by the shoul- 
 der of the red mountain. Randsburg was the 
 largest, whose one street was a steep hill. It 
 had a score of buildings and two or three stores. 
 Johannesburg, just over the crest, had six build- 
 ings, among them an adobe hotel and a large 
 garage. All three towns ornamented the map 
 with big black letters. We thought we were 
 approaching cities and found instead little 
 wooden houses set on the sand with the great 
 simplicity of the desert at their doors. 
 
 According to that map Death Valley was now 
 not more than sixty miles away. We thoroughly 
 startled the inhabitants of Johannesburg, famil- 
 iarly known as Joburg, by the announcement 
 that we were going there. We did not yet know 
 how startling an announcement it was; but these 
 
 C34] 
 
How We Found Mojave 
 
 real dwellers on the desert, intimately acquainted 
 with her difficulties, met our ignorance in a 
 more helpful spirit than any of our other ad- 
 visers had, even the agreeable druggist. Hardly 
 any one ever goes to places like Joburg just for 
 the pleasure of going, and they seemed pleased 
 that we had come. They described the Panamint 
 Mountains which shut off the valley from that 
 side with a barrier nearly 12,000 feet high. 
 There are only two passes, the Wingate Pass 
 through which the borax used to be hauled and 
 which is now blocked with fallen rocks, and a 
 pass up by Ballarat. They had not heard of 
 any cars going in for some time. Unhappily 
 Ballarat had been abandoned for several years 
 and we could not stay there unless we could find 
 the Indians, and no one knew where they were. 
 None of the Joburgians whom we first inter- 
 viewed had ever been to Death Valley. 
 
 It was discouraging, but we persevered until 
 we found a real old-timer. He was known as 
 Shady Myrick. We never discovered his 
 Christian name though he was a famous desert 
 character. Wherever we went afterward every- 
 
 [3S] 
 
White Heart of Mojave 
 
 one knew Shady. Evidently the name was not 
 descriptive for all agreed on his honesty and 
 goodness. He was an old man, rather deaf, 
 with clear, very straightforward-gazing eyes. 
 Most of his life had been spent on the Mojave 
 as a prospector and miner, and much of it in 
 Death Valley itself. The desert held him for her 
 own as she does all old-timers. He was under 
 the "terrible fascination." As soon as we ex- 
 plained that we had come for no other purpose 
 than to visit his beloved land he was eagerly 
 interested and described the wonders of Death 
 Valley, its beautiful high mountains, its shining 
 white floor, its hot brightness, its stillness, and 
 the flowers that sometimes deck it in the spring. 
 
 "If you go there," he said, "you will see some- 
 thing that you'll never see anywhere else in the 
 world." 
 
 He had gem mines in the Panamints and was 
 in the habit of going off with his mule-team for 
 months at a time. He even said that he would 
 take us to the valley himself were he a younger 
 man. We assured him that we would go with 
 him gladly. We urged him — you had only to 
 
 [36] 
 
How We Found Mojave 
 
 look into his eyes to trust him — promising to do 
 all the work if he would furnish the wagon and 
 be the guide, innocently unaware of the absurdity 
 of such a proposal in the burning heat of Death 
 Valley; but he only smiled gently, and said that 
 he was too old. 
 
 Silver Lake turned out to be the place for us 
 to go after all. He described how we could 
 drive straight on from Joburg, a hundred and 
 sixteen miles. There was a sort of a road all the 
 way. He drew a map on the sand and said that 
 we could not possibly miss it for a truck had 
 come over six weeks before and we could follow 
 its tracks. 
 
 *'It ain't blowed much, or rained since," he 
 remarked. 
 
 "But suppose we should get lost, what would 
 we do?" 
 
 "Why should you get lost? Anyway, you 
 could turn around and come back." 
 
 We looked at each other doubtfully. In the 
 far-spreading silence around Joburg the idea of 
 getting lost was more dreadful than it had been 
 at Barstow. There was not even a ranch in the 
 
 [37] 
 
White Heart of Mojave 
 
 whole hundred and sixteen miles. We hesitated. 
 
 "You are well and strong, ain't you?" he 
 asked. *'You can take care of yourselves as well 
 as anybody. Why can't you go?" 
 
 "You have lived in this country so long, Mr. 
 Myrick," I tried to explain, "you do not under- 
 stand how strange it is to a newcomer. How 
 would we recognize those mountains you speak 
 of when we do not even know how the desert- 
 mountains look? How could we find the spring 
 where you say we might camp when we have 
 never seen one like it?" 
 
 "You can do it," he insisted, "that's how you 
 learn." 
 
 "And there is the silence, Mr. Myrick," I 
 went on, hating to have him scorn us for cow- 
 ards, "and the big emptiness." 
 
 He understood that and his face grew kind. 
 
 "You get used to it," he said gently. 
 
 It was refreshing to meet a man who looked 
 into your feminine eyes and said: "You can do 
 it." It made us feel that we had to do it. We 
 spent a whole day on a hilltop near Joburg look- 
 ing longingly over the sinister, beautiful moun- 
 
 [38] 
 
How We Found Mojave 
 
 tains and trying to get up our courage. Happily 
 we were spared the decision. Two young miners 
 at Atolia sent word that they were going over 
 to Silver Lake in a few days and would be glad 
 to have us follow them. Perhaps it was 
 Shady's doing. We accepted the invitation 
 with gratitude. 
 
 We loafed around Joburg during the Inter- 
 vening days. The stern, red mountains were 
 full of mine-holes, but most of the mines were 
 not being worked and the three towns were dead. 
 Everywhere on the Mojave Desert mining activ- 
 ity had fallen off markedly after the beginning of 
 the war. The population of the three towns had 
 dwindled away and the few people who remained 
 did so because they still had faith in the red 
 mountain and hoped that the place might boom 
 again. The big hotel at Joburg, which was 
 attractively built around a court and which 
 could accommodate twenty to thirty guests, was 
 empty save for us. We looked at and admired 
 innumerable specimens of ore. They were- 
 everywhere, in the hotel-office, in the general 
 store, in the windows of the houses. Everyone 
 
 [39] 
 
White Heart of Mojave 
 
 had some shining bit of the earth which he 
 treasured. We bought some of Shady Myrick's 
 cut stones and received presents of gold ore and 
 fine pieces of bloodstone and jasper in the rough. 
 We enlisted the services of the garage to get 
 our car in the best possible condition for the 
 journey across the uncharted desert. The gen- 
 eral opinion held that it was too heavy for such 
 traveling; the next time we should bring a Ford. 
 When the two young men appeared early on the 
 appointed morning with a light Ford truck dis- 
 mantled of everything except the essential ma- 
 chinery they also looked over our big, red car 
 questioningly. They feared we would get stuck 
 in the sand and jammed on rocks; but gener- 
 ously admitted themselves in the wrong when, 
 later in the day, they stuck and we did not. Of 
 course they had the advantage, for we would 
 probably have remained where we stopped, 
 while the four of us were able to lift and push 
 the little truck out of its troubles. It was the 
 most disreputable-looking car we had ever en- 
 countered even among Fords, a moving junk- 
 pile loaded with miscellaneous shabby baggage, 
 
 [40] 
 
How We Found Mojave 
 
 tools, and half-worn-out extra tires. Our new 
 friends matched it in appearance. They looked 
 as tough as the Wild West story-tellers would 
 have us believe that most miners are. We have 
 found out that most miners are not, though we 
 hate to shatter that dear myth of the movies. If 
 you were to meet on any civilized road the outfit 
 which we followed that day from seven o'clock 
 in the morning until dark you would instantly 
 take to the ditch and give it the right of way. 
 
 The drive was wild and fearful and wonder- 
 ful. The bandits led us over and around moun- 
 tains, down washes and across the beds of dry 
 lakes. Often there was no sign of a road, at 
 least no sign that was apparent to us. On the 
 desert you must travel one of two ways, either 
 along the water-courses or across them. It is 
 strange to find a country dying of thirst cut into 
 a rough chaos by water-channels. Rain on the 
 Mojave is a cloud-burst. The water rushes down 
 from the rocky heights across the long, sloping 
 mesas, digging innumerable trenches, until it 
 reaches a main stream-bed leading to the lowest 
 point in the valley. When you go in the same 
 
 [4>] 
 
White Heart of Mojave 
 
 direction as the water you usually follow up or 
 down the dry stream-beds, or washes, but when 
 you cross the watershed you must crawl as best 
 you can over the parallel trenches which are 
 sometimes small and close together like chuck- 
 holes in a bad country road, and sometimes wide 
 and deep. One of the uses of a shovel, which 
 we found out on that day, is to cut down the banks 
 of washes that are too high and steep for a car 
 to cross. 
 
 Most of the mountains of the Mojave are 
 separate masses rather than continuous ranges. 
 Between them the mesas curve, sometimes fall- 
 ing into deep valleys. Instead of foothills, long 
 gradual slopes always lead up to the rock battle- 
 ments, the result of the wearing down of count- 
 less ages, the wide foundations that give the 
 ancient mountains an appearance of great repose. 
 They are solid and everlasting. The valleys are 
 like great bowls curving up gently to sudden, 
 perpendicular sides. The mesas always look 
 smooth, beautiful sweeps that completely satisfj/ 
 the eye. It rests itself upon them. 
 
 When the valleys are deep they usually con- 
 
 [42] 
 
How We Found Mojave 
 
 tain a dry lake, baked mud of a white, yellow, or 
 brownish-purple color. Crossing dry lakes is 
 a curious experience. They never look very 
 wide, but are often several miles across. You 
 need a whole new adjustment of ideas of distance 
 on the desert for the air is so clear that distant 
 objects look stark and near. What you judge to 
 be half a mile usually turns out to be five, and 
 four miles is certainly eighteen. We were always 
 deceived about distances until we trained our- 
 selves a little by picking out some point ahead, 
 guessing how far it was, and measuring it with 
 the cyclometer. Dry lakes are not only deceit- 
 ful about their size, but also about their nature. 
 Along the edges is a strange glistening effect as 
 though water were standing under the shore. 
 Often the rocks and bushes are reflected in it 
 upside down, and if the lake is large enough the 
 illusion of water is perfect. You drive across 
 with a queer effect of standing still, for there h 
 not so much as a stone to mark your progress. It 
 is like being in a boat on an actual lake. The 
 sunlight is very dazzling on the white and yellow 
 expanses and the heat-shimmer makes the 
 
 [43] 
 
White Heart of Mojave 
 
 ground seem to heave. Sometimes you have the 
 illusion of going steeply up-hill. 
 
 Nothing grows in the lake-beds, but the mesas 
 are covered with the usual desert-growths, sage- 
 brush, greasewood and many varieties of cacti. 
 A view from one of the ridges is a look into a 
 magical country. Only enchantment could pro- 
 duce the pale, lovely colors that lie along the 
 mountains and the endless variety of blues and 
 pinks and sage-greens which flow over the wide, 
 sagebrush-covered mesas. The dry lake far 
 down in the bottom of the valley shines. The 
 illusion of water at its further edges is a glisten- 
 ing brightness. It is hard to tell where the baked 
 mud ends and the sand begins. It is hard to 
 tell what are the real colors and shapes of things. 
 If you can linger a while they change. The 
 valley never loses its immense repose, but it 
 changes its colors as though they were garments, 
 and it changes the relations of things to each 
 other. That violet crag looks very big and im- 
 portant while you are toiling up the mesa, but 
 just as you are crossing the ridge and look back 
 
 [44] 
 
How We Found Mojave 
 
 for the last time you see that the wine-red hill 
 beside it is really much larger. 
 
 For a short distance we followed the old trail 
 over which the borax used to be hauled from 
 Death Valley. The familiar name, "Twenty- 
 Mule-Team Borax," was touched with romance. 
 Out of the bottom of that baffling, inaccessible 
 valley, through a pass by the high Panamint 
 Mountains where it is sixty miles between the 
 water-holes, and over this weird country unlike 
 any country we had dreamed existed in the 
 world, this prosaic commodity was hauled by 
 strings of laboring mules. They tugged through 
 the sand day after day and their drivers made 
 camp-fires under the stars. We can never see 
 that name now on a package of kitchen-borax, 
 humbly standing on the shelf, without going 
 again in imagination over those two old, lonely 
 ruts. 
 
 We lunched at a spring under a cottonwood 
 tree — Two Springs is its name, the only water 
 on the route. Some one once tried to graze cattle 
 there, and the water came through a wooden 
 trough into a cement basin. During lunch the 
 
 [45] 
 
White Heart of Mojave 
 
 bandits entertained us with tales of the desert. 
 It has its own ethics. You are justified in kill- 
 ing a man who robs your camp or steals your 
 burros. Out there at Two Springs we realized 
 that it was right. If you lose your food or your 
 pack-animal you may well lose your life. Many 
 a prospector has never returned. The elder of 
 the bandits remarked thoughtfully that he was 
 glad he had never had to kill a man. He knew 
 a fellow who had and who was hounded to death 
 by the memory. He was justified by desert- 
 ethics, but he had no peace in his sleep. 
 
 Toward sunset we went down an endless slope 
 among mountains, some of which were red, some 
 yellow, some a sulphurous green, and some black. 
 A black mountain is a sinister object. There is 
 a kind of fear which does not concern itself with 
 real things that might happen, but is a primitive 
 fear of nature herself. Even the bandits admit- 
 ted feeling it sometimes. It is a fear of some- 
 thing impending in the bare spaces, as though 
 the mountains threatened. A little creeping 
 chill that had nothing to do with the cool of 
 evening kept us close behind the Ford. At the 
 
 [46] 
 
How We Found Mojave 
 
 bottom of the rough slope lay a somber basin 
 full of shadow, beyond which rose an abrupt, 
 high ridge of sand. In spite of us the Ford 
 gained there and we saw it far ahead crawling 
 up the ridge like a black bug. It seemed to stop 
 and jerk and stop and jerk again. Then it dis- 
 appeared over the top. For a few fearful mo- 
 ments we were alone with Mojave. How could 
 rocks and sand and silence make us afraid and 
 yet be so wonderful? For they were wonderful. 
 The ridge was orange against a luminous-orange 
 sky, the sand in the shadowy basin reached right 
 and left, mysteriously shining, to mountains with 
 rosy tops. The darkness around us was indigo, 
 the two crooked ruts of the Ford were full of 
 blue. 
 
 Apprehensively, jerking and stopping, stop- 
 ping and jerking, as the Ford had done, the 
 engine clanking as though it would smash itself 
 to pieces, the radiator boiling frantically, we 
 bucked our way to the summit of the ridge. It 
 looked down on an immense dry lake in a valley 
 so big that the mountains beyond were dim in 
 the twilight. At the far side of the lake stood a 
 
 [47] 
 
White Heart of Mojave 
 
 group of eight or ten portable houses, bright 
 orange beside the purple darkness of the baked- 
 mud lake. It was the town which we had made 
 that incredible journey to reach. Below us we 
 could see the little truck struggling through the 
 sand. Presently it reached the hard edge of the 
 lake and merged with its dark smoothness. We 
 followed down the ridge in its ruts and drove 
 for three miles straight across the hard lake-bed 
 toward the town, where now a few lights 
 gleamed. The orange faded from the houses 
 and the whole valley became a rich plum-color. 
 It was dark when we came out onto the sand 
 again and drove into the lonely hamlet. 
 
 A kindly German couple received us. They 
 were as amazed to see two women arrive in a big 
 car as we were at arriving. Once two men had 
 come in a Cadillac just to see the desert, but 
 they could remember no other visitors with such 
 an unusual object. Mrs. Brauer doubted if we 
 would find much to look at in Silver Lake. We 
 assured her that we found much already and 
 hoped to find much more. 
 
 "And where did you think you vas going?" 
 
 [48] 
 
How We Found Mojave 
 
 her husband asked, chuckling vastly in the back- 
 ground. 
 
 "To Death Valley." 
 
 "Mein Gott!" 
 
 They conducted us to a one-room shack beside 
 the tin can dump and bade us be at home. 
 Strangely enough we felt at home. The door of 
 the shack faced the open desert, the threshold 
 only three inches above the sand. It stretched 
 away white and still, radiating pale light. The 
 craving which had made us seek a wild and 
 lonely place responded to it. The night was a 
 deep-blue, warm and luminous. A hard young 
 moon, sharp as a curved knife blade, hung over 
 the hills. We went out into the vague brightness 
 among the ghostly bushes, and at last onto the 
 darkness of the lake-bed. Beyond it the sand 
 gleamed on the ridge we had come over. On 
 either side the mountains we had feared were 
 strong, beautiful silhouettes. In the northwest 
 stood the mass of the Avawatz, a pure and noble 
 skyline glowing with pale rose. The Avawatz 
 had been the most fearful mountain of all in the 
 sultry afternoon, a red conglomeration of vol- 
 
 [49] 
 
White Heart of Mojave 
 
 canic hills. We walked on and on, full of a 
 strange, terrible happiness. The trackless, un- 
 broken expanse of the lake seemed boundless, the 
 mountains were never any nearer. We kept 
 looking back for the reassuring gleam of the 
 lamp we had set in the window; presently it was 
 lost. Nothing indicated the whereabouts of the 
 town, we left no footprint-trail on the hard mud, 
 every link with mankind was gone. Before 
 starting we had located the little houses in rela- 
 tion to a certain peak and we felt like navigators 
 in an uncharted sea. 
 
 "We must learn to steer by the stars," Char- 
 lotte said. "We must always remember that." 
 
 We stood still listening to the silence. It was 
 immense and all enveloping. No murmur of 
 leaves, nor drip of water, nor buzz of insects 
 broke it. It brooded around us like a live 
 thing. 
 
 "Do you hear the universe moving on?" Char- 
 lotte whispered. 
 
 "It is your own heart beating," I told her, but 
 I did not believe it. 
 
 We had found Mojave. 
 [so] 
 
Ill 
 
 The White Heart 
 
 WE had indeed found her. The morn- 
 ing sun came up over the immense 
 valley ringed with beautiful, reposeful 
 mountains. The big, empty mesas swept up to 
 them, streaked with purple and green like the 
 sea. Sometimes shining sand led between them 
 to indistinguishable rose and blue. Such a pal- 
 ace of dreams beckoned toward Death Valley 
 behind Avawatz, the sultry, red mountain that 
 had been so magical in the night; and another 
 called southward to the white desolation of the 
 Devil's Playground beyond the far end of the 
 lake where stood a symmetrical, black, mountain- 
 mass with a tongue of bright sand running up 
 it. The black mountain and the shining tongue 
 of sand were reflected in an expanse of radiant 
 blue water. This was astonishing and we hast- 
 ened to inquire the name of the river or lake 
 
 [SI] 
 
White Heart of Mojave 
 
 that lit the distance with such heavenly bright- 
 ness. The old German chuckled so much that 
 he seemed about to blow up with access of mirth. 
 Finally he was able to explain that it was only 
 a mirage. We watched it all day and saw it 
 change to a thin streak at noon and widen again 
 at evening. The reflections of the bushes at its 
 edge were so magnified that they looked like 
 trees. To Brauer's endless entertainment we in- 
 sisted that trees grew there. 
 
 Ever since leaving Barstow we had been pene- 
 trating further and further into the Mojave. 
 With every mile she had become more terrible 
 and more beautiful. The colors which had de- 
 lighted us at Joburg were pale beside the colors 
 around Silver Lake, the mountains were hills 
 compared to these beautiful, sinister masses. 
 The sun had been brighter there than any east- 
 ern sun, here it was a hot, white blaze. All the 
 way Mojave had asserted herself more and more. 
 In the Imperial Valley, at Joburg and Barstow, 
 we had felt men upon the desert, the drama was 
 partly their drama; now, though they might still 
 make roads and build houses, they seemed in- 
 
 [S2] 
 
The White Heart 
 
 significant. We had but to walk two or three 
 hundred yards from Silver Lake to forget it and 
 be wrapped in the endless stillness. There was^ 
 something awful in the silence, the awfulness 
 which our savage ancestors felt and bequeathed 
 to us in our intangible fear of the dark and of 
 the wilderness, and the fear of being alone 
 which many people have; but there was great- 
 ness in it too, the greatness which is always to 
 be found in the outdoors. Balzac remarks 
 that "the desert is God without humanity." 
 Truly the earth lives, and the sun and the stars, 
 a rhythm beats in them and unites them. They 
 are the drama and the human story is only a 
 scene. ^ 
 
 The town of Silver Lake, such a little oasis 
 of life in the solitude, is owned by the Brauers 
 who operate a general store and give board to 
 the few travelers who come to the mines in the 
 neighborhood. They are mostly silver-mines, 
 whence the name. A few years ago there was 
 considerable activity when the Avawatz Crown 
 and the big silver mine at Riggs were in opera- 
 tion. Miners came to "town" in Fords which 
 
 [53] 
 
White Heart of Mojave 
 
 no doubt resembled the junk pile we had fol- 
 lowed from Joburg, and sometimes with pack- 
 trains. The pack-train on the desert always con- 
 sists of a string of burros. The burro in spite 
 of his Mexican name, is nothing more than a 
 donkey, the biblical ass. He seems to be native 
 to all primitive places, the first burden-bearer. 
 The prospector of the early days with his pick 
 and shovel was a picturesque figure traveling 
 across the sandy stretches from water-hole to 
 water-hole. It is often a hard day's-journey be- 
 tween the infrequent springs, sometimes a sev- 
 eral- days'- journey, He dug and broke the rock, 
 and sometimes he made his ^'strike." Then the 
 boom on the desert would begin. Settlers came 
 in, roads were built and towns sprang up. The 
 brutalities of mining-camps which we read of 
 were probably reflections of the inhospitality of 
 the land. The very characteristics which make 
 the desert dramatic and beautiful make it ter- 
 rible for mankind to overcome. The expense of 
 mining operations in that hard country proved 
 to be too great unless the vein were exceptionally 
 rich, and most of the small mines are now aban- 
 
 [54] 
 
The White Heart 
 
 doned. Nevertheless you still occasionally 
 meet a prospector with his burros, and in re- 
 mote places like Silver Lake the Ford has not 
 entirely done away with the pack-train. 
 
 A number of half wild burros wandered 
 around among the little houses attracted by the 
 watering-trough though there was hardly any- 
 thing for them to eat. The soil is said to be so 
 alkalai that nothing will grow there even under 
 irrigation, A patch of grass six feet by two, 
 carefully cherished by the Brauers, was the only 
 green thing in town. We saw the list of electors 
 nailed to the door of the general store. There 
 were seven names on it. 
 
 A lonesome little railroad comes along the 
 edge of the Devil's Playground from Ludlow 
 on the Santa Fe, past Silver Lake to the mining 
 camps of Nevada. All the supplies for the 
 neighborhood are hauled in on it through a coun- 
 try of shifting sand where no wagon-road can be 
 maintained. Even a railroad, the symbol of 
 civilization, cannot break the solitude. Great 
 arteries of life like the Santa Fe and the South- 
 ern Pacific become very tiny veins when they 
 
 [55] 
 
White Heart of Mojave 
 
 cross the desert; the little Tonapah and Tide- 
 water Railroad hardly seems to exist. You do 
 not see the track until you stumble over it, the 
 telegraph poles are lost in the sagebrush. There 
 are two trains a week, up in the morning and 
 down at night. During breakfast on train-day 
 a long hoot suddenly cuts the stillness you have 
 grown accustomed to. You jump. Mr. Brauer 
 chuckles at you and finishes his coffee and his 
 anecdote, and gets up ponderously and knocks 
 the ashes out of his pipe and says: 
 
 "I guess she'll be here pretty soon now." 
 Presently you see him sauntering over to the 
 station. In about fifteen minutes an ungainly 
 line of freight-cars with a passenger-coach or 
 two in the rear comes swaying along. Mrs. 
 Brauer gathers up the dishes leisurely. She 
 hopes they have brought the meat. The last 
 time she had boarders they didn't bring any 
 meat for two weeks. If they bring it she prom- 
 ises to make you a fine German dinner. She 
 never goes out to look at the train. Nobody 
 does, except you, who stand in the doorway and 
 wonder at it. Ever so long ago you used to see 
 
 [56] 
 
The White Heart 
 
 things that resembled it. It is a curiosity like 
 the strange, long neck of the giraffe. Like the 
 giraffe it has a momentary interest. It goes, and 
 the silence settles down again with a great yawn. 
 The dry lake on whose shores the town is 
 situated is three miles wide and eighteen miles 
 long, of a brownish-purple color. The surface 
 is hard and covered with little ripples like pet- 
 rified waves. It is the sink, or outlet of the 
 Mojave River, whose wide, torn bed we had seen 
 at Barstow spanned by an iron bridge. The 
 river-bed had been as dry as any part of the 
 desert, and we had supposed it was just an un- 
 usually wide, deep wash. We now learned that 
 in times of heavy rains or much snow in the 
 northern mountains the Mojave River thunders 
 under the iron bridge. On a later trip, when 
 we were staying at the Fred Harvey Hotel in 
 Barstow, we once saw it come to life over-night. 
 In the evening its bed lay dry and white under 
 the moonlight, in the morning it was full of 
 hurrying, turbid water. From Barstow the 
 river-bed winds through the desert to the purple- 
 brown basin at Silver Lake. Were the Mojave 
 
 lS7l 
 
White Heart of Mojave 
 
 a normal river its water would always flow down 
 there and the hard dry lake would be blue with 
 little white waves running before the wind, but 
 it is a desert-river and gets lost in the sand. Oc- 
 casionally the water flows past Barstow, but it 
 hardly ever arrives at Silver Lake. It came 
 once in the memory of the present inhabitants, 
 and covered the dry lake to a depth of three or 
 four feet. The water gradually evaporated and 
 in a few weeks was gone. Our kind entertain- 
 ers showed us pictures which they had taken of 
 the real lake with boats on it. At that time 
 both the town and the railroad were in the lake- 
 bed and had to be hastily removed before the 
 oncoming flood. An amusing incident hap- 
 pened one day at dinner when an artist from 
 San Francisco, who had stopped off on his way 
 to paint in Nevada, was boasting of the marvels 
 of his city risen from the great fire and earth- 
 quake. 
 
 "Well," remarked our host with the same sub- 
 terranean chuckle that he lavished upon us, 
 "Silver Lake ain't so bad. We pulled her up 
 out of the water once already." 
 
 [S8] 
 
The White Heart 
 
 We tried to imagine the great expanse of liv- 
 ing water, how it would ripple and shine at its 
 edges, and the purple mountain-tops would be 
 mirrored in it. Once the mirage had come true. 
 
 Every day we watched the dream water in- 
 crease and diminish at the base of the black 
 mountain with the tongue of silver sand running 
 up it. The illusion was always best in the morn- 
 ing, but never quite vanished while the sun 
 shone. It was so perfect that incredulity at last 
 compelled us to drive down the eighteen miles 
 of the lake-bed and explore it. 
 
 Brauer's eyes twinkled as he filled our gasoline 
 tank. "You think the lake ain't dried up yet, 
 hey?" We kept our thoughts to ourselves. 
 
 The first surprise was when we reached the 
 end of the lake and had not reached the moun- 
 tain. It looked just the same except that the 
 water had vanished — hidden maybe by the 
 brush that covered the sand. Our host had said 
 something about a road, but we had been so 
 sure that the mountain was at the edge of the 
 lake that we had not listened carefully enough 
 and failed to find it, so we left the car and 
 
 [59] 
 
White Heart of Mojave 
 
 walked through the brush. The bushes were 
 very small and starved, growing several yards 
 apart on ground that was hard and covered 
 with little bright stones like packed-down 
 gravel. The most flourishing shrub was the 
 desert-holly with gray, frosted leaves shaped 
 exactly like the leaves of Christmas holly, and 
 small lavender berries. The following Christ- 
 mas Mrs. Brauer sent us great wreaths made of 
 it and tied with red ribbons to decorate our 
 homes, a happy present that brought the hot 
 brightness of the desert into the gloom of an 
 eastern winter. As we walked among the little 
 bushes the sun was very hot and the mountain 
 seemed to travel away as fast as we approached 
 it. The second surprise was when it also van- 
 ished entirely and three black hills stood in its 
 place. They were ugly and looked like heaps 
 of coal. The beautiful peak which we had 
 seen was some ten miles further back on the 
 main range which shut oflP the Devil's Play- 
 ground. It had composed with the three black 
 hills to form the symmetrical mass. There was 
 no water either, and no trees. 
 
 [60] 
 
The White Heart 
 
 The desolation was stark and sad; sand and 
 sand with hardly any brush reached to the dis- 
 tant range. The palace of dreams was gone. 
 Disillusioned, we climbed upon the nearest coal- 
 pile, then suddenly we saw the miracle again, 
 in the north this time, whence we had come. 
 The town of Silver Lake was mirrored in blue 
 water as shining and as heavenly as the vision 
 which was lost. The houses had weathered a 
 deep orange and burned in the sun. The white 
 tank set upon stilts above the well was dazzling 
 to look at. Trees grew beside the glistening 
 dream-water. It was brighter than any town or 
 lake could possibly be; it was magical. 
 
 Thus the desert keeps beckoning to you. 
 Either the unknown goal, or the known starting- 
 point, or perhaps both at the same time, are 
 magical; only "here" is ever dreary. While we 
 sat on the coal-pile Mojave related a parable; 
 
 "Once three brothers slung their canteens over 
 their shoulders and came to me. They trav- 
 eled many days toward my shining. They 
 were often thirsty and very tired. Presently 
 they came to a spring, and when they had rested 
 
 [6.] 
 
White Heart of Mojave 
 
 a dispute arose. The eldest brother wished to 
 hasten on, but the second said that my shining 
 appeared no nearer than at the beginning. 
 Nay, he did not believe in it, he would stay 
 where he was. The youngest, however, agreed 
 to accompany his eldest brother and the two set 
 out once more. They crossed high mountain- 
 ranges and deep valleys, but my shining was 
 always before or after. In the seventh valley 
 the youngest brother also began to doubt me 
 and refused to go any further. 
 
 " 'I will stay here,' he said, 'these bushes have 
 little cool shadows beside them, and the ground 
 is bright with little colored stones and there are 
 flowers. Stay also and let us be happy.' 
 
 "But the eldest brother would not stay. 
 
 "He traveled all the years of his life toward 
 my shining. The second brother turned the 
 spring into a lake and built himself a house with 
 orange-groves around it. The third brother 
 rested in the cool shadows and rejoiced in the 
 little bright stones." 
 
 We listened intently, but there was no moral. 
 
 [6a] 
 
The White Heart 
 
 In spite of our host's "Mein Gottl" we still 
 persisted in our idea of going to Death Valley. 
 It was now only thirty miles away where a shin- 
 ing such as had led the brothers on beckoned be- 
 yond the Avawatz. We learned that this route 
 was impossible for a car, and so dry that even 
 pack-animals could hardly enter the valley that 
 way. However, we could make a detour of 
 nearly two hundred miles, striking the Tonopah 
 and Tidewater Railroad again at Zabrisky or 
 Death Valley Junction, and possibly get in that 
 way. During the debate the sheriff of Silver 
 Lake, a silent person decorated with pistols, 
 volunteered to go with us beyond the Avawatz 
 as far as Saratoga Springs, and as much further 
 as we could drive the car. He would promise 
 nothing as he had not been there for some time 
 and was a cautious man, but he thought we 
 might find it worth while. Any one of those 
 bright paths was worth while to us, and we 
 eagerly agreed. 
 
 That day's excursion proved even more 
 memorable than the drive from Joburg. It was 
 like a continuation of it, becoming ever wilder 
 
 [63] 
 
White Heart of Mojave 
 
 and stranger. We had already heard a few of 
 Mojave's songs, bits of her color-songs, and her 
 peace-songs, and underneath like a rumbling 
 bass her terror-song — but we were as yet only 
 acquaintances on the way to intimacy. Ever 
 since leaving Barstow we had felt that we 
 were advancing through progressive suggestion 
 toward some kind of a climax. Mojave was 
 leading us on to something. Her heart still lay 
 beyond. 
 
 A good enough track led north along the rail- 
 road for a few miles and then swung around the 
 base of the Avawatz. We drove up an inter- 
 minable mesa where the alleged road grew al- 
 ways rougher and less well-marked, and the 
 engine had an annoying tendency to boil. The 
 wind was from behind and the heat of the sun 
 radiating up from the white ground made it 
 impossible to keep the engine cool. We 
 crossed a ridge among red and purple hills of 
 jumbled rock and began to descend into an 
 oblong, sandy basin. The road became so un- 
 speakable that the Sheriff advised leaving it for 
 the white, unbroken sand of a wash. For miles 
 
 [64] 
 
The White Heart 
 
 we made our own track, winding around stones 
 and islands of brush. We were in a sort of out- 
 post-valley south of Death Valley itself, and 
 separated from it by what looked like a low 
 ridge of gravel, but we no longer believed in the 
 reality of what we thought we saw. As a mat- 
 ter of fact the ridge was succeeded by others, 
 and the only way to get into the main valley was 
 through an opening with the startling name of 
 Suicide Pass. The valley we were in is usually 
 considered to be a part of Death Valley; on 
 many maps the low basins stretching north from 
 the Avawatz for nearly a hundred miles are in- 
 cluded under that name. 
 
 On both sides of the outpost-valley stood 
 mountains of every hue. They were maroon, 
 violet, or black at the base shading into lighter 
 reds and clear yellows. One yellow mountain 
 had a scarlet spot on its summit like a wound 
 that bled. The dark bases of the mountains had 
 a texture like velvet, black and purple and olive- 
 green velvet, folded around their feet. As we 
 descended the wash toward sea-level the heat 
 and brightness of the sun steadily increased. 
 
 [6s] 
 
White Heart of Mojave 
 
 Each color shown in its intensity. The bottom 
 of the valley was streaked with deposits of white 
 alkali that glistened blindingly. The whole 
 world was an ecstasy of light. 
 
 Saratoga Springs is a blue pool with green 
 rushes growing around it, in the angle of a dark 
 red mountain. The water bubbled up from the 
 bottom of the little pool. A marsh full of green 
 grass and coarse, white flowers led back from the 
 pool, spreading out into a sheet of clear water 
 which reflected the bare mountains and the 
 vividly green rushes. Though this real lake in 
 the desert was a pure and lovely blue, and daz- 
 zlingly bright, it had none of the magicalness 
 of the dream-water by the three black hills. 
 Somehow it just missed enchantment. Hence- 
 forth we would be able to distinguish mirage by 
 this indescribable quality. 
 
 Saratoga is the last appearance of the Arma- 
 gosa, or Bitter River, before it loses itself in 
 Death Valley. Like the Mojave River the 
 Armagosa gets lost. It flows southward through 
 the desert, sometimes roaring down a rocky 
 gorge, sometimes vanishing completely for 
 
 [66] 
 
The White Heart 
 
 miles in a sandy stretch, then reappearing un- 
 accountably to form oases like the one at Sara- 
 toga. Opposite the southern end of Death Val- 
 ley it suddenly changes its mind and turns north 
 on itself to enter the valley where it makes a 
 great bog encrusted with white, alkali deposits. 
 The Armagosa flows through an alkali desert 
 carrying along minerals in solution, which give 
 its water the taste that has gained for it the 
 name of Bitter River. The water of Saratoga 
 Springs is flat and unpleasant, though it is fit to 
 drink. There are stories of poison-water in 
 Death Valley, but most of the springs are merely 
 so full of alkali and salt that they are repulsive 
 and do not quench thirst. At Silver Lake the 
 water is strongly alkali. Everybody uses it, but 
 when a supply of clear spring-water can be 
 hauled in from the mountains they all rejoice. 
 The Sherifif's partner, Charley, had a barrel full 
 which he shared with us while we were there. 
 The pool at Saratoga was full of little darting 
 fish, strange to see in the silent, lifeless waste. 
 The Sheriff saved some of his lunch for them 
 and sat a long time on the edge throwing in 
 
 [67] 
 
White Heart of Mojave 
 
 crumbs. Once, he told us, he had camped there 
 alone for three months prospecting the hills, 
 and they had been his friends. 
 
 We attempted to drive beyond Saratoga 
 Springs. There was supposed to be a road, but 
 neither Charlotte nor I could discern it. We 
 bumped along over ground so cut by shallow 
 water-channels that after about seven miles we 
 dared not proceed, for a wrecked car in that 
 shining desolation would stay forever where it 
 smashed. We tried to walk to the top of the 
 gravel-ridge that seemed to shut ofif the main 
 valley. It looked near and innocent enough, but 
 when we tried to reach it over the dazzling- 
 ground under the blazing sun we found, to our 
 surprise, that we could not. The temperature 
 was about 95 degrees, and the air very dry. The 
 heat alone would have been quite bearable had it 
 not been augmented by the white glare. Sud- 
 denly we realized that the little ridge was Inac- 
 cessible; all the little yellow hills and ridges, 
 and the rocky crests that shone like burnished 
 metal, were likewise inaccessible. The realiza- 
 tion brought a terrifying sense of helplessness. 
 
 [68] 
 
The White Heart 
 
 Here was a country you could not travel over: 
 though your goal were in sight you might never 
 reach it. The strength and resourcefulness you 
 relied on for emergencies were of no avail; an 
 empty canteen, a lost burro, a smashed car, and 
 your history might be finished. We began to 
 understand why this place, so gay with color, 
 so flooded with light, so clean, so bright, was 
 called Death Valley. 
 
 Before us was the opening in the mountains 
 where the terrible valley itself lay. It was mag- 
 nificent in the biggest sense of that big, ill-used 
 word. On the east side rose the precipitous 
 Panamints with a thin line of snow on their 
 summits; opposite them the dark buttresses of 
 the Funeral Mountains faded back into dim- 
 ness. Between the ranges hung a blue haze of 
 the quality of the sky, like the haze that had 
 obscured the hot Imperial Valley. The moun- 
 tains were majestic, immovable, their summits 
 dwelt in the living silence. The haze had the 
 magicalness of mirage. We longed to go on 
 while the sun went down and the silence turned 
 blue, for now we were certain that under that 
 
 [69] 
 
White Heart of Mojave 
 
 haze, between those imposing walls, lay the cli- 
 max to which Mojave had been leading us, her 
 White Heart. She could never be more deso- 
 late, or stiller or grander. It was the logical 
 journey's end, and what had been at first merely 
 a casual choice of destination became a fixed 
 goal to be reached through any hazards. 
 
 "If you go there," the old prospector had said, 
 "you will see something you won't see anywhere 
 else on earth." 
 
 [70] 
 
IV 
 
 The Outfit 
 
 DEATH VALLEY was the goal, but after 
 the day at Saratoga Springs one thing 
 was certain: no matter if we could get 
 there in an automobile — and various expedients 
 were suggested to make it possible, even safe — 
 not thus would we enter the White Heart, not 
 with the throbbing of an engine, not dependent 
 on gasoline, not limited in time, not thwarted 
 by roads. When we went it would be slowly, 
 quietly, camping by the springs, making fires of 
 the brush, sleeping under the open sky, listening, 
 watching. We had found the outdoors on the 
 desert a wonderful thing and we wanted to live 
 with it a while. If the White Heart was the 
 climax of Mojave we felt that it must be a 
 climax of the feel of the outdoors, one of its 
 supreme expressions. We were going on a pil- 
 grimage to that. 
 
 [71] 
 
White Heart of Mojave 
 
 Such a pilgrimage meant an outfit, either a 
 wagon or a pack-train, and a guide. We needed 
 a man accustomed to living on the desert, who 
 knew the valley thoroughly, who could work in 
 its heat and brightness, and who had the courage 
 to take two ignorant enthusiasts there. We had 
 lost the easy assurance with which we had talked 
 at Joburg about going to Death Valley. No 
 wonder the inhabitants of that town had been 
 stunned when we said that we were on the way 
 there! The unspeakable road beyond Saratoga 
 Springs and the little gravel-ridge which we 
 could not climb were sufficient warning of the 
 nature of the undertaking. Mojave is not easily 
 to be known as we would know her. She keeps 
 herself to herself. The season added a further 
 complication. Soon it would be April and the 
 heat in the valley would be too great for us to 
 endure. The pilgrimage must start no later 
 than January. That meant going home and 
 coming back. As usual the way to the valley 
 bristled with difficulties. 
 
 We talked to the Sheriff about it. Julius 
 Meyer was nearing fifty, a lean, strong-looking 
 
 [72] 
 
The Outfit 
 
 man. He had a fine face, very somber in repose 
 as though he had met with some lasting disap- 
 pointment, but wonderfully lit by his occasional 
 smile. His eyes had the hard clearness which 
 living on the desert seems to produce. They 
 looked straight at 3^ou. He said little, the kind 
 of man who announces his decisions briefly and 
 carries them out. Mrs. Brauer said of him: 
 "Julius is good." Beyond her praise and the 
 impression which he made we knew nothing of 
 him except the incident of the little fishes and 
 that he had lived twenty years on the desert and 
 had once traveled the length of Death Valley 
 with burros; but we had no hesitation in asking 
 him to be our guide. He said it was a mad idea. 
 Nobody ever went to Death Valley unless they 
 expected to get something out of it, and then they 
 took a Ford if they could find one and hurried. 
 
 "We are just like the rest of them," we told 
 him. "We expect to get something out of it, 
 but we can't get it in a Ford." 
 
 He finally agreed to go if we would take a 
 wagon. He refused to consider a pack-train, 
 saying that we would never be able to pack bur- 
 
 [73] 
 
White Heart of Mojave 
 
 ros, and walk beside them and ride them in the 
 heat of the valley. He did not take the discus- 
 sion very seriously, for he evidently did not 
 expect us to return. He thought the glamor of 
 Mojave would wear off. 
 
 Nevertheless it was a promise, and we were 
 certain that when such a man promised we 
 would see the White Heart. During the follow- 
 ing summer and autumn we kept hearing 
 snatches of Mojave's songs. A bit of pure cobalt 
 in the depths of the woods, the flash of the sun 
 on the tops of waves, the clear lovely blue of 
 ruts in a sandy road echoed her. Thinking of 
 her the eastern sun seemed a trifle pale, the gay 
 brightness of summer a little dim. We loved 
 the familiar, dear New England landscape, but 
 we were under the "terrible fascination." Only 
 the sea was like Mojave. Often Charlotte and I 
 would take our blankets to a lonely part of the 
 beach and spend the night there. Never before 
 had we slept outdoors, on the ground under the 
 stars. Knowing Mojave even a little had made 
 us feel that it might be worth while. We found 
 that it was. 
 
 [74] 
 
The Outfit 
 
 "We have to get used to it," we told our aston- 
 ished friends. "When we go to Death Valley 
 with the wagon we will have to sleep on the 
 ground." 
 
 We did get used to it and in December wrote 
 the Sherifif. This telegram came: 
 
 "O. K. Julius Meyer." 
 
 When we appeared for the second time at 
 Silver Lake in the big automobile we were 
 greeted with even greater amazement than be- 
 fore. We had driven over from Barstow and 
 traveling on the desert for pleasure is so novel 
 an idea that everybody thought us insane. There 
 were a few more people in town than we had 
 found on our former visit, a commercial traveler 
 and three or four miners, among them a brigand 
 known as French Pete, with his head tied up in 
 a red handkerchief. They all took a lively inter- 
 est in the proposed expedition and gave advice. 
 They were courteous, but amusement contended 
 with wonder behind their friendly eyes. They 
 tried to be kind and searched their minds for 
 something good to say of the frightful valley. 
 
 [75] 
 
White Heart of Mojave 
 
 Each one separately told us what was its real, 
 true attraction. 
 
 *'You see the highest and the lowest spots in 
 the United States at the same time. Mount 
 Whitney, you know, and the bottom of the 
 Valley." 
 
 Since we had never been able to see Mount 
 Whitney in any of our travels on the Mojave, 
 we wondered how we should be able to see it 
 ifrom the deep pit of the valley with the Pana- 
 mints between, but receptivity was our role. The 
 highest and lowest became a sort of slogan. 
 Sooner or later everybody we met at Silver Lake 
 or on our way to the valley said it. We waited 
 for them to say it and recorded it in our diaries: 
 ''Explained about H. and L." 
 
 The Sheriff had procured a wagon drawn by a 
 horse and a mule to start from Beatty, a hundred 
 miles further up the Tonopah and Tidewater 
 Railroad, and much credit is due him for the 
 gravity with which he embarked on the folly. 
 After the O. K. telegram he never expressed 
 the slightest doubt of the feasibleness, the sanity, 
 and even the usualness of the proceeding. What 
 
 [76] 
 
The Outfit 
 
 we needed more than anything else was a real 
 reason for going, seeing the desert and having an 
 adventure with the outdoors being no reasons at 
 all. He furnished even that. Charlotte had 
 brought her sketching-box ; he saw it among the 
 camping-paraphernalia, asked what it was, and 
 instantly spread the report that we were artists 
 in search of scenery. We had the presence of 
 mind never to deny this and by refraining from 
 exhibitions were able to be both notorious and 
 respectable. 
 
 We abandoned the automobile and traveled 
 up to Beatty on the railroad, a seven-hours'-jour- 
 ney. On the morning of train-day our bed-rolls 
 and duffle-bags on the station-platform, and our- 
 selves getting into the coach in knickerbockers 
 and tough, high shoes created more excitement 
 than Silver Lake had known for some tim.e. 
 Even Mrs. Brauer came out, and Mr. Brauer 
 stood with his hands in his pockets, beaming on 
 the crazy line of freight cars and the heads stuck 
 out of the windows of the coaches, chuckling 
 and chuckling. There was a Pullman from Los 
 Angeles hitched to the tail of the train, very 
 
 [77l 
 
White Heart of Mojave 
 
 grand, with all the window-shades still pulled 
 down so early in the morning. Our guide, who 
 felt his responsibilities, was chagrined because 
 he could not get us places in it; but we were 
 more than content, especially when the conduc- 
 tor, who had a black mustache worthy of one of 
 Stevenson's pirates and wore no uniform, assured 
 us that the coach was not supposed to be a smok- 
 ing-car so our presence would interfere with 
 no one's happiness. It was full of old-timers 
 who were all remarkable for the clearness of 
 their eyes. They were friendly and courteous, 
 men past middle age, dressed in overalls and 
 flannel shirts, who got ofif at Zabrisky and such 
 places, where it is hard to see that a town exists. 
 The younger men, and the more prosperous look- 
 ing in business-suits were mostly bound for Ton- 
 opah, one of the most active mining-centers left 
 in the country. During the day many of our 
 fellow-passengers talked to us, stopping as they 
 went up and down the aisle to sit on the arm of 
 the opposite seat. The talk was of mining pros- 
 pects, the booms of Goldfield and Tonopah, spec- 
 ulation in mining-shares, the slump after the 
 
 [78] 
 
The Outfit 
 
 war began, the abandoned towns, the river of 
 money that has flowed into the desert and been 
 drunk up by the sand. They all agreed that 
 Death Valley was a desperate place, there had 
 never been any mining there to amount to any- 
 thing. To encourage us they never failed to 
 mention H. and L., but they thought we would 
 find more to interest us in the mining towns of 
 Nevada. They made them picturesque with 
 pioneering stories. 
 
 The railroad runs along the east side of Death 
 Valley, separated from it by a range of moun- 
 tains. It follows the course of the Armagosa 
 River as it flows south through the desert. In 
 some places the river-bed was full of water, in 
 others it was a dry wash. Where the water is 
 certain large mesquites and cottonwood trees 
 grow and the mining stations, consisting of a 
 store and one or two houses, are nearby. The 
 mountains along the route are scarred with mines 
 and prospect holes. At Death Valley Junction 
 a branch road goes to the large borax-mine at 
 Ryan on the edge of the valley. 
 
 The country is very desolate. Soon after leav- 
 
 [79] 
 
White Heart of Mojave 
 
 ing Silver Lake we passed a group of big sand- 
 dunes with summits blown by the wind into 
 beautiful, sharp edges. From that viewpoint 
 they seemed to guard the shining illusion that 
 always beckoned behind the Avawatz. We had 
 seen them on the way to Saratoga, but so far off 
 that they had looked like little mounds. They 
 are a miniature of the Devil's Playground, that 
 utter desolation of shifting sand south of Silver 
 Lake where no roads are. Now we passed near 
 enough to see their impressive size and how the 
 wind makes their beautiful outlines. When the 
 sand is deep and fine the wind is forever at work 
 upon it, blowing it into dunes, changing their 
 shapes, piling them up and tearing them down. 
 It gradually moves them along in its prevailing 
 direction by rolling their tops down the lee side 
 and pushing up the windward side for a new 
 summit. The dunes literally roll over. The 
 artist who had boasted of his city at Silver Lake 
 called them the "marching sands." North of 
 the marching sands we traveled through gray- 
 green mesas much broken by rugged, mountain- 
 ous masses, a forbidding and stern land. 
 
 [80] 
 
The Outfit 
 
 Beatty has a magnificent location at the base 
 of a big, red mountain in front of a greater, 
 indigo mass. It was once a prosperous mining 
 town, but was at that time partly deserted and 
 many of the small wooden houses stood empty. 
 Every effort had been made to give the appear- 
 ance of streets by fencing off yards around the 
 houses, but it was hard to get the scheme of 
 Beatty. The first impression was of houses set 
 down promiscuously on the sand. Some of the 
 yards had gardens where, by means of constant 
 watering, fruit-trees and roses were made to 
 grow. Beatty is at a considerable altitude so 
 that while the noonday sun was hot the nights 
 were cold, sometimes below freezing. The air 
 was marvelously clear. On the brightest days in 
 the east flowers and shrubs look as though they 
 were floating in a pure, colorless liquid, and 
 the vistas are softly veiled. The air seems to 
 have substance. Among the mountains of the 
 desert it is a flawless plate glass through which 
 you look directly at the face of the world. Dis- 
 tant outlines stand but boldly, and every little 
 shining rock and bush is set firmly down. 
 
 [8i] 
 
White Heart of Mojave 
 
 Prohibition had hit Beatty hard. Most of 
 the ground-floor of the hotel consisted of a big 
 poolroom and bar over which hung an air of 
 sadness. We had an impression of moving-day 
 in that forlorn hour when everything is disman- 
 tled and the van has not come. The landlady 
 apologized for the accommodations which, how- 
 ever, were excellent. 
 
 "We used to keep it up real nice before mining 
 slumped," she said, ''but now there is prohibi- 
 tion, too, and we are clean discouraged." 
 
 She was an ingenious person. In her front 
 yard, one of the prettiest in Beatty, the walks 
 and flower-beds were edged with empty bottles 
 driven in neck down. They made a fine border, 
 durable, with a glassy glitter in the sun. 
 
 At Beatty we first encountered Molly and 
 Bill. Molly was a white mule and Bill a big, 
 thin, red horse. They were hitched to an ordi- 
 nary grocery wagon. Our guide seemed pleased 
 with them, but we were doubtful. He had rented 
 them from an Indian and said that they were 
 absolutely desert-proof, they could live on noth- 
 
 [82] 
 
The Outfit 
 
 ing at all and drink soda-water forever. Bill 
 looked as though he had always lived on nothing 
 at all, and Molly laid back her long, white ears 
 in a manner unpleasantly suggestive. More- 
 over, it did not seem possible that the frail- 
 looking wagon could carry the supplies and the 
 camping equipment. We had purchased food 
 for a month. It was both heavy and bulky; 
 bacon, ham, potatoes, flour, canned milk and 
 vegetables, four pounds of butter and six dozen 
 eggs. It was the Sheriff's selection; Charlotte 
 and I had not expected to travel de luxe like that. 
 Indeed we had brought some dried potatoes and 
 vegetables and had not dreamed of things like 
 milk or butter or eggs. He made quite a stand 
 for the real potatoes, so they had to go along. 
 In spite of their bulk the canned milk and vege- 
 tables are almost necessities on the desert, where 
 the water is scarce and bad, for things that have 
 to be soaked a long time and cooked in the alkali 
 water are hardly edible. He had a weakness for 
 green California chilies and horehound candy, 
 so they also were included. Charlotte insisted on 
 
 [83] 
 
White Heart of Mojave 
 
 dried fruit, especially prunes. The grub alone 
 made a formidable pile on the porch of the 
 general store. In addition there was a bale of 
 hay and a bag of grain. It looked like very 
 little for the dejected Molly and Bill, but the 
 Sheriff said that we could buy more at Furnace 
 Creek Ranch in the bottom of the valley, and 
 that we need only feed them while we were 
 actually in the valley, for as soon as we went 
 up a little way on either side they could forage. 
 We looked anxiously out over the environs of 
 Beatty, which is fairly high-up. They were 
 precisely like the environs of Silver Lake, where 
 the half-wild burros can scarcely find a living. 
 We began to worry in earnest. By the time the 
 food for man and beast was on the wagon worry 
 turned to despair. It was full, and the three 
 beds, the duffle-bags, the sketch-box which we 
 clung to as the only proof of sanity, and the three 
 five-gallon gasoline cans for carrying water were 
 still on the ground. 
 
 "It can't be done," we told the Sheriff. "You 
 will have to make some other arrangement." 
 
 "Now look here," he replied. "You stop wor- 
 
 [84] 
 
The Outfit 
 
 rying. Nobody in this outfit is to worry except 
 me. That's my job. It's what I'm for." 
 
 His hard blue eyes looked into ours with 
 determination, then he grinned and from that 
 moment became the Official Worrier. 
 
 Slowly and patiently he built up a monu- 
 mental structure and cinched it with rope and 
 baling wire. Everything found a place. As we 
 expected to make a spring that night it was not 
 necessary to fill the gasoline cans. They were 
 hung on the back of the load with more baling- 
 wire. Remembering the day when it had been 
 95 degrees at Saratoga Springs we tried to leave 
 our heavy driving-coats behind, but were forci- 
 bly forbidden to do so. They were added to the 
 topmost peak. 
 
 For two days all Beatty, from the leading citi- 
 zen who sold us our supplies to the Mexican cook 
 in the railroad restaurant who told us that it 
 was so hot in Death Valley the lizards had to 
 turn over on their backs and wave their feet in 
 the air to cool them, had been much cheered by 
 our presence. Nobody expected us to be gone 
 very long and they watched the loading up of 
 
 [85] 
 
White Heart of Mojave 
 
 the month's supplies with amused interest. When 
 we were ready we had to pose beside the wagon 
 in the middle of the street to have our picture 
 taken. Then somebody cried "Good luck!" and 
 at last we started. 
 
 As soon as a turn in the road hid Beatty the 
 silence closed around us. The crisp, clear air 
 made our blood tingle. We walked the first 
 few miles while the Worrier drove. The sun, 
 the wind, and the scarred old mountains became 
 the only important things in the world. We were 
 committed to sunrise and sunset, rocks and brush 
 were to be our companions, lonely springs were 
 to keep us alive, the roots of the greasewood 
 were to warm us, all our possessions were con- 
 tained in one frail wagon. In half an hour the 
 desert claimed us. The sun that loves the desert 
 clothed it in colored garments. 
 
 [86] 
 
Entering Death Valley 
 
 THE way to Death Valley from Beatty is 
 across a shallower valley and through 
 Daylight Pass at an elevation of 4,317 
 feet. First the road winds down around small, 
 rough hills, at whose base the deserted town of 
 Ryolite is situated. Ryolite is what remains of 
 a mining boom. It is pushed into a cove of a 
 rose-colored mountain — but desert mountains 
 change their hues so often that it may not always 
 be rose. Ryolite is a typical American ruin. 
 Its boom was very brief. The town sprang up 
 over-night. Money was poured in. Water was 
 brought for miles in a pipe-line, a railroad from 
 Beatty begun, and permanent buildings erected 
 — it had the pride of a "thirty thousand dollar 
 hotel," and a bank to match. Immense energy 
 and enthusiasm of youth, middle-aged greed, too, 
 with its eye on the immediate main chance, went 
 
 [87] 
 
White Heart of Mojave 
 
 into its making. No doubt some people profited 
 by the building of Ryolite. It was a tumult of 
 "American initiative" — then it did not pay. It 
 is easy to picture the promoters, their important 
 hurry, their "up-to-date methods," their big 
 talk. It is easy to picture the investors too. 
 Nearly everybody who has money to invest buys 
 stock in a gold mine once. Great hopes con- 
 verged on the desert here from many a board- 
 sidewalked town and prairie-farm; futures were 
 built on it. There is a throb in the throat for 
 Ryolite, fading into the mountain, its corru- 
 gated-iron roofs rusting red like the hills. The 
 desert is licking the wound with her sandy 
 tongue until not even a scar will remain. Sooner 
 or later she heals all the little scratches men 
 ^make on her surface. 
 
 The dead town faced a wide valley stretching 
 like a green meadow to the opposite mountains. 
 The thick sagebrush melted together into a 
 smooth sward over which cloud-shadows floated. 
 The sun evoked lovely, changing color-tones 
 from it, like a musician playing upon his instru- 
 ment, making harmonies of violet and brown and 
 
 [88] 
 
Entering Death Valley 
 
 sage-green flow beneath a melody of pure blue. 
 A perfectly straight road cut a white line 
 through the meadow. The distance was ten 
 miles, but no one unaccustomed to the clear air 
 of the desert would guess it to be more than 
 three. The road appeared level with a slight 
 rise under the western mountains which had 
 strong, dark outlines on the sky. They looked 
 purple and their lower masses kept emerging 
 from the main range and fading again as the 
 shadows circled. 
 
 It took Molly and Bill a long time to travel 
 the straight, white line. By turn we drove and 
 walked, as the three of us could not ride in 
 the wagon at once. Already the superiority of 
 this mode of travel over Fords was being dem- 
 onstrated. We felt the simple bigness of the 
 desert, and were intimate with the indigo shadow 
 under each little bush, and the bright-colored 
 stones; we had time to make digressions to some 
 new cactus or strange-looking rock while Molly 
 and Bill plodded on. For hours we crossed the 
 valley, hardly seeming to progress. The same 
 landscape was always before us, yet we were in 
 
 [89] 
 
White Heart of Mojave 
 
 the midst of a changing pageant. Soon Ryoiite 
 was lost in a mass of pale rose and blue that 
 seemed like a gate to another world. The 
 knowledge that the mountains were made of dull- 
 red, crumbling rock, and that only Beatty lay 
 behind them could not destroy the illusion. It 
 grew fairer as we left it. The dark mountains 
 in front became formidable silhouettes as the 
 afternoon sun inclined toward them. We could 
 never quite see the canyon by which we were 
 to reach the pass; several times we thought we 
 saw it, only to lose it again in the subtleties of 
 shifting shadows. 
 
 Soon after crossing the middle of the valley 
 the road began a long, brutal ascent. Mile after 
 mile it steadily climbed until the sweat made 
 furrows in the shaggy coats of Molly and Bill; 
 but to us, walking ahead of the wagon, the valley 
 looked level as before, and only our greater exer- 
 tion convinced us of the rise. Here was one of 
 the characteristic mesas of the Mojave; nothing 
 is quite flat there except the narrow bottoms 
 of the valleys. Suddenly the road reached the 
 outposts of the mountain and became much 
 
 [90] 
 
,^^^*^^«^ 
 
Entering Death Valley 
 
 steeper through the sandy wash of a canyon. The 
 walls on either side gradually grew higher and 
 the sand deeper. The ungainly load proved 
 almost too much for the desert-proof steeds. At 
 times we all three had to push, and we often 
 had to stop to rest. Night came while we were 
 still toiling upward. It was cold, and a bit- 
 ter wind blew between the walls. During one 
 of the halts the Worrier gathered up some bits 
 of wood by the roadside, the remains of a 
 ruined shack, and thrust them under the cinch- 
 ropes. 
 
 "We'll need them," he said, buttoning his 
 inadequate coat to the chin. "We're in luck.'* 
 
 "You'll find we're always in luck," we told 
 him through chattering teeth. 
 
 At last Molly and Bill succeeded in reaching 
 the top of the pass. The spring was still half a 
 mile away in the side of a mountain. We did 
 not attempt to take the wagon there, but the 
 Worrier took the tired animals and brought 
 back the water while Charlotte and I found a 
 place fairly sheltered from the wind in the bot- 
 tom of a wash, lugged down the bits of firewood 
 
 [91] 
 
White Heart of Mojave 
 
 and the "kitchen," and began to cook our first 
 meal on the desert. Soon we heard the Worrier 
 shouting unintelligible things. Much alarmed 
 we scrambled hastily up out of the wash to find 
 him returning, followed by a troop of wild bur- 
 ros. They were not in the least discouraged by 
 his violent remarks, but came all the way and 
 stood in a half -circle around the wagon, twitch- 
 ing their furry ears. He was noisily vehement. 
 He said that they would steal and eat anything 
 from our blankets to his precious chilies sealed 
 up in tin cans; that they had no conscience, they 
 were the pirates of the desert. During dinner he 
 kept making excursions to the top of the wash to 
 throw stones at them. He guarded the wagon all 
 night by sleeping under it, a practice which he 
 continued throughout the trip, greatly tranquil- 
 izing our minds. Burros and coyotes were the 
 only marauders, and we knew that they would 
 have a hard time of it. Charlotte and I dragged 
 our bed-rolls a little way down the wash. It 
 was a wild night. The stars had an icy glitter 
 and the wind made dismal noises among the 
 fearsome-looking mountain-tops; before morn- 
 
 [92] 
 
Entering Death Valley 
 
 ing it snowed a little, but we were too tired to 
 care. 
 
 The rising sun awoke us. It leapt up over the 
 mountains; soon every trace of the light snow 
 was gone, the ground dry, and the air warm. 
 From Daylight Springs a fairly good track led 
 down eight miles to the northern rim of Death 
 Valley. Near the end of the descending canyon 
 Corkscrew Mountain appeared, a symmetrical 
 mass, striking both on account of its red color 
 like crumbling bricks and for the perpendicular 
 cliff which spirals around it like a corkscrew. 
 Through the field-glass the cliff was a dark violet 
 and might be a hundred or more feet high. 
 Corkscrew Mountain stands out boldly from its 
 fellows, nor while we were in the valley did we 
 ever lose sight of its sun-bright bulk. It became 
 our landmark in the north. 
 
 Opposite Corkscrew Mountain the road 
 turned abruptly around a point of rock. Char- 
 lotte and I were walking ahead of the wagon, 
 we went gayly to the end of the promontory and 
 were brought to a sudden stop by what we saw. 
 There, without any warning of its nearness, like 
 
 [93] 
 
White Heart of Mojave 
 
 an unexpected crash of orchestral music, lay the 
 terrible valley, the beautiful, the overwhelming 
 valley. 
 
 The Official Worrier stopped the w^agon. 
 Though he thought us insane, though he declared 
 he could see none of the colors and enchantments 
 we had been pointing out to him, he was moved. 
 From the look that came into his eyes we knew 
 that, whether he admitted it or not, like Shady 
 Myrick he was under the terrible fascination of 
 Mojave. That, after all, was why he had been 
 willing to come with us to the White Heart. 
 "Well," he said brusquely, "that's her!" 
 We all stood silent then. We were about three 
 thousand feet above the bottom of the valley 
 looking down from the north over its whole 
 length, an immense oblong, glistening with white, 
 alkali deposits, deep between high mountain 
 walls. We knew that men had died down there 
 in the shimmering heat of that white floor, 
 we knew that the valley was sterile and dead, 
 and yet we saw it covered with a mantle of such 
 strange beauty that we felt it was the noblest 
 thing we had ever imagined. Only a poet could 
 
 [94] 
 
Entering Death Valley 
 
 hope to express the emotion of beauty stronger 
 than fear and death which held us silent moment 
 after moment by the point of rock. Perhaps 
 some day a supreme singer will come around 
 that point and adequately interpret that thrill- 
 ing repose, that patience, that terror and beauty 
 as part of the impassive, splendid life that always 
 compasses our turbulent littleness around. Be- 
 fore terror and beauty like that, something inside 
 you, your own very self, stands still; for a while 
 you rest in the companionship of greatness. 
 
 The natural features which combined to pro- 
 duce this tremendous effect came slowly to our 
 understanding. They were so unlike anything 
 in our experience, even of the wonders of the 
 outdoors, that they bewildered us. The strange 
 can only be made comprehensible by comparison 
 to the familiar, and perhaps the best comparison 
 is to a frozen mountain-lake. The smooth, white 
 bottom of the valley looks more like a frozen 
 lake than like anything else, and yet it looks so 
 little like a lake that the simile does not come 
 easily to the mind. Death Valley is level like a 
 lake, it is bare like a lake, cloud-shadows drift 
 
 [95] 
 
White Heart of Mojave 
 
 over it as over a lake, the precipitous mountains 
 seem to jut into it as mountains jut into a lake, 
 but there the comparison ends and its own unfa- 
 miliar beauties begin. 
 
 Evanescent streaks and patches of color float 
 over the shining floor between the changing hills. 
 It reflects them. Sometimes a path made of 
 rose tourmalines crosses it, or a blue patch lies 
 near one edge as though a piece of the sky had 
 fallen down. Lines of pure cobalt, pools of 
 smoky blue, or pale yellow, or pink lavender 
 are there, all quiveringly alive. At times the 
 white crust shines like polished silver, at others 
 it turns sullenly opaque. Now a blue river 
 flows down the center — now it moves over under 
 the western wall — now it gathers itself into a 
 pond around which green rushes grow. 
 
 High above the middle of the valley tower 
 the Panamint Mountains. That winter their 
 summits were covered with snow as white as the 
 white floor, and as shining. Without apparent 
 break into foothills they rise nearly 12,000 feet. 
 Seldom, even in the highest ranges, can you see 
 so great a sheer rise, for most mountains are 
 
 [96] 
 
Entering Death Valley 
 
 approached from a considerable elevation. In 
 Death Valley the eye begins its upward journey 
 below sea-level. Down there the white floor 
 shimmered and seemed to move while above it 
 the two peaks of Telescope and Mount Baldy, 
 joined by a long curving ridge of snow, were a 
 remote, still whiteness. 
 
 The eastern wall of the valley is not so high, 
 but is hardly less impressive. The Funeral 
 Mountains are steel-blue with layers of white 
 rock near their summits. Both the moun- 
 tains and the valley were named because of 
 tragedies down on that white floor during pio- 
 neering and prospecting days. It is impossible 
 to get the details of the stories from the old- 
 timers, each has a dififerent version and no one 
 is very clear even about his own. One story is 
 of a party of emigrants, men, women, and chil- 
 dren, on the way to the gold-fields with all their 
 household goods, who entered the valley by mis- 
 take and could not find a way out; another is of 
 a party who were attacked by Indians and fought 
 in a circle they made of their wagons until the 
 last man was killed. The remains of the wagons 
 
 [97] 
 
White Heart of Mojave 
 
 are said to be buried in the sand near a place 
 called Stovepipe Wells. We never could learn 
 the exact location, though on a later trip v^e met 
 a man who said that he had once actually found 
 them, and that he had seen Indians around there 
 wearing jewelry and using utensils which they 
 could only have obtained from the white man 
 sometime in the fifties. There are also stories 
 of individual prospectors who perished on the 
 burning sands. It does not matter which par- 
 ticular tragedy fastened such names on this 
 region of celestial day, they commemorate all 
 whose last sight of the earth was that lonely 
 splendor. 
 
 The Funeral Range is separated by a deep 
 canyon from the Black Mountains which con- 
 tinue the eastern wall of the valley. This wall 
 is from five to six thousand feet high, jutting 
 into the basin in great promontories as moun- 
 tains jut into a rock-ringed lake. The range 
 across the southern end is not so high and was 
 half hidden by an opalescent haze. All the time 
 we were in the valley that haze persisted. Only 
 rarely and for short periods could we see any 
 
 [98] 
 
Entering Death Valley 
 
 detail in the depths of the hot basin, though the 
 foreground sparkled in the stark, clear air. The 
 Imperial Valley and Death Valley are always 
 hung with misty curtains. 
 
 A long, long slope leads from the rock prom- 
 ontory from which we first saw the valley down 
 to that shimmering pit. It is very rocky, cut 
 by washes and sparsely covered with sagebrush 
 and greasewood. Occasional little yellow or 
 blue hills rise like islands from blue-green 
 waves. The ground is covered with little stones 
 of every conceivable color, which flash back the 
 sunlight from their polished surfaces. Unfa- 
 miliar green and purple stones lie around, and 
 bright red stones, and a stone of a strange orange- 
 color like flame. A mass of this is what we must 
 have seen at Saratoga Springs on the mountain 
 that bled. The impulse to pick up specimens 
 was irresistible. This proved to be the curse of 
 walking over the bright mosaics. Each little 
 stone was of a color or texture more alluring 
 than the last until our pockets became unbear- 
 ably heavy. Every resting-time was spent in 
 trying to decide which ones to throw away, but 
 
 [99] 
 
White Heart of Mojave 
 
 as we could not possibly throw one away on the 
 same day that we picked it up, this was a fruit- 
 less occupation. 
 
 About noon we lunched in the shade of one of 
 the little hill-islands. During the descent the 
 heat had steadily increased and the sun shone 
 with white, blinding intensity. The Official 
 Worrier grew expansive and happy. He de- 
 scribed himself as a "desert rat," and said that 
 the hot brilliance suited him entirely. He called 
 it a pleasant, warm day. Charlotte and I were 
 continually looking at the little blue spots of 
 shade behind a bush or projecting rock to rest 
 our eyes. We could no longer look away over 
 the valley, objects merged and vanished there. 
 One of my recurring dreams since childhood is 
 of trying to walk or run in a light so dazzling 
 that I could not keep my eyes open for more 
 than a few seconds at a time. That day my 
 dream strikingly came true. Everywhere bright 
 heat-waves ran over the ground. The surface 
 of stones and the tips of leaves glittered daz- 
 zlingly. It was probably no hotter than it had 
 been at Saratoga, but the reflection of light from 
 
 [lOO] 
 
Entering Death Valley 
 
 the immense white bottom of the valley was an 
 almost unbearable brightness. 
 
 Our destination was an abandoned gold-mine 
 on the side of the Funeral Range. From the 
 lunch-place the Keane Wonder Mine looked on 
 a level with us and quite near, but we traveled 
 two hours and made a stiff climb to reach it. 
 This was the hardest bit of marching that we 
 did, for we were too ignorant of the effects of 
 such a combination of heat and blinding light to 
 know how to conduct ourselves. We thought 
 we were sick or overtired, and being much too 
 proud to let the Worrier suspect such a thing, 
 pressed on without stopping often enough to 
 rest. We had not yet learned that the wagon 
 was always accompanied by a blessed bit of 
 shade that we could sit down in any time. Later 
 we appreciated fully this happy attribute of 
 wagons. More than once we were grateful to 
 the Worrier for refusing to come with a pack- 
 train. 
 
 The mine was a large plant which had paid 
 well. A mess of buildings, some half-blown- 
 down, pieces of machinery and the big red mill 
 
 [lOl] 
 
White Heart of Mojave 
 
 huddled at the mouth of the canyon where the 
 mountain rises steeply from the mesa. The mine 
 itself was higher up the canyon down which the 
 ore was swung in huge buckets that ran on iron 
 cables. Water had been piped from a spring a 
 mile away, but the pipe was broken. The 
 ground was far too rough to allow us to take the 
 wagon to the spring, so once more the Worrier 
 led off Molly and Bill and brought back water 
 in a pail. Earlier in the day we had lamented 
 the necessity of camping among wreckage, but 
 when we reached the first building, which once 
 had been a barn, its oblong, indigo shadow was 
 Heaven. We lay prone on the ground behind it 
 until the sun went down, not attempting to un- 
 load the wagon or do any useful thing. The 
 Worrier found us thus on his return and gravely 
 opined that we had better stay a while at Keane 
 Wonder and try to get acclimated. 
 
 During the three days that we camped behind 
 the barn we were living about a thousand feet 
 above the bottom of that amazing valley, look- 
 ing down into it and up at the still, white peaks 
 of the Panamints above it. Opposite Keane 
 
 [102] 
 
Ti'^'i 
 
Entering Death Valley 
 
 Wonder what looked like a low, sandy ridge 
 separates the main sink of Death Valley from 
 a similar though smaller and less striking basin 
 called the Mesquite Valley. The high Pana- 
 mints end in a stern red mass near the sand-ridge, 
 beyond which a long slope like the one we had 
 come down leads to more distant mountains 
 which, however, are a continuation of the range. 
 Emigrant Pass through the mountains over to 
 Ballarat starts from the slope and winds around 
 behind the stern, red mass. That may well have 
 been the way out which the party of emigrants 
 who perished sought and did not find. Most 
 of the time the steadily pressing wind of the 
 desert blew through the great, bright space. 
 Often we saw it pick up the sand far down at the 
 edge of the valley and whirl it along in tall 
 wraiths that looked like ghosts walking over the 
 white floor. 
 
 On the second evening a bell sounded in the 
 dusk. When you travel with burros on the des- 
 ert it is the custom to put a bell on one of them 
 at night so you can find them in the morning, and 
 often the bell is left on during the day's journey. 
 
 [103] 
 
White Heart of Mojave 
 
 That sound meant that someone was coming to 
 our camp-fire. Soon a frail old man with two 
 loaded burros and a little dog appeared. It was 
 "Old Johnnie," an habitue of Death Valley, 
 coming home. He had an unworked gold-mine 
 near Keane Wonder and he spent his life looking 
 after his property. Apparently he was also the 
 official caretaker of Keane Wonder itself. He 
 performed his duties by looking over our camp 
 and guarding every bit of wire and every old 
 rusty nail as though they were gold itself. He 
 hovered around us, especially at departure, so 
 we only succeeded in stealing one iron bar for 
 our fireplace, and we needed two. We cast long- 
 ing eyes at a certain chipped, granite kettle, but 
 finally had to borrow that, promising solemnly 
 to return it at Beatty on our way back. Perhaps 
 he was unduly suspicious because the Worrier 
 had taken a bit of some very ancient and hope- 
 less-looking hay, which we found in the barn, 
 to cheer up Molly and Bill. 
 
 "How could I know he lived here?" he apol- 
 ogized to us. "Anyways, there wasn't but two 
 mouthfuls." 
 
 [104] 
 
Entering Death Valley 
 
 But "Old Johnnie" was hospitable, as all old- 
 timers are. He urged Charlotte and me to move 
 into the superintendent's house. It had been a 
 good house once, but in its present condition we 
 preferred the open sand, nor could we bear even 
 for a night to have a roof between us and the 
 blue deeps of that star-filled sky. He was a 
 garrulous talker and very friendly. He claimed 
 that his mine was richer than Keane Wonder 
 ever dreamed of being. Once some one had of- 
 fered him $300,000, but his partner would not 
 look at it. His tone implied that it was a paltry 
 sum anyway. He was an inventor, too, and had 
 sold a patent for an automobile-part which he 
 described in great detail. We asked him if he 
 still hoped to sell the mine. He seemed not to 
 know what he intended to do. Plainly he was 
 another victim of the "terrible fascination." He 
 related how he had lately been to Tonopah and 
 got sick and almost died from lack of air in the 
 clutter of things. The Worrier said that he 
 had money put away somewhere, but money or 
 no money, whether he ever sold the mine or not, 
 
 [105] 
 
White Heart of Mojave 
 
 he would hang around Death Valley the rest 
 of his life. 
 
 **01d Johnnie" rose to fine heights as a story- 
 teller when we invited him to dinner next day. 
 We had brought some fresh meat which had to 
 be used up early on the trip, and the Worrier 
 achieved a magnificent meal. Usually I was 
 the cook, but that dinner was far beyond me. He 
 invaded the ruined boarding-house, wrestled suc- 
 cessfully with the rusty stove, and produced a 
 roast surrounded by potatoes and onions to be 
 long remembered. We ate it at the board table 
 in the dining-room. "Old Johnnie" changed 
 his coat for the festivity; he beamed upon us 
 and talked. He had the good story-teller's gift 
 of suggestion and in the midst of that blazing 
 emptiness steeped in a silence broken only by the 
 wind clanging rusted cables and rattling the 
 loosened iron roof, he peopled the dining-room 
 again. We saw the faces of the men crowding 
 in for their supper and heard their voices. Once 
 more the camp-cook in white apron and cap, for 
 "Old Johnnie" described it as a fine camp "run 
 right," leaned over the table to pour soup into 
 
 [1 06] 
 
Entering Death Valley 
 
 granite bowls. Keane Wonder came to life 
 while the obliterating desolation crept in at the 
 door. 
 
 He told stories of other mining camps and of 
 the struggle of individual prospectors with the 
 valley. You outwit its wickedness or you are 
 outwitted by it. It was alive, a sort of fascinat- 
 ing enemy. His words took us with him and his 
 burros down its white length. The enemy had 
 uncanny powers. She played strange tricks on 
 you. If she could not get you one way she tried 
 another. 
 
 "You find fellers dead down there," he said. 
 "And they don't die of thirst, either. Some- 
 times there's water in the canteens. They just 
 go crazy. She gets 'em." 
 
 He leaned closer across the table and his voice 
 became lower. 
 
 "And you hear 'em in the night," he whis- 
 pered. 
 
 "Hear who?" 
 
 "Them. I call it the Lonesome Bell." 
 
 "What is the Lonesome Bell?" We found 
 ourselves whispering too. 
 
 [107] 
 
White Heart of Mojave 
 
 "You hear it. It's a bell. It rings regular, 
 far off. Sometimes you hear it all night. It 
 sounds like the bell on a burro. But it ain't 
 nothing. Once I had a young feller for a part- 
 ner, and when he heard it he got up and made 
 coffee for the outfit that was coming. He 
 wouldn't believe me when I told him it wasn't 
 nothing but the Lonesome Bell. He waited and 
 waited and nobody came. And the next morn- 
 ing he packed up and beat it." 
 
 Old Johnnie's eyes glittered with unnatural 
 brightness. He was telling his own secret. Very 
 vividly he made us see a man alone in the blue 
 night, dim sand spreading away, dark-blue 
 mountains on blueness. Not a sound, not even 
 the breath of the night stirring the sagebrush. 
 Through white, empty days and blue, empty 
 nights he is always alone. He listens to his own 
 heart beating. Then, far off, the faint sound of 
 a bell. Then again. He listens intently because 
 it is the only sound for such a long time. It comes 
 again. It grows louder. He strains to hear. 
 A bell belongs on a burro — he hears the tramp 
 of burros' feet. 
 
 [io8] 
 
Entering Death Valley 
 
 With awe we looked at those bright, intent 
 eyes and that thin body bent tensely forward. 
 Some night the Lonesome Bell will be true, but 
 "Old Johnnie" will not hear it. A belated trav- 
 eler with his pack-train will find a dead camp- 
 fire and an old man asleep forever beside it. 
 "Old Johnnie" has outwitted the valley so long 
 that he thinks he can always do it, but she will 
 get him in the end. 
 
 After dinner "Old Johnnie" unlocked the mill 
 and showed us the costly machinery inside, ex- 
 plaining in careful detail the processes of mill- 
 ing gold. The canyon behind Keane Wonder 
 is narrow and precipitous as though it had been 
 gouged out by a giant's trowel. High up on the 
 mountain-side the dumps of iridescent rock 
 around the mine-pits shimmered. We sat with 
 him on a beam of the ruined mill while he 
 pointed things out in the valley. He showed 
 us where Furnace Creek Ranch lies on the sand 
 by the opening of the canyon between the 
 Funeral Range and the Black Mountains, but we 
 could not see it because of the heat-shimmer and 
 the misty veil. He said that the stern, red mass 
 
 [109] 
 
White Heart of Mojave 
 
 opposite was called Tucki Mountain, an Indian 
 word for sheep, because the Panamint Indians 
 used to hunt wild mountain-sheep in its fast- 
 nesses. The smooth, bare slope beyond the 
 Mesquite Valley, he said, was really very rough, 
 cut by deep water-channels and covered with 
 brush ; and rose in that gradual way nearly 3,000 
 feet before it reached the mountains. The curi- 
 ous streak in the bottom of the Mesquite Valley 
 was the swamp of Salt Creek, where the water 
 was so bad you could not drink it. It joined the 
 morass in the bottom of Death Valley. There 
 were quicksands there, that you could not get 
 out of if you got in. Men and burros had been 
 lost that way. He pointed out little, white heaps 
 down by Salt Creek and said they were sand- 
 dunes a hundred feet high. 
 
 While we sat there a storm swept down the 
 big slope and around on the face of the high 
 Panamints above Death Valley. First the wind 
 lifted the sand in the tall whirling wraiths that 
 fled before the pursuing host of the rain. It 
 came on like an army of giants in bright armor, 
 dust-clouds swirling before their horses' gallop- 
 
 [iiol 
 
Entering Death Valley 
 
 ing feet, the sun gleaming on their million spears 
 that reached higher than the mountain-tops. 
 In the midst of blazing sunshine the shadow of 
 their passing was dark on the valley; for a few 
 moments they obliterated the mountains. 
 
 "Surely," Charlotte said, "it is pouring rain 
 over there, yet they told us it never rains in 
 Death Valley" 
 
 "That's some rain," he admitted, "but maybe 
 it ain't wetting the sand. I've been in storms like 
 that when the water all evaporated before it 
 got down." 
 
 "But it must rain sometimes and the water get 
 down," I objected to both of them, "for Shady 
 Myrick said that he had seen the valley full of 
 flowers." 
 
 "I've seen 'em," he assented, with a sudden 
 eager lighting of his face — "yes!" 
 
 They did not happen to bloom while we were 
 there but we believe in them. Anything might 
 happen, anything could be true in that terrible, 
 bright place. 
 
 [Ill] 
 
VI 
 
 The Strangest Farm in the World 
 
 ON the fourth day we bade "Old Johnnie" 
 farewell, and descended into the quiver- 
 ing white basin. The next camp was to 
 be at Furnace Creek Ranch, the irrigated farm 
 in the bottom of the valley established long ago 
 in connection with the original borax-works of 
 the Twenty-Mule-Team brand. The water for 
 irrigation is brought down in a ditch from Fur- 
 nace Creek in the canyon between the Funeral 
 Mountains and the Black Mountains and the 
 ranch is a large, green patch on the sand. In 
 any ordinary place, or in any ordinary light it 
 would be a conspicuous feature of the landscape; 
 but, though ''Old Johnnie" had pointed it out 
 so carefully, we could never distinguish it nor 
 could we see it during our approach that day 
 until we were within half a mile of it. Through- 
 
 [112] 
 
Strangest Farm in the World 
 
 out the journey the valley-floor presented the 
 same unbroken, white expanse. 
 
 For several miles our way continued down the 
 mesa. Here was no road, only a lurching and 
 grinding down a rocky wash, crawling over the 
 edge in the hope of something better and return- 
 ing again to the ills we knew. It seemed as 
 though the slender-spoked wheels must collapse 
 under the strain. Our tower of baggage swayed 
 dangerously. The Official Worrier was a skill- 
 ful driver and he needed to be, not only on this 
 day but on several subsequent ones which sur- 
 passed it. About noon we reached the road that 
 leads from Salt Creek at the southern end of 
 Mesquite Valley across the northern end of 
 Death Valley and along its eastern side to the 
 ranch. This road was an improvement on the 
 uncharted wash. There were no rocks in it; but 
 it soon became sandy, two deep ruts meandering 
 off toward the white floor. 
 
 Presently we came to its edge and skirted the 
 swamp of the Armagosa River, the morass of 
 mud and quicksands which fills the whole bot- 
 tom of the valley, an immense expanse covered 
 
 [113] 
 
White Heart of Mojave 
 
 with large white crystals and a powdery sub- 
 stance that looks like coarse salt. The valley 
 probably was once the bed of a salt-lake whose 
 slow evaporation left the thick alkali crust. The 
 ruts were very deep and the ground soft to walk 
 on, spongy and hummocky. The Worrier said 
 that if the wagon were to get out of the ruts 
 it easily might be mired. "Old Johnnie" told us 
 that in some places in the middle of the bog a 
 team or a man walking could be sucked down 
 out of sight and one of his tales was of finding a 
 dead man's face looking up at him out of the 
 ground. 
 
 "He was a Swede with yellow hair," he said, 
 "and he stared at the sun. He sank stand- 
 ing up." 
 
 The road which crosses the valley below the 
 ranch near the old Eagle Borax Works is said 
 to be almost the only way to get over the swamp. 
 The Panamint Indians are supposed to have 
 known this route and to have crossed the valley 
 to escape from their enemies, who dared not 
 follow them. 
 
 A Government bench-mark by the roadside 
 ["4] 
 
Strangest Farm in the World 
 
 indicated 258 feet below sea level. The heat \ 
 was oppressive, and the white ground reflected a 
 blinding light. At one place, rounding the base 
 of a hill which shut ofif the view of the nearby 
 mountains, we found ourselves in the midst of 
 miles of the shining whiteness. It spread in 
 every direction, reaching to the distant Pana- 
 mints across the valley and to the hazy outline 
 of the low range at the southern end. The hill 
 which we were passing rose into the sky, white 
 as the plain except for a few streaks of ugly, 
 greenish-yellow-like sulphur. No living green , 
 thing appeared. The white expanse was un- 
 broken by a bush or even by an outjutting rock. 
 The desolation was complete. An intense 
 silence lay over it. If we dropped far enough 
 behind the wagon not to hear the creaking of its 
 wheels, we felt utterly alone, the only survivors 
 in a dead universe. That day the sky was a hot 
 purplish-blue; no cloud shadows drifting over 
 the valley relieved its blinding monotony. The 
 rose and silver which we had seen from above 
 were gone, not even the illusion of water far oflf 
 remained. The sun stared steadily down. It 
 
White Heart of Mojave 
 
 was the far-spread, motionless silence of the last 
 days when the whole earth will be dying. 
 
 Winding around the hill we came to the ruins 
 of a borax-works. This had been the first plant 
 in the valley, then the Eagle Borax Works south 
 of the ranch was operated, but now the borax 
 comes from the mines in the mountains at Ryan. 
 Nothing was left of the old borax-works except 
 a few roofless stone buildings and the ruins of 
 the works which looked like a row of immense 
 vats embedded in the side of a low ridge. The 
 vats and the ridge had the same sulphurous color, 
 and melted together. Around the buildings the 
 ground was covered with tin cans and broken 
 bottles, but the square of dark-blue shade beside 
 each house was a blessed relief from the burn- 
 ing sun. 
 
 Beyond the old borax-works the road wound 
 through sand covered with large mesquites and 
 greasewoods. Though the mesquite is called a 
 tree it looks more like an overgrown, thorny 
 shrub. It grows near swamps and dry lakes 
 and is supposed to be a sure indication of water, 
 but its roots go down very deep and it appears 
 
 [1.6] 
 
Strangest Farm in the World 
 
 in desolations of sand where it would be unwise 
 for the wayfarer to dig. Those mesquites in 
 Death Valley looked very hopeless indeed, 
 sprangling, thorny, leafless things with a hillock 
 of sand blown around the roots of each. 
 
 As we descended into the valley and came 
 along the edge of the morass a feeling of deep 
 lassitude and inertia gradually crept over Char- 
 lotte and me. It had been very hard to leave the 
 dark squares of shade at the borax-works, and 
 now as we crawled along among the mesquites 
 we felt that the white monotony would go on 
 forever. It pressed upon us like a weight that 
 never, never could be lifted. We stared down at 
 the sand with unseeing eyes and went on because 
 we were in the habit of going on. The ranch 
 was only an imagining, born of vain hope. 
 
 And then the strange-looking, tufted tops of 
 some tall palms appeared against the sky. They 
 were very striking and we thought they must 
 still be far off or we would have seen them all 
 day, but not a quarter of an hour later we reached 
 the fence which separated the desert from the 
 emerald-green fields. The sudden springing up 
 
 [117] 
 
White Heart of Mojave 
 
 of the ranch was as unreal as any imagining. 
 The fence was a sharp line of demarcation. On 
 one side the sand drifted up to it, on the other 
 were meadows and big willow trees. It was 
 evening when we arrived, so we camped at once 
 by the irrigation-ditch which made a narrow 
 green ribbon across the sand with grass and 
 trees growing along its banks. We built our 
 fire between an encampment of Indians and the 
 white adobe ranch-buildings beyond the fence. 
 The water rushed down the ditch, clear and cool. 
 How marvelous this running water seemed! 
 How marvelous to dip out all we wanted to wash 
 ourselves and our clothes and our dishes! 
 
 Our felicity, however, was short-lived. The 
 Panamint Indians, in common probably with all 
 Indians, do not count cleanliness among their 
 virtues. The rising of the fierce, hot sun 
 brought millions of flies which converted our 
 dishes and camp equipment into black masses 
 that crawled. Between the Indians and the large 
 herd of cattle at the ranch, camping by the irri- 
 gation-ditch was impossible. We spent most 
 of the forenoon moving a mile or two away 
 
 [1.8] 
 
Strangest Farm in the World 
 
 among the mesquites. We were on the grad- 
 ually sloping ground which leads up from the 
 valley-floor to the rock-walls of the Funeral 
 Mountains. Here in the valley we found that 
 our impression from the Keane Wonder Mine 
 of mountains rising precipitously from the flat 
 white floor had been an illusion. The charac- 
 teristic mesa of the Mojave curves up on both 
 sides, sandy, covered with stones, but often en- 
 tirely bare of vegetation. Death Valley is 
 always full of such illusions. Even afterwards, 
 when we knew better, we could never look down 
 into the valley from a height without feeling 
 that the mountains rose precipitously out of it. 
 That camp among the mesquites blazed. The 
 yellow sand seemed to smite our eyes. Across 
 the valley under the edge of the Panamints the 
 mesa looked a beautiful dark-blue, but around 
 us was an even greater ecstasy of light than we 
 had known at Keane Wonder. Everything 
 blazed, the sand, the slow waves of the heat 
 shimmer, the little rounded stony hills between 
 us and the Funeral Mountains, and the steel-blue 
 battlements of the mountains themselves. 
 
 [■19] 
 
White Heart of Mojave 
 
 The Indians at the ranch are employed as 
 laborers, when they will work. The superin- 
 tendent, a vigorous, silent Scotchman, was ex- 
 tremely pessimistic about them. While we were 
 there they had "the flu" and all we ever saw them 
 do was sit around the corral waiting for supplies 
 to be handed out. The women and girls, with 
 heavy melancholy faces, gathered and stared at 
 us. They stared with the stolid curiosity of 
 cattle, not like burros who twitch their ears 
 saucily, though they have the burro's reputation 
 for thievishness. The superintendent kept 
 everything under lock and key. The only Indian 
 who showed a sign of life was an old fellow who 
 prowled around with a gun after the birds and 
 wild ducks that make the ranch a resting-place 
 in their flights across the desert. We were told 
 that there was only one gun in the whole encamp- 
 ment and that the younger men hunted with 
 bows and arrows. Most of them looked stunted 
 and their faces were wrinkled like the skins of 
 shrunken, dried-up apples, as though the valley 
 were taking toll of the generations of their race. 
 
 The valley takes its toll. Most white men 
 [120] 
 
Strangest Farm in the World 
 
 cannot live there long. The vigorous Scotch- 
 man had been at the ranch eight years and 
 thought he could remain, but no one else had 
 ever stayed such a length of time, and he had 
 difficulty in finding anybody to keep him com- 
 pany for more than a few months. He told us 
 that no vs^hite woman can stand it at all in sum- 
 mer. As Charlotte and I were almost pros- 
 trated even in early March, we are willing to 
 accept the statement. Nothing that anyone can 
 tell us of the evil effects of living in the valley 
 is beyond our imaginations. At times the ther- 
 mometer goes up to 130 degrees, but there is 
 something worse than the heat. The Worrier 
 claimed that 130 degrees was not uncommon in 
 Silver Lake, and that he spent his summers there 
 without suffering as people do in the valley. 
 The mercury never rose above 98 degrees while 
 we were at the ranch, a temperature by no means 
 unknown in eastern summers, yet our feeling 
 of lassitude increased daily, combined with a 
 faintness and giddiness that we could hardly 
 combat. The blazing light had much to do with 
 it, and we were below sea-level. A learned, 
 
 [121] 
 
White Heart of Mojave 
 
 scientific man has since told us that so small a 
 drop in elevation could not be noticeable. Those 
 old-timers who went insane on the hot sands 
 knew that it was noticeable. You feel that if 
 you were to go out into that blazing silence you 
 could easily go insane, or succumb to the deadly 
 inertia which paralyzed Charlotte and me. Too 
 easily you could lie down in the thin, delusive 
 shade of some little bush and forget. Even be- 
 neath the willow trees beside the flowing water 
 we could scarcely move, our minds were dazed 
 so we could neither read nor think. We under- 
 stood "Old Johnnie's" feeling about the valley. 
 Something hostile lives there. 
 //The ghastly, shining swamp and the pools of. 
 poisonous water are horrible to the imagination 
 because of their unnaturalness in the midst of 
 such choking thirst. Only the perverted brain 
 of a demon could have invented such a mon- 
 strosity. Water is in your thoughts all the time. 
 From morning until night you are thirsty in the 
 dry heat, and you look out over the shimmering, 
 miles and know that, though there is water 
 here and there, if you leave the irrigation- 
 
 [122] 
 
Strangest Farm in the World 
 
 ditch you cannot quench your thirst. You cling 
 to the narrow green line where the mountain- 
 water flows down. The feeling grows on you 
 that you are visiting some sinister world which 
 can be no part of your beloved earth. 
 
 And then night comes. A miracle happens 
 and you know this is the same outdoors you love, 
 only its trappings are put off, it is stripped of 
 obscuring verdure, naked, and you find it more 
 terrible than you thought it could be and more 
 beautiful than you thought it could be. The 
 rising and the setting of that cruel sun are great 
 splendors, that dark night sky is bigger and 
 deeper than in kinder countries. The stars are 
 very near, floating In a sea so deep it reaches to 
 infinity; they are twice as big as ordinary stars, 
 they look like silver balls. The sky is a deep, 
 dark blue. The whole valley is blue in the night 
 and luminous like a sapphire. The going-down 
 of the sun is a pageant; its uprising is a triumph. 
 You feel as though you ought to clash cymbals, 
 you feel as though you ought to dance and sing 
 when the sun looks over the mountains. You 
 have been remiss in worship all your life be- 
 
 [123] 
 
White Heart of Mojave 
 
 cause you have not learned to dance and sing in 
 honor of the rising sun. The sun-god was wor- 
 shiped on the desert for there the sun is a cruel, 
 great god. His glory consumes the earth, but 
 he is so absorbed in rejoicing in his glory that 
 he does not know it. 
 
 One night we camped a little way up the 
 canyon behind the ranch in the vain hope of 
 finding a cooler spot. The canyon entered the 
 mountain beside a precipitous, jagged cliff made 
 of crumbling yellow rock, so steep that we could 
 scarcely climb its sides. We attempted it late 
 in the afternoon in the hope of getting a view of 
 the whole valley at sunset, but its knife-edge 
 ridges were so sharp and crumbling and our en- 
 durance so slight after the burning day that we 
 could not reach a satisfactory summit. Being 
 shut up in a canyon was no part of our plan and 
 we made the Worrier help us lug our beds quite 
 a way from camp to the top of a little hill over- 
 looking at least part of the valley. 
 
 "Why don't you take them to the top of that 
 there peak?" he inquired sarcastically, pointing 
 at one of the steel-blue crests of the Funeral 
 
 [124] 
 
Strangest Farm in the World 
 
 Range. We could not help it if he scoffed, we 
 had to see the drama of the coming of night. 
 Panting from these exertions added to our fruit- 
 less effort to climb the cliff, we brought up a 
 canteen and the few things we needed and bade 
 him go back and sleep happily under the wagon. 
 We ourselves had very little sleep on the hill-^ 
 top for the drama was too stupendous. Slowly 
 the mountains turned blue, and then bluer. 
 Their beautiful skyline was drawn with a pencil 
 that left a golden, luminous mark. Pale blue 
 crept into the valley, indigo lay in pools among 
 the foothills. The whole night was a succession 
 of studies in blue like the blue nights some 
 artists paint, but every shade of blue that an 
 artist could mix on his palette was there. Lay- 
 ers of different blues lay one above another, and 
 changed, and mingled. The enormous stars 
 came out and hung in the sky like great lamps. 
 The sapphire valley glistened beneath them. 
 The lamps swung slowly toward the west and 
 then were gradually extinguished. The sapphire 
 turned into a moonstone, palely glimmering, and 
 then into an opal full of flashing fires. The 
 
 [I2S] - 
 
White Heart of Mojave 
 
 cruel, great god was coming. He came, and 
 we were two tongue-tied fools longing to cele- 
 brate him and only standing mute and bewil- 
 dered. 
 
 We always felt that longing and that bewil- 
 derment during the evenings and nights and 
 mornings in the White Heart. They over- 
 whelmed us and hurt us. We were like prison- 
 ers shut in by the walls of ourselves, unable to 
 break through and be one with such beauty. We 
 could not rest in it as we had rested for long 
 minutes by the red promontory where we first 
 saw the valley; there was too much beauty. We 
 clutched at each changing, evanescent moment, 
 spectators watching through tiny loopholes in 
 the walls a pageant which passed too quickly 
 and was too big for our understanding. 
 
 The White Heart exceeds the imagination 
 every way. It is too terrible and too splendid. 
 It asserts itself tremendously; the green patch 
 of the ranch lying on the baked sand beside the 
 shining swamp seems more ephemeral and un- 
 important than any of man's efforts to tame the 
 desert; it is an unreality, a dream, and the dwell- 
 
 [126] 
 
Strangest Farm in the World 
 
 ers on it are shadows in a dream. The majesty 
 of the valley completely overshadows the row of 
 tall palms against the background of the snowy 
 Panamints, and the little oasis of alfalfa-fields, 
 willow-trees, and white ranch-buildings blessed 
 with shade. They might vanish like a mirage 
 and never be missed. The magnificent proces- 
 sion of the nights and days passes over the white 
 terror, more magnificent than other nights and 
 days precisely because of the glowing of that 
 terrible sand and those terrible mountains, per- 
 fect for its own sake, and utterly indifferent 
 whether or not eyes and hearts can endure it. 
 
 [127] 
 
VII 
 
 The Burning Sands 
 
 EVERY day that we stayed in Death Val- 
 ley seemed more awful than the last. 
 From ten o'clock in the morning until 
 four in the afternoon we existed in a blind tor- 
 por. Eyes and brain and pumping heart could 
 not bear it. At noon we always planned to leave 
 immediately, we panted to escape; then the en- 
 chantment would begin and we would forget 
 all the plans. Soon, however, it became evident 
 that we must get up into the coolness of the 
 mountains on one side or the other of the burn- 
 ing basin, for there was no such thing as becom- 
 ing acclimated. In the stupor in which we lived 
 the plans we made were extremely incoherent. 
 We only knew that the mantle of snow on the 
 peaks of the Panamints, so serene above the quiv- 
 ering heat of the valley, was the most desirable 
 
 [128] 
 
The Burning Sands 
 
 thing on earth. To reach it with the wagon we 
 had to circle the northern end of the morass, 
 cross the low ridge into the Mesquite Valley and 
 go up the great mesa leading to Emigrant Pass 
 behind the mountains. There we would bury 
 ourselves in the cold, wet snow, and rub it on our 
 faces and fling it about, strong again and able to 
 laugh at midday. The Worrier pooh-poohed 
 this plan when it finally emerged, for snow has 
 no allurement for a ''desert rat." He suggested 
 that we go on up the canyon in which we were 
 camped and thus quickly escape, but we refused 
 to consider that. We had come for the purpose 
 of knowing the feel of the valley and we must 
 travel over the burning sands. 
 
 The Worrier was amenable; he always was, 
 but he liked to be persuaded. We went back to 
 Furnace Creek Ranch from the camp in the 
 canyon and stocked ourselves with hay and 
 drinking-water, as we would find no more good 
 water until we reached Emigrant Springs some 
 fifty miles away. The journey over that difficult 
 country would take the better part of four days. 
 Two of the camps would be by so-called "bad 
 
 [129] 
 
White Heart of Mojave 
 
 water," which, however, animals can drink — the 
 first at Cow Creek not far from the ranch, and 
 the second at Salt Creek in the southern end of 
 Mesquite Valley. The third would be a "dry 
 camp,"' somewhere on the big mesa we had seen 
 from the Keane Wonder Mine. 
 
 Leaving the ranch rather late on the same day 
 we passed the old borax-works again, wound 
 round the white and sulphur-colored hill 
 through the spongy, borax-encrusted ground 
 and along the edge of the sandy mesa where it 
 begins to rise from the level bottom of the 
 valley. Cow Creek is a little green spot at the 
 base of the Funeral Mountains about two miles 
 from the road. Though it is near the ranch we 
 stopped there in order to break the long pull 
 from Furnace Creek to Salt Creek. In Death 
 Valley every blazing mile is to be reckoned with 
 and it is worth while to shorten a day's journey 
 from twenty miles to sixteen. No track led to 
 Cow Creek from the road, and the mesa, which 
 looked quite level, turned out to be as steep as 
 usual. It was broken by little washes and thinly 
 covered with brush. Bumping over it under the 
 
 [130] 
 
.?mM&.^immmMt. m 
 
 \ 
 
The Burning Sands 
 
 hot sun we felt again as though we were in the 
 midst of an interminable monotony. The moun- 
 tain seemed unattainable. Charlotte and I, 
 suffering from the usual lassitude and complete 
 lack of ambition, wanted to stop and camp on 
 the sand beside a large mesquite, the only thing 
 anywhere that cast a big enough shadow to sit 
 down in, and we had a sharp argument with the 
 Worrier. 
 
 "You can't do that," he said. "It don't matter 
 so much to-day, the water ain't far, but to- 
 morrow you got to go on and you better do it 
 now. When we start you've got to get there, or 
 we don't start." 
 
 That was unanswerable and we dragged our- 
 selves on until we reached a large rock near the 
 spring with a square of blue darkness beside it. 
 He was satisfied with our endeavor and let us 
 make camp there while he took the horses to 
 the spring. Cow Creek is chiefly memorable 
 for another argument, a long, warm debate as 
 to whether or not Molly and Bill could haul the 
 outfit up the four-thousand-foot rise to Emigrant 
 Springs. Charlotte maintained that they could 
 
 [131] 
 
White Heart of Mojave 
 
 not. She based her argument entirely on the 
 appearance of Molly and Bill and she had a 
 good one; but I, inspired by the band of snow 
 on the tops of the Panamints and the mountain- 
 climber's zeal, met it with spirit. I said that 
 Molly and Bill could do it because they were 
 "desert-proof Indian horses." The Worrier lay 
 at full length on the sand, apparently lost to the 
 world. I demanded what he thought about it. 
 He replied sleepily that you ''never can tell 'til 
 you try." All the time we were in the valley 
 we argued, and it is to the credit of all three of 
 us that the arguments never degenerated into 
 quarrels. Our nerves were very near the sur- 
 face. Everything was difficult to do, packing 
 and unpacking, cooking, shaking the sand out 
 of the blankets, hitching-up, getting anywhere, 
 gathering brush for our poor little fires. We all 
 did the minimum of work, and the desert de- 
 mands very little of the camper-out, but under 
 the weight that seemed to be always pressing 
 down on us that little was hard even for the 
 Worrier. 
 
 Next morning we arose with the dawn and 
 [132] 
 
The Burning Sands 
 
 hastened to get underway during the cool hours. 
 The road layover miles and miles of sand, dotted 
 in some places with sad-looking brush and 
 streaked sometimes with the white borax deposit. 
 As always, the morning was radiant. The valley 
 was beautiful, wrapped in its lonely silence, and 
 for the first few hours Charlotte and I forgot 
 our discomforts in the circle of high mountains, 
 blue and red in the sunshine, and the clean sweep 
 of the sand ; but by noon we could not see any- 
 thing and had to ride ignominiously in the wagon 
 with our eyes on the very tiny oblong shadow 
 that traveled beside it. Charlotte had dark 
 glasses, but she seemed to suffer as much as I, 
 who lived again through the nightmare of my 
 childhood's dream. A hot haze lay over all 
 the distances, though the air was clear, and the 
 nearby little stones and bushes blazed. The 
 wagon crawled on, the sand falling in bright 
 showers from the slowly turning wheels, until 
 Molly and Bill stopped. We shook the reins 
 with what energy we had left, and the Worrier 
 came up and shouted and threw stones, but they 
 only looked around at us pathetically. 
 
 [133] 
 
White Heart of Mojave 
 
 "We might as well eat lunch here and let 'em 
 rest," he said. 
 
 There was no shade except the bit beside the 
 wagon. We sat in that and leaned against the 
 wheels. They would not move for Molly and 
 Bill hung down their heads and the sweat 
 streamed off them. The sand glittered with 
 little particles of mica, which added to the 
 glaring brightness. Toward the south the illu- 
 sion of water appeared once more, not blue but 
 a glassy gray with several strange-looking shrubs 
 reflected in it upside down. There was nothing 
 between us and the ranch to look so large, un- 
 less it were magnified like the stunted little 
 bushes in the mirage at Silver Lake. The Wor- 
 rier decided that these appearances could only 
 be the palm trees, though they did not look in 
 the least like palm trees nor could we see a sign 
 of the green patch of the ranch. It is curious 
 that we never saw Furnace Creek Ranch from 
 any of the places where we had views of the 
 valley, either before we had been there or after- 
 wards, or while we were approaching or leaving 
 it. It sprang from the earth by magic for our 
 
 [134] 
 
The Burning Sands 
 
 bewilderment and vanished the instant we went 
 away. 
 
 That lunch-place was in the middle of Death 
 Valley at the northern edge of the morass. Ever 
 since coming down from the Keane Wonder 
 Mine we had been below sea-level. Tradition 
 has it that the lowest part of the valley is south 
 of the Ranch, near the old Eagle Borax Works, 
 but the bench-marks of the government's survey 
 indicate that the part opposite the white and 
 sulphur-colored hill by the borax-works which 
 we had passed is the lowest. Two iron posts 
 driven into the ground along the road had read 
 respectively 253 and 257 feet below sea-level. 
 The lowest point, 280 feet, was in the morass at 
 our end of the valley not very far away. Whether 
 being below sea-level has an effect or not we all 
 suffered that day. The Worrier guessed the tem- 
 perature at about 105 degrees, but said that it 
 felt like 120 degrees at Silver Lake. The sun 
 seemed to stand still in a hard sky. The heat 
 rose solidly from the endless white sand, the 
 vast glistening swamp and the metallic-look- 
 ing mountains. We were in the midst of an 
 
 [135] 
 
White Heart of Mojave 
 
 immense movelessness, in a silence never to be 
 broken. 
 
 After an hour's halt we started on again, 
 Charlotte and I in the wagon, though we could 
 hardly bear to be dragged through the heavy 
 sand by that unhappy horse and mule. Even in 
 the wagon our heads swam, the ground would 
 not stay still under us, the sun seemed to drink 
 every bit of moisture from our bodies so we 
 burned in the heat instead of perspiring. The 
 skin of our faces and hands felt dried up and as 
 though it might chip off. We were blind and 
 parched with thirst. The water in the canteens 
 was hot and did not help us much. Molly and 
 Bill kept trying to stop, and little stones the 
 Worrier threw as he walked behind whizzed 
 past our heads and thudded on their tired flanks. 
 We had to fight the hope that they would stop 
 for good and let us creep under the wagon and 
 shut our eyes; but we never suggested doing it. 
 "When you start you got to get there." 
 
 The Worrier himself suggested stopping two 
 hours after lunch in the shade of a little grove 
 of mesquites, though they were not much good 
 
 [136] 
 
The Burning Sands 
 
 as shade-trees. They were about ten feet high, 
 each one with a little hummock of sand blown 
 around its roots, and branches armed with long 
 sharp thorns spreading close to the sand. We 
 could not get under them, but for some reason 
 they were more comforting than sitting beside 
 the wagon. 
 
 ''We'll stay until the sun gets above Tucki 
 Mountain," he said. "We're getting alone fine, 
 if Molly and Bill don't lay down." 
 
 "Suppose they should lie down?" 
 
 "You'd stay by the wagon and I'd go back for 
 help." He spoke cheerfully as though the idea 
 of walking back over the burning sands was 
 perfectly commonplace. 
 
 "I suppose you could walk out of the valley 
 from anywhere?" 
 
 "Sure. Got to. I walked thirty miles once 
 without no water. Blazing hot as this and not 
 a bush big enough to get more than my head 
 under. I laid down by a greasewood most all 
 day. But I made it." 
 
 Walking through the valley at that season was 
 nothing to an old-timer. They often cross it 
 
 [137] 
 
White Heart of Mojave 
 
 in June, July and August. Death is lurking 
 behind the bushes then, waiting for them. Along 
 the way from Furnace Creek we had passed two 
 of the sun-bleached boards set upright in the 
 sand which mark graves on the desert. 
 
 As the day cooled we wandered a little way 
 from the road among the mesquite and suddenly 
 came upon another one. Near it lay the skele- 
 tons of two burros tied to a bush and a little fur- 
 ther ofif a coffee pot beside the stones that had 
 been a fireplace. Someone had written with a 
 pencil on the board : "John Lemoign, Died Aug. 
 1919." 
 
 The Worrier had known John Lemoign. He 
 described him as a regular old-timer who owned 
 a mine somewhere in Tucki Mountain. Our 
 friend seemed sorry, but his final comment was: 
 
 "He ought to have known better. But they 
 never learn. They always think they will make 
 it this time." 
 
 Everywhere that attitude toward accidents on 
 the desert was typical. "Old Johnnie" told his 
 most gruesome tales as though the victims were 
 to blame. The valley was an enemy to be out- 
 
 [•38] 
 
The Burning Sands 
 
 generaled; if you were a fool, of course she 
 would get you. It was a pity when she did, in- 
 evitable and not very important. They were 
 not callous, for they included themselves in the 
 "inevitable and not very important." When we 
 had first talked to them they seemed to us sin- 
 gularly care-free and their faith in their own 
 sagacity and prowess pathetically blind, but we 
 found that we shared somewhat in their attitude 
 as we crossed the burning sands. We felt able 
 to take care of ourselves — could there be a more 
 pathetic and blind faith? — and if by some re- 
 mote mischance we should not be able, it would 
 be only another painful but trifling accident. 
 The sun-bleached boards made us sorry, but 
 they did not seem especially tragic. 
 
 The point of view is born of the desert her- 
 self. When you are there, face to face with the 
 earth and the stars and time day after day, you 
 cannot help feeling that your role, however gal- 
 lant and precious, is a very small one. This con- 
 viction, instead of driving you to despair as it 
 usually does when you have it inside the walls 
 of houses, releases you very unexpectedly from 
 
 [139] 
 
White Heart of Mojave 
 
 all manner of anxieties. You are frightfully 
 glad to have a role at all in so vast and splendid 
 a drama and want to defend it as well as you 
 can, but you do not trouble much over the out- 
 come because the desert mixes up your ideas 
 about what you call living and dying. You see 
 the dreadful, dead country living in beauty, and 
 feel that the silence pressing around it is alive. 
 The Worrier said one night: 
 
 "My, ain't it awful 1 Them stars and every- 
 thing. Makes you feel kind of small." 
 
 "Do you like to look at them?" 
 
 "Yes, I do." 
 
 "Why do you?" 
 
 "I dunno." 
 
 [140] 
 
VIII 
 The Dry Camp 
 
 WHEN the sun stood over Tucki and the 
 mesquites began to have real shadows 
 beside them we resumed our journey. 
 The little ridge which separates Death Valley 
 from Salt Creek had looked very insignificant 
 from the Keane Wonder Mine, but we climbed 
 for more than an hour to cross it. It was en- 
 tirely bare and covered with small flat stones of 
 pale colors, lavender, light-blue, gray and bufiP, 
 pressed down into a hard mosaic. Instead of 
 being polished smooth the delicately-colored 
 little stones were marked with intricate pat- 
 terns which looked like the impressions of 
 leaves and sections of plants, as though a van- 
 ished vegetation had left its record upon them. 
 We were not scientific enough to know whether 
 they were really fossils or whether the mark- 
 
 [141] 
 
White Heart of Mojave 
 
 ings were due to the action of water or some 
 other cause. So lovely were they that in spite 
 of the heat which still beat up from the bright 
 ground Charlotte and I walked behind the 
 wagon in order to examine them. There, on 
 that hard ridge, where not even one sickly sage- 
 brush grew, we saw the fronds of ferns and the 
 stems and cups of flowers finely etched. 
 
 From the top of the ridge the dim wagon- 
 track which we had been following pitched 
 down an almost impossible hill to Salt Creek, a 
 marsh formed by a stream that keeps itself 
 mostly underground. Coarse grass grew in it, 
 looking very green in the surrounding waste, 
 alternating with streaks of white alkali. The 
 marsh winds down from the Mesquite Valley 
 and cuts through the ridge into Death Valley. 
 The surrounding country is utterly barren. A 
 little way off up the bog we could see the be- 
 ginning of the sand-dunes which "Old Johnnie" 
 had pointed out, opposite us rose the immense 
 mesa leading up past Tucki Mountain to Emi- 
 grant Pass through the Panamints, at the left 
 just beyond the swamp stood the harsh, red mass 
 
 [142] 
 
The Dry Camp 
 
 of Tucki, first a smooth-looking bare slope, then 
 towering buttresses and crags of rock. Our side 
 of Salt Creek was a jumble of little stony hills. 
 Save for the grass and a few dead-looking mes- 
 quites in the swamp we could not see a growing 
 thing in the whole waste. 
 
 You have to dig a well to get the water from 
 Salt Creek. Several shallow holes had been 
 dug where the road began to cross the marsh, 
 and, as one was clean enough for our use, the 
 Worrier was spared the exertion of making an- 
 other. Stove Pipe Wells, near which the ring 
 of wagons is said to be buried, is a little further 
 up Salt Creek where some prospector once drove 
 down a length of Stove Pipe to preserve his 
 wat§r-hole. All the water in Salt Creek is bit- 
 ter and salty, intolerable to drink. We had 
 thought that we might at least use it for cooking, 
 but one taste killed that hope. We feared we 
 could not eat potatoes boiled in it, and knew that 
 tea would be impossible, so once more we drew 
 upon the fifteen gallons which we had brought 
 from Furnace Creek Ranch. 
 
 Poor Molly and Bill had no choice in the 
 
 [■43] 
 
White Heart of Mojave 
 
 matter. They had to drink the loathsome stuff 
 which the Worrier drew up for them from the 
 uninviting hole. However, they seemed much 
 pleased with the coarse, green grass, the first 
 forage they had had since leaving Daylight 
 Springs. Henceforth they would have to get 
 their own living with occasional small feeds of 
 grain, as we could not carry enough hay to last 
 for more than another two days. By that time 
 we should be well up in the mountains; still, 
 remembering Beatty and the thin pickings at 
 Daylight Springs, and looking out now over the 
 discouraging bareness, their prospects seemed 
 far from cheerful. 
 
 When we had located our camp as far as 
 possible from the tin cans and ancient rubbish 
 of other camps, the Worrier took his shot gun 
 from under the wagon seat and went off to hunt 
 ducks. Ducks! How could the desolation of 
 Salt Creek, after that journey over the burning 
 sands, yield ducks? At every green place 
 like Furnace Creek Ranch and Saratoga 
 Springs, we saw birds. They flashed in the 
 sun and their twitterings broke the silence. 
 
 [144] 
 
The Dry Camp 
 
 While we unloaded the wagon that evening we 
 saw small yellow birds like wild canaries light 
 on the mesquites in the swamp, and many tiny 
 blue birds; but it was hard to believe in wild 
 ducks, even harder there than it had been at the 
 ranch where the old Indian snooped around with 
 his gun. 
 
 The Worrier's assurance was so surprising 
 that we put ofif getting dinner and dragged our- 
 selves to the top of one of the stony hills over- 
 looking the winding of Salt Creek toward Death 
 Valley to watch him. From that viewpoint the 
 swamp coiled between high, perpendicular, sul- 
 phur-colored bluffs like a poisonous snake glis- 
 tening with green and white spots. One small 
 blue pool far off was its eye. The Worrier was 
 working his way toward that from grass-tussock 
 to grass-tussock. Presently he reached it and 
 vanished in a bunch of rushes at its edge. 
 
 W^hile we sat and waited the enchantment of 
 sunset began. The sky became orange and 
 green, the terrible valley that we loved and 
 hated began to put on its sapphire robe, the sul- 
 phurous walls that prisoned the snake turned 
 
White Heart of Mojave 
 
 pink, the poisonous blue eye, too blue, too bright, 
 softened — the enchanter almost had us by the 
 throats again, ready to choke us until tears came 
 in our eyes, when two shots spilt the spelL TVe 
 sprang up, startled; we had forgotten that at man 
 was hunting ducks in a swamp. A scramble 
 then, back to the fireplace, a hasty match, the 
 red fire kindled and leaping up, the smoke- 
 blacked pot balanced on the iron bar stolen from 
 "Old Johnnie," the soft clash of tin dishes, and 
 soon a proud hunter coming home through the 
 sapphire night. 
 
 Early next morning we were underway, 
 floundering across the swamp. The Worrier' 
 fulfilled his function by doing a little worrying' 
 there, for he remarked afterwards that he might 
 have lost Molly and Bill. Salt Creek marsh is 
 a little sample of the giant bog that makes the 
 bottom of Death Valley fearful. The road 
 usually traveled to Emigrant Pass leads along 
 the edge of the marsh and through the sand- 
 dunes before it begins to ascend the big mesa, 
 but "Old Johnnie" had instructed us to avoid 
 the heavy sand by keeping to the base of Tucki 
 
 [146] 
 
The Dry Camp 
 
 Mountain. There was a sort of track in some 
 places, but mostly we ground among rocks and 
 made detours to avoid gullies too deep to cross. 
 The base of the mountain had looked smooth, 
 instead it was cut by wide, deep washes full 
 rolled-down boulders. For nine miles we 
 skirted Tucki before we began the ascent of the 
 mesa itself. Not till then did we pass a bench- 
 mark indicating that at last we were as high as 
 sea-level. Except that the road around the 
 mountain was rocky instead of sandy there was 
 very little difference between the morning's 
 journey and the one across Death Valley. The 
 light and heat were intense and we suffered from 
 the same feeling of depression. Even when we 
 began to ascend the mesa we were hardly con- 
 scious of any relief. Though we climbed two 
 thousand feet that day we were still on the burn- 
 ing sands under the pitiless sun. Everything 
 burned, rocks were hot to the touch, the endless 
 stony ground was a hot floor. Tucki Mountain 
 showed a dull red as though it smoldered, and 
 the hot blaze on the mountains beyond the great 
 mesa was smoke rising out of furnaces. 
 
 [147] 
 
White Heart of Mojave 
 
 After passing the bench-mark we were in the 
 midst of an immense space far away from any 
 mountains, toiling for miles up a stony barren- 
 ness where only scattered sagebrush grew. The 
 road was so washed out that often no trace of it 
 showed and the Worrier steered by intuition. 
 The wagon groaned and swayed, and Molly and 
 Bill stumbled and sweated. In the roughest 
 places we led them. We all walked most of the 
 day to lighten their load. A long spur of Tucki 
 Mountain reached up the mesa several miles to 
 the left, ending in a red promontory which we 
 must go around, and that point became our goal. 
 We toiled and toiled, but it was never any nearer. 
 A quarter of an hour, a day, a year of putting 
 one foot heavily in front of the other, and we 
 would look up expecting some reward for so 
 much labor, and the red promontory would be 
 exactly where it was before. 
 
 In the afternoon we saw a cloud of dust mov- 
 ing. We hoped it might be wind coming to cool 
 us, but it turned out to be a cattle outfit cutting 
 across the mesa to our road. The dust cloud 
 looked near, yet it was fully two hours before we- 
 
 [.48] 
 
The Dry Camp 
 
 met the cattlemen. The sight of the big herd 
 of cattle on the desert was stranger than the 
 yellow and blue birds or the fabulous wild ducks 
 had been. They were being driven over this 
 awful country to a spring feeding-ground in 
 Wild Rose Canyon, and they were white with 
 dust, limping on sore, cut feet. Two men and 
 a boy in big hats and with pistols at their belts 
 rode small shaggy horses, galloping through the 
 brush and shouting when the tired cattle tried 
 to stop or scatter at meeting us. Wild Rose 
 Canyon was cold at this season, the men said, 
 and there was plenty of fine water in it. "A 
 river runs down the middle," the boy volun- 
 teered. We looked out over the shimmering 
 mesa stretching hopelessly in all directions. A 
 canyon called Wild Rose where a river flowed 
 between the mountains I 
 
 We inquired further into the fairy tale. The 
 Canyon was about forty miles away by the route 
 which we would have to take with the wagon. 
 It led up into the high Panamints. There was 
 a spring by some old charcoal-kilns right under 
 Mt. Baldy. The cattlemen knew nothing of 
 
 [149] 
 
White Heart of Mojave 
 
 Telescope Peak. They had never heard of any 
 one climbing the mountains. They supposed it 
 was easy enough when the snow was gone. No 
 doubt prospectors had been up, but there was 
 nothing there, it was no good. We saw them 
 eying the Worrier curiously, evidently wonder- 
 ing what manner of creatures he had managed 
 to pick up. 
 
 After a mile or two they left us, turning oflf 
 by an ancient signboard pointing vaguely toward 
 the long, red spur of Tucki Mountain with the 
 legend: "Water Eight Miles," and in the oppo- 
 site direction across the trackless, torn-up waste: 
 "Water Fifteen Miles." What are eight miles 
 or fifteen miles to the modern man accustomed 
 to leap over distance? To the primitive trav- 
 eler with horses and mules, and until now all 
 travelers throughout the ages have been thus 
 primitive, a mile is a formidable reality. Mo- 
 jave teaches the truth about it. At the end of 
 those two days, that "Water Eight Miles" was 
 as inaccessible to us as though it had been fifty. 
 Even if we had been full of vigor we probably 
 could not have reached it with the wagon over 
 
 [150] 
 
The Dry Camp 
 
 that rough ground. The cattlemen, however, 
 on their tough little horses, went to it. We did 
 not attempt to leave the two dim streaks that 
 occasionally marked our road, but at dusk 
 stopped and made camp beside them. 
 
 That was our first genuine dry camp, though 
 it was the third time we had depended on the 
 water carried from Furnace Creek. Water is 
 the commonest of all commodities, so common 
 that we fail to realize its meaning until we are 
 without it. All the camps thus far had been 
 resting-places, homes. We had come to feel 
 that any spot where we built our fire could be 
 home, for the essentials of home are very sim- 
 ple; a little water, something to eat, a bit of fire, 
 and good friends. In the mess at Keane Won- 
 der, in the forbidding inhospitality of Salt 
 Creek, we had had them all and been at home; 
 but that night, when the Worrier began to un- 
 load the wagon in the stark middle of the soli- 
 tary waste, we were not at home. Nor could 
 we make it home, however brightly we urged 
 up the fire or cheerfully we talked. One of the 
 essentials was missing and the gasoline cans 
 
 [151] 
 
White Heart of Mojave 
 
 could not take its place. No water, not even 
 bad water, not a drop! That mesa was not a 
 human resting-place; we were aliens in it, tran- 
 sients, one-night-standers. The Worrier laughed 
 at our restless forlornness. On subsequent trav- 
 els we have learned to make dry camps almost 
 as nonchalantly as he does, but they are never 
 home. 
 
 In the hot miles between Furnace Creek 
 Ranch and the mountain-spring we learned the 
 meaning for our little lives of the commonest 
 of commodities. We had never been so thirsty, 
 no amount of water could satisfy us, and the 
 supply was limited. We had enough for all 
 our needs, yet we never could forget that there 
 was an end to it. When the jolting of the wagon 
 slopped some out around one of the corks we 
 could have wept. Using any for cooking or 
 washing dishes, and pouring out ten gallons for 
 Molly and Bill at the dry camp seemed terrible. 
 Until then we had thoughtlessly turned on a 
 faucet, or drawn a bucket from a well, or dipped 
 water out of a stream. Now there was no 
 water. The miles were not only hot, they were 
 
 [■52] 
 
The Dry Camp 
 
 dry miles. The diminishing supply of warm, 
 unattractive liquid in the dented gasoline-cans 
 was our most precious possession. We would 
 have parted with everything we had, rather than 
 lose it. 
 
 From the camping place the red promontory 
 looked as far away as it had been at noon ; we 
 seemed to have made no impression on our goal. 
 Below us the Mesquite Valley spread out, im- 
 mense and still, with the green thread of Salt 
 Creek crossing it. On the far side rose the 
 Grapevine Range, of which Corkscrew Moun- 
 tain is the southern end. The evening air was 
 so clear that we could see the spiral clifif and 
 the opening of the canyon that leads to Daylight 
 Pass. It looked very near, yet how many days'- 
 journeys we had come from there! Heat and 
 thirst and weariness lay between. The grim- 
 ness of Death Valley, cool now in the shadow 
 of the Panamints, was hidden by the buttresses 
 of Tucki. The long line of sultry red rock that 
 had smoldered and smoked all day slowly 
 turned blue in the twilight. It seemed as though 
 you might saunter over there and lay your hands 
 
 [153] 
 
White Heart of Mojave 
 
 upon it, yet the signboard pointing to the water 
 at its base had read eight miles. We had long 
 lost sight of the cattlemen. Suddenly, in the 
 dusky blueness under the mountain, their camp 
 fire bloomed like a crimson cactus flower. 
 
 Evening smoothed the whole mesa into a blue 
 and yellow floor rounding gently the mountains. 
 It was impossible to believe that it was every- 
 where cut into hills and canyons by washes fif- 
 teen or twenty feet deep as it was around our 
 camp. In the bottoms of the declivities large 
 greasewoods and cacti grew, and occasional 
 tufts of dried grass; but the wind-swept ridges 
 were bare and every particle of sand was blown 
 away from among the stones. On one of the 
 beaten-down mosaics near our camp something 
 gleamed dimly. We went to it and found 
 large white stones laid in the form of a cross 
 pointing toward the east. Another traveler, 
 then, had stopped here. Perhaps he had looked 
 at the red promontory and the spiral clifif and 
 lost hope; perhaps he had prayed for water; 
 or perhaps he had made it as a thank-ofifering 
 for the blessed coming of cool night. 
 
 [■54] 
 
IX 
 
 The Mountain Spring 
 
 THE next day's climb was easier, for by 
 the time the sun had asserted its full 
 vigor we were at an altitude where the 
 air was cool, tinglingly crisp, and so clear that 
 it seemed not to exist at all. The earth sparkled 
 with laughter and shouted her joy in the glory 
 of light. 
 
 For several hours the red promontory contin- 
 ued to recede, then suddenly we were rounding 
 it, and soon afterwards entered a gorge whose 
 sides steadily became higher and higher. The 
 bottom of the gorge was a wide, sandy wash 
 much cut up by rains, full of boulders and 
 grown over with brush. The vegetation be- 
 came ever greener and more luxuriant. The 
 wash looked like a wind-tossed green river be- 
 tween crumbly, precipitous mountains of many 
 colors. Some were a dull red, some sage-green, 
 
White Heart of Mojave 
 
 some buff, some dark yellow, while an occa- 
 sional purple crag gave the canyon a savage ap- 
 pearance. These mountains had the velvet tex- 
 ture which we had seen at Saratoga Springs, 
 especially the sage-green ones. The colors were 
 not an atmospheric illusion for the mountains 
 were actually made of different colored rock. 
 We investigated them with great interest. 
 Though the velvet-textured hills had often been 
 all around us, they were always too far away or 
 the sun was too fiercely hot for us to get near 
 enough to touch them. Now we walked along 
 the edge of the wash picking up the colored 
 rocks while the Worrier led Molly and Bill up 
 the middle. It was so steep that he often had 
 to rest them. 
 
 About three o'clock we came unexpectedly 
 upon a little spring. It was in a green cleft be- 
 tween a red and a yellow hill where the water 
 trickled over the rock into a charming basin. 
 Eagerly we dipped in our cups. It was true! 
 Here at last was a real mountain spring, very 
 cold, tasteless, a miraculous gift from Heaven. 
 We drank and drank. The Worrier unhitched 
 
 [ti6] 
 
The Mountain Spring 
 
 Molly and Bill and they broke away from him 
 to rush at the water. They did not stop drink- 
 ing until the last drop was gone. 
 
 This bit of Paradise was a complete surprise. 
 The map did not show the little spring, nor 
 did the Worrier know of its existence. It was 
 so tiny that doubtless it is often dry. Emigrant 
 Springs itself, with a much more plentiful flow 
 of water, was about a mile further on. There 
 the canyon narrowed with steep, high sides 
 broken into some beautifully shaped summits. 
 The spring is only a few miles from a big aban- 
 doned mining camp called Skidoo and used to 
 be an important one for desert travelers. Some- 
 one once built a shack, and nearby was a cave 
 with a fireplace inside, also a corral, part of 
 whose fence had since been used for firewood. 
 Like all desert watering places the surround- 
 ings were littered with tin cans, old shoes and 
 rusty iron. We know now what becomes of all 
 the old shoes in the world; they are spirited 
 away to the desert. An ancient government 
 pamphlet that we had found blowing about in 
 one of the shacks at Keane Wonder and care- 
 
 [iS7] 
 
White Heart of Mojave 
 
 fully preserved describes very scientifically how 
 to locate water, then throws science to the winds 
 and says that the tin can is the best of all meth- 
 ods. When you find a pile of tin cans stop and 
 search. It is surprising how quickly you cease 
 to see the litter, provided it is sufficiently ancient 
 not to be actively dirty. The desert has no fore- 
 ground ; you soon stop looking much for things 
 near at hand and get the horizon-gazing habit. 
 If a flower or a shining stone is at your feet you 
 see it joyfully, but if it is a tin can it does not 
 exist. There are too many far-off, enchanting 
 things to look at. You are never unaware of the 
 sky, nor the beautiful curves of the mountains; 
 no forests nor roofs conceal them from you, and 
 your eyes pass untroubled over small uglinesses. 
 We made our camp in the shelter of an im- 
 mense rock that stood alone in the middle of the 
 wash, and settled down for a long resting space. 
 The desert was exhibiting her variety in monot- 
 ony. Between the burning sands and this moun- 
 tain coolness what a difference, and yet what an 
 essential sameness! Here is the same glittering 
 sand, the same colorful rocks, the same plants, 
 
 [158] 
 
The Mountain Spring 
 
 the same bare, crumbling hills. The sun 
 blazes with the same brightness, turning every 
 projecting edge of rock and little leaf into a spot 
 of light. The all-enveloping silence is the same. 
 The distances shine with the same illusion. 
 
 All around Emigrant Springs are mountains 
 from five to seven thousand feet high. One day- 
 was devoted to a stiff climb up to the abandoned 
 mines at Skidoo, at an elevation of about 6,000 
 feet. A trail started up from Emigrant Springs, 
 but it looked very steep, so we went a longer 
 way around intending to come down it. Part 
 of the route lay over high ridges from which we 
 saw the splendid mass of the snowy Panamints, 
 now close at hand. We passed little patches of 
 snow in the shadows of the rocks. The sky was 
 a deep blue all day and the air cold with the 
 mountain sting in it. 
 
 The town of Skidoo lay in a high valley shut 
 off from a view by the surrounding hills. They 
 were barren and made of crumbly yellow rock. 
 The long narrow basin itself was covered with 
 sagebrush like a blue carpet. The town had 
 consisted of one wide street along which several 
 
 [<S9] 
 
White Heart of Mojave 
 
 buildings were still standing. An incredible 
 number of stoves, broken chairs and cooking 
 utensils were strewn about. The most imposing 
 building had been the saloon, behind which a 
 neatly piled wall of bottles, five feet high and 
 several feet wide, testified to past good cheer. 
 The Worrier said that four thousand people 
 once had lived here. They had brought water 
 twenty-eight miles in a pipe-line from a spring 
 near Telescope Peak. During the war the pipe 
 was taken out and sold to the government, but 
 we could see the trench plainly, perfectly 
 straight, leading off toward Mt. Baldy across 
 high ridges. With the taking out of the water 
 Skidoo died. 
 
 The place was littered with paper-covered 
 books and old magazines. In one house we 
 found a pile of copies of a work entitled "Mys- 
 terious Scotty, or the Monte Cristo of Death 
 Valley." Needless to say we stole one, which 
 became a treasure to be brought out in idle hours 
 by the camp-fire. "Scotty" was a boon to the 
 Worrier who did not hold much with the sort 
 of literature that we carried around. Early in 
 
 [i6o] 
 
The Mountain Spring 
 
 the expedition he had glanced over our library 
 and preferred meditation. We had a few slim 
 volumes of verse, "Leaves of Grass," some wild 
 tales of Lord Dunsany's and a learned treatise 
 on how to paint. This last helped us to keep up 
 the fiction of artistic greatness. 
 
 From Skidoo we traversed the top of a long 
 ridge from the precipitous end of which we had 
 a superb view over Death Valley. We owed 
 this to "Old Johnnie" who had told us to go 
 there, for among the tumbled peaks of the Pana- 
 mint Range around Skidoo you could wander a 
 long time without getting a commanding view 
 of the valley. The point from which we saw 
 it that day was opposite Furnace Creek Ranch, 
 but even with the glass we could not distin- 
 guish the green patch of the ranch, nor could we 
 see the Eagle Borax Works lower down. The 
 bottom looked like a white plain with brown 
 streaks around and across it. Death Valley is 
 always different. That afternoon there was no 
 play of color, no magical mirage. From there, 
 looking straight down seven thousand feet, it 
 was ghastly, utterly unlike anything on the earth 
 
 [i6i] 
 
White Heart of Mojave 
 
 as most of us know her. It was like the valleys 
 on the dead, bright moon when you look at them 
 through a powerful telescope. 
 
 We stayed too long watching the shadow of 
 the Panamints, as sharp and stark as a shadow 
 on the moon, encroach on the white floor. Twi- 
 light had begun by the time we reached Skidoo 
 again to hunt the trail down to Emigrant 
 Springs. We tramped around the rough hills 
 searching for it until darkness made it impos- 
 sible to distinguish it even if we had found it. 
 There below lay our camp. Could we have 
 gone down a ridge or a canyon to it we would 
 have defied the trail, but it was necessary to go 
 crosswise over several of the ridges that but- 
 tress the mountain, and up and down their steep 
 dividing canyons. Even the Worrier hesitated 
 to attempt this in the dark. Getting lost is one 
 of the easiest things you can do in desert moun- 
 tains for they are very broken, flung down seem- 
 ingly without plan, cut by deep, often precipi- 
 tous gorges. The same old, tattered pamphlet 
 that gives advice about tin cans also advises about 
 getting lost. It says that persons not blessed 
 
 [162] 
 
The Mountain Spring 
 
 with a good sense of locality had better find 
 some other place than the desert for the "exer- 
 cise of their talents." Standing on top of a 
 mountain you think you know very well where 
 to go, but when you get into those clefts among 
 those hills that look all alike you find you do not 
 know. Any moment you may meet a barrier to 
 be climbed over with great labor or gone around 
 at the risk of getting involved in little canyons 
 leading ofif in the wrong direction. 
 
 There was nothing to do but skirt around the 
 mountain and try to get back onto the path by 
 which we had come. During the quest we had 
 our reward and were glad. Just as night was 
 closing in a shadow rose like a curtain beyond 
 the mountain-tops that shut Death Valley from 
 us. It was a blue shadow and a rose-colored 
 shadow. It was both those colors and yet they 
 were not merged to a purple. It seemed to rise 
 straight up, a live thing, as though the spirit of 
 the valley were greeting the stars. The beau- 
 tiful apparition remained less than a minute; 
 always after that we looked toward deep valleys 
 at evening hoping to see it again, but we never 
 
 ['63] 
 
White Heart of Mojave 
 
 saw it, though night made wonderful shadows 
 and blue pools of darkness in them. Death 
 Valley is a thing apart. It is a white terror 
 whose soul is a miracle of rose and blue. 
 
 About an hour later we came upon the cabin 
 of "Old Tom Adams," another old-timer guard- 
 ing his own mine and Skidoo. He came 
 out and made a great fuss about finding 
 ''ladies." He had heard of us before. He of- 
 fered to make cofifee, but a deep craving for 
 more substantial food forbade any delay. He 
 talked incessantly and would hardly let us go; 
 no doubt we were the most exciting event for 
 a long time. He described a way to get down 
 the mountain by following the tracks of his 
 burros. He swore we could not miss it, you 
 just "fell down" right into Emigrant Springs. 
 He went a little way with us to be sure we 
 started down the right ridge; after that we 
 "fell down" in about two hours and a half. It 
 was the worst, the rockiest, the steepest series 
 of hills and gullies we ever encountered. Pres- 
 ently the deceitful moon turned the bushes into 
 white ghosts and fooled us about the angle of 
 
 [.64] 
 
The Mountain Spring 
 
 ledges. From time to time we saw burro tracks 
 in the sand, but we suspect that a herd of wild 
 burros pastures around there. The Worrier's 
 opinion of "the old fool" was unmentionable, 
 nor did it soothe him to suggest that the old man 
 had tried to do his best. 
 
 Next day Old Tom appeared at Emigrant 
 Springs wanting to know if we had seen a white 
 burro and a black burro. We had that very 
 morning. 
 
 ^'They're mine," he said, "but I can't keep 
 'em home." 
 
 Hunting burros seemed to be his life work. 
 Two weeks later we heard of him twenty miles 
 away still hunting his burros. The Worrier 
 opined that he had no burros, but our guide was 
 prejudiced. 
 
 We learned to appreciate what it meant to 
 hunt burros, for though our burros were horses, 
 the Worrier spent most of the days in camp look- 
 ing for them. It was amazing how far they 
 could travel with hobbles on. They were clever 
 at hiding, too, but we were assured that they 
 were dull compared to burros. Everybody on 
 
 [165] 
 
White Heart of Mojave 
 
 the desert seems to have burros somewhere that 
 he expects to use some day. They are all de- 
 lightfully casual about them : 
 
 "Did you happen to see a bunch of burros in 
 the gulch youse come through?" 
 
 "No. Have you lost yours?" 
 
 "Yes. Gone about a week. I thought maybe 
 they was over there." 
 
 The hope seems to be that they will come back 
 for water. Generally they do, but sometimes 
 they go to some other water hole and leave you 
 to guess which one. At Silver Lake the 
 brigand called French Pete had come from 
 thirty miles ofiF looking for his burros. 
 
 "You ought to put a bell on them," our host- 
 ess had told him. 
 
 "I did, but it's no use. You can't find 'em, 
 anjrway. They're too smart." 
 
 "Do they hide?" 
 
 "Hide! The one with the bell gets behind a 
 rock and holds his neck perfectly still while the 
 others bring him foodl" 
 
 Another day at Emigrant Springs was spent 
 in climbing Pinto Peak, 7,450 feet high. We 
 
 [■66] 
 
The Mountain Spring 
 
 chose it because it was the highest point any- 
 where around, and we hoped for a good look at 
 Mt. Baldy and Telescope Peak in order to lay 
 out a route by which to climb them. Pinto 
 Peak is on the west side of Emigrant Pass, over- 
 looking the Panamint Valley and all the region 
 to the foot of Mt. Whitney in the Sierra Ne- 
 vada. The peak is not visible from the spring 
 and we had to guess at a possible way up. We 
 began by ascending a steep ridge leading in the 
 right direction, over and among several little 
 summits. The ridge brought us to a large, high 
 plateau set round with little peaks and cut at 
 the sides by deep canyons. The top of the ridge 
 and the plateau were dotted over with cedar 
 trees, for on the desert, where everything is dif- 
 ferent, you do not climb above the timber, you 
 climb up to it. Between six and seven thousand 
 feet the trees begin, and sometimes in sheltered 
 corners become twenty or thirty feet high. They 
 are not large nor numerous on Pinto, but there 
 are enough of them to give the ridge a speckled 
 appearance from below. The plateau sloped 
 gradually up toward the west and we selected 
 
 [1671 
 
White Heart of Mojave 
 
 the furthest little rounded rise as probably Pinto 
 Peak. For two miles we walked toward it over 
 comparatively level ground. From that side 
 Pinto is not especially interesting as a mountain, 
 being only a higher point in a big table-land, 
 but its western side is a precipice falling two 
 thousand feet into a terribly rocky and desolate 
 canyon. Not until we reached the extreme edge 
 of the plateau did the view open. It appeared 
 suddenly, black mass after black mass of harsh 
 mountains leading over to Mt. Whitney, serene 
 and white on the wall of the Sierras. The Sierra 
 Nevada are the barriers of the desert. Beyond 
 that glistening wall lie the lovely and fertile 
 valleys of California. Over there at that sea- 
 son the fruit trees were beginning to bloom, on 
 this side was only bareness, black rocks, and deep 
 pits of sand. 
 
 Mt. Whitney is toward the southern end of 
 the high peaks of the Sierras. That day they 
 bit into the sky like jagged white teeth. South- 
 ward the range is lower, rising again in Southern 
 California to the peaks of San Bernadino and 
 San Jacinto. We could vaguely see San Ber- 
 
 [■68] 
 
The Mountain Spring 
 
 nadino Mountain, mistily white, mixed up with 
 the clouds. Below us lay the Panamint Valley 
 under the western wall of the steep Panamints 
 which separate it from Death Valley. This 
 basin is neither so low nor so large as the famous 
 one east of it, but is of the same character. At 
 its edge, pressed against the mountain, we could 
 make out with the glass the once prosperous 
 mining town of Ballarat, the Ballarat that we 
 had so gayly started to drive to from Johannes- 
 burg. With the Worrier's help we traced the 
 route we would have come over. He pointed 
 out the red mountain on which the three min- 
 ing towns are perched, then came a line of low 
 hills, then an immense dry lake where the Trona 
 Borax Works are located, then a range of ugly- 
 looking black mountains, then a long mesa 
 which he said is almost as rough and difficult as 
 the one we had recently come over, then the 
 Panamint Valley, shimmering hot, glistening 
 white, first cousin to Death Valley itself. It 
 would have been a magnificent drive, but sup- 
 pose we had undertaken it in the sublime inno- 
 cence that was ours at the time! We had never 
 
 [.69] 
 
White Heart of Mojave 
 
 crossed a dry lake, never wrestled with a mesa, 
 never in our wildest imaginings pictured such 
 a place as the Panamint Valley, — and at the 
 end we would have found the town deserted! 
 
 ''You wouldn't have made it," the Worrier 
 teased us, "you would have turned back before 
 you got to Trona." 
 
 "We would not!" But in our hearts we 
 knew how we would have been weak from pure 
 fear of the ugly-looking black mountains. The 
 terrifying approach to Silver Lake was nothing 
 compared to them, nor would we have had a 
 friendly little Ford chugging along ahead. 
 
 As we had hoped, the top of Pinto commands 
 a fine view of Telescope Peak and Mt. Baldy 
 joined by the beautiful, long ridge which re- 
 poses so splendidly above Death Valley. From 
 this side they looked higher and snowier. We 
 studied them carefully with the glass. The 
 great mass of snow was discouraging, but it 
 seemed to be blown ofif the sharp ridges which 
 showed black. We planned to move the outfit 
 as far as possible up Wild Rose Canyon which 
 branches off from Emigrant Canyon about 
 
 [170] 
 
The Mountain Spring 
 
 twenty miles above Emigrant Springs and leads 
 up to the far, high peaks. From there we 
 thought we could climb the rounded summit of 
 Mt. Baldy and walk along the splendid curve 
 to the slender pyramid of Telescope. No lover 
 of mountains could look at those pure, smooth 
 lines as long as we had looked at them and from 
 as many aspects without being filled with the 
 desire to set his feet upon them. 
 
 It is not the height of a mountain nor its dif- 
 ficulty which makes it desirable, but something 
 in the mountain's own self. The Panamints are 
 neither very high nor very difficult, but they 
 are dramatic and alone. Besides the contrast of 
 their snow with the burning sands beneath, we 
 wanted the feel of a truly lonely mountain top. 
 The Panamints are truly lonely. They are not 
 objects of solicitude to any mountain club; no 
 tourist keen for adventure, nor boy scout outfit, 
 nor earnest-eyed mountaineer who carves the 
 record of his conquests on his pipe-bowl or his 
 walking-stick, have left their names up there. 
 No trail leads up the Panamints, nor are their 
 summits splashed over with paint like the stately, 
 
 [171] 
 
White Heart of Mojave 
 
 desecrated summit of Mt. Whitney. We would 
 not be forced to know in letters a foot high that 
 on August 27th, John Doe made the ascent. We 
 do not hate John Doe, but we prefer to meet 
 him under roofs. If he loved the mountain, 
 rather than so disfigure it, he would throw ink 
 at his most cherished possession ; and only lovers 
 of mountains have the right to invade their lone- 
 liness. The Panamints, with their feet in the 
 burning heat of Death Valley and their heads 
 in the snow, almost unknown to any save a few 
 prospectors, guarded on all sides by the solitudes 
 of the desert, seemed utterly desirable to us. 
 
 We sat on a rock studying the map, which was 
 no help at all, and eating the big, sweet, Cali- 
 fornia prunes of which we always carried pock- 
 ets-full as aids to wayfaring. The Worrier 
 acquiesced in our mountaineering project, 
 though without enthusiasm. He bade us not 
 forget that it would be cold up there. The sight 
 of the snow had already set him shivering. We 
 twitted him with being a "desert rat." 
 
 "You may have got along better than we did 
 [172] 
 
The Mountain Spring 
 
 in Death Valley," we said to him, ''but it's our 
 turn now; that's fair." 
 
 The Worrier scorned prunes and always 
 looked on with dour superiority during our con- 
 sumption of them. Soon he left us and went 
 to hunt the "lost mine." There are many 
 legends of lost mines in the desert-mountains and 
 we paid no especial attention to this one, being 
 weary enough to sit still, munching prunes, and 
 looking out over the fearful, majestic landscape. 
 In an hour he came back with a handful of rocks. 
 He laid them solemnly before us. They were 
 pieces of gold ore which he had found in a hole 
 a little way below the summit. 
 
 "The lost mine," he said. 
 
 "You had better come back and work it," we 
 laughed. 
 
 "I'll have them assayed." His manner was 
 serious. 
 
 "Why, you don't think " 
 
 "I don't know. But anyways, we'll call it the 
 Prune Stone Mine." 
 
 As a matter of fact he did have them assayed 
 and did go back with his partner; but the Prune 
 
White Heart of Mojave 
 
 Stone Mine, like so many mines in the Death 
 Valley Country, failed to fulfill its first 
 promise. 
 
 During the week that we camped at Emigrant 
 Springs we saw no wild life except a few little 
 brown birds that made a happy twittering in the 
 mornings. Sometimes in the blue night we 
 heard the distant howling of coyotes, and once 
 an owl mocked us with a cry that sounded ridicu- 
 lously like "Hoo, Hoo, Skidoo!" He was a na- 
 tive, no doubt, and old in wisdom. In the 
 rambles among the mountains we found our first 
 wild flowers. They were small except one 
 striking crimson-velvet one with a ragged blos- 
 som like garden balsam. It grew in clumps 
 about six inches high and made vivid spots of 
 color against the rocks. Later, as the spring ad- 
 vanced, we found a great variety of flowers, but 
 never this one except at high altitudes. Seeing 
 it was always a joyful heart-beat. The graceful 
 greasewood was in bloom, covered with small 
 yellow flowers that looked like little butterflies 
 perched on the slender branches. The nights 
 were still very cold, often freezing the water in 
 
 [■74] 
 
The Mountain Spring 
 
 the pail, but the days were pleasantly warm. 
 The sun shone with such dazzling brightness 
 that during the middle of the day the shady sides 
 of rocks were the best resting places. A fresh, 
 steady wind blew nearly always up or down the 
 canyon, sometimes piling great white masses of 
 clouds in the sky, always scouring the world in- 
 credibly clean. Each night was a blue won- 
 der. The mountains were delicate, luminous 
 shapes in front of a sky infinitely far away. The 
 big stars hung low and burned with a steady, 
 silver shine. 
 
 Every day we climbed one or another of the 
 ridges and smaller mountains close to the spring. 
 It was good to lie on their summits in the sun. 
 From any one of them we could look down the 
 canyon and see the whole length of the Mes- 
 quite Valley, always the same, yet, like Death 
 Valley, always different. You can look day 
 after day at the deep, hot basins of the desert 
 without ever knowing them. Quickly enough 
 you can see the obvious features of the Mesquite 
 Valley — the continuation of the Panamints on 
 the west, the wine-red Grapevine Mountains on 
 
 [175] 
 
White Heart of Mojave 
 
 the east, the low blue hills in the north, the level 
 bottom of the valley streaked with white alkali 
 where Salt Creek crosses it and ''Old Johnnie's" 
 big sand-dunes are glistening little ant hills — but 
 you must stay all the hours of a long day to find 
 out what she really is, and then you will not 
 know. Listen : 
 
 "Behold me! You think that I am an arid 
 valley with a white alkali streak down the 
 middle of my level-seeming floor. You 
 think that I am surrounded by red moun- 
 tains, or perhaps you think they are blue, 
 or purple — well, not exactly — more rose. 
 
 "Come down to me! I am very deep be- 
 tween the mountains. I am very white. 
 But if you do not like me so I can be a wide, 
 level plain covered with velvet for you to 
 lie on. 
 
 "Come down to mel Rest beside this lake. 
 See how it shines, how blue it is! I am all 
 in white like a young girl with a turquoise 
 breastpin. You don't believe that? I am a 
 witch, I can be anything. My wardrobe is 
 
 [176] 
 
The Mountain Spring 
 
 full of bright dresses. I will put them on 
 for you one by one. 
 
 "See, I know more colors of blue than you 
 ever dreamed of. When you tire of blue 
 I change to ripe plums. Now I throw gray 
 gauze over my purple. I look like a nun, 
 but am not. Here is my yellow gown. 
 You do not like it? See, I have all degrees 
 of red, fire red and crimson and pink, the 
 color of bride roses. Here is my finest. It 
 is made of every color, but the tone of 
 it is the gray breast of a dove. You did 
 not know that the breast of a dove 
 could be made of all colors, but now I show 
 you. 
 
 "Do you not love me? You remember too 
 well that I am hot as a bake-oven. You 
 think that if any one were fool enough to 
 come down to me I would steal behind and 
 grip him by the throat. 
 
 "What of it? Why do you question me 
 
 so much? You see how old I am, how 
 
 many storms have left their scars on me, 
 
 and you think I am wise. But I am only 
 
 [177] 
 
White Heart of Mojave 
 
 fair. Is it not enough to be old and yet 
 fair? 
 
 "Beauty is sitting on my topmost peak 
 making the enchantments that confirm your 
 dreams. She experiments with many ma- 
 terials; she makes new combinations for- 
 ever. 
 
 "Behold all the desolate places how they 
 are hers — the lonely hills, the lonely plains, 
 the lonely green sea, the lonely sands — she 
 clothes us in gorgeous raiment, she makes 
 us content with death. Where she is your 
 heart can pasture even to the emptiness be- 
 between the stars." 
 
 A lifetime is not long enough to listen to the 
 songs of the desolate places. A whole sunny, 
 timeless day is too short to hear the Mesquite 
 Valley. The days and nights of the desert merge 
 into each other. They are like perfectly matched 
 pearls being strung on an endless string. You 
 delight to run your fingers over their smooth 
 surfaces and detect no difference. 
 
 [178] 
 
The Mountain Spring 
 
 "Do we move to-morrow?" Thus the Wor- 
 rier. 
 
 "Why to-morrow?" 
 
 "We have been here a week." 
 
 That is not possible 1 How could a week slide 
 into past things so soon? 
 
 [179] 
 
The High White Peaks 
 
 WILD ROSE CANYON has a lovely 
 name, justified by a small clump of 
 bushes that may bear wild roses some- 
 time. The canyon, where it branches east from 
 Emigrant Pass, is very narrow with precipitous 
 sides. Emigrant Canyon itself at this point is 
 walled by high clififs so close together that the 
 wagon track fills the gorge. A considerable 
 stream, bordered with feathery trees, flows 
 through the lower end of Wild Rose Canyon 
 and down Emigrant Pass toward the Panamint 
 Valley and Ballarat, but dies before it emerges 
 from the cliff-like hills onto the long, stony 
 slope that leads into the valley. Once more we 
 had been deceived. From Pinto Peak the rocky 
 cliffs appeared to rise directly out of the Pana- 
 mint Valley, but a walk down the western 
 descent of Emigrant Pass revealed the same 
 
 [i8o] 
 
The High White Peaks 
 
 long, brush-covered slope that we had learned 
 to know so well. 
 
 The cattlemen had been there and gone away, 
 leaving the cattle in Wild Rose for their spring 
 range. The young steers huddled together, star- 
 ing with their expression of fierce innocence. 
 They had tramped the stream-bed into a bog and 
 otherwise made camping at the mouth of the 
 canyon unpleasant. A stone shack with an iron 
 roof was located near the spring. It was rather 
 a magnificent shack with two rooms, the inner 
 one windowless like a cave. For some reason 
 that seems to be the approved way of building 
 sleeping-rooms on the desert. At Keane Won- 
 der veritable black holes were the sleeping-quar- 
 ters near the boarding-house. The shack had 
 no floor and the uneven ground was littered with 
 rubbish, as indeed were all the surroundings. 
 The mess around the spring at Wild Rose both- 
 ered us more than the litter anywhere else. Per- 
 haps it was because we were shut in on all sides 
 by high walls, and there were no vistas nor even 
 any beautifully shaped summits to look at. For 
 once the desert was all foreground, little trees 
 
 [i8.] 
 
White Heart of Mojave 
 
 along the stream, little bushes, little stones. A 
 tin can in such a small environment can hardly 
 be ignored. 
 
 As soon as possible therefore, we pushed on 
 up the canyon which widened into what looked 
 like a plain surrounded by mountains. In reality 
 it was level nowhere, but rounded down like a 
 giant oval basin about five miles wide and seven 
 or eight miles long. The mountains on the east 
 and south were covered with cedars whose van- 
 guard dotted the edge of the mesa under Mount 
 Baldy, now become a great white mass, very 
 near, led up to by a precipitous ridge broken 
 into jagged peaks. Telescope Peak lay behind 
 Baldy and was not visible. There was more 
 snow than we had supposed in our survey from 
 Pinto Mountain, it lay all along the jagged ridge, 
 coming down in some places almost to the mesa. 
 The northern wall of the canyon was composed 
 of lower mountains. The one furthest east was 
 a big, pointed, red mass, polka-dotted with little 
 trees near its summit. Looking back whence 
 we had come the mountains seemed to close the 
 narrow gorge. 
 
 [182] 
 
The High White Peaks 
 
 The cattlemen had told us that Wild Rose 
 Canyon was full of water, but after we left the 
 spring we found none. The big wash down the 
 middle was dry — the boy must have seen it on 
 some rare occasion when it had water in it — and 
 the great bowl far too large and too rough to 
 admit of much scouting for springs at the bases 
 of the mountains. We had thought that we 
 would see the deserted charcoal-kilns and thus 
 find the spring which the cattlemen had de- 
 scribed, but there was no sign of any kilns. We 
 supposed that they were somewhere along the 
 bottom of the precipitous ridge that led up to 
 Mount Baldy. In that direction the mesa was 
 so terribly cut up that we could not attempt to 
 take the wagon there until we had first explored 
 it, so we made a dry camp in the middle of the 
 basin under the shelter of the eight-foot-high 
 bank of the wash. 
 
 The wind had blown harder than usual all day 
 with an icy bite from the snowy heights. Dur- 
 ing the night a racing cloud deposited snow on 
 the northern hills which before had been bare. 
 A real storm now became our fear, for a little 
 
 [183] 
 
White Heart of Mojave 
 
 more snow would defeat our project. More- 
 over Wild Rose Canyon is at an altitude where 
 the cold at that time of year is intense, and we 
 had to depend on the sun's fires to warm us 
 sufficiently during the day to make life possible 
 through the night. The ''desert rat" became a 
 bundle of misery. We had not realized the para- 
 lyzing effect cold would have on him. He sat 
 and shivered, apparently unable to move or to 
 think, so utterly wretched that Charlotte and I 
 offered to give up the Panamints and "beat it" 
 to a more salubrious climate. We could not 
 bear to see our friend suffer; but he flatly re- 
 fused, angry with us for even making the sug- 
 gestion, saying that when he started to do a thing 
 he generally did it. 
 
 The next morning was as cold as ever. Still 
 the Worrier refused to consider moving out, and 
 when the sun had warmed the great windy bowl 
 a little, he went back to fetch more water from 
 the spring by the old shack. We explored the 
 base of the long ridge under Mount Baldy as 
 well as we could, but failed to find the charcoal- 
 kilns. However, it was possible to get the wagon 
 
 [184] 
 
The High White Peaks 
 
 over there, so in the afternoon we moved the 
 whole outfit up to the first cedar trees. There 
 the mesa became so steep that Molly and Bill 
 could no longer pull the load. The Worrier 
 had brought ten gallons of water, enough for 
 several days, and the "desert-proof" horses were 
 turned loose to find their way back to the spring 
 at the mouth of the canyon. What either they 
 or the cattle ate at Wild Rose remained a pro- 
 found mystery to us. The mesa was covered 
 with low, dry brush, interspersed occasionally 
 with bunches of yellow grass. We could see the 
 dark backs of the steers like spots moving 
 through it, but it looked like anything rather 
 than a spring feeding-ground. 
 
 Camp-in-the-Cedars was charming. A real 
 tree had become a wonderful object. For once 
 there was plenty of wood and the Worrier kept 
 himself warm chopping and carrying. After the 
 feeble little fires of roots and twigs to which we 
 had been accustomed, that blazing, crackling 
 camp-fire was a rich luxury. Dinner was a ban- 
 quet. Our bed was laid under a big pinon tree 
 through whose tufts of fine needles the enormous 
 
 [•85] 
 
White Heart of Mojave 
 
 stars looked down. We had a glimpse through 
 the far-off mouth of the canyon of distant peaks, 
 vague in the starlight. The wind rose and fell 
 softly through the pines and cedars, like the 
 breathing of the great white mountain beneath 
 whose side we slept. 
 
 The white dawn of a clear day filtered through 
 the blue darkness. Before the sun had climbed 
 over the ridge we were started on our long 
 anticipated adventure. It began with a stiflf 
 scramble up the first buttressing ridge, then a 
 long pull to the crest of the barrier that walls 
 the southern side of Wild Rose Canyon. The 
 steep inclines of gravelly rock were varied with 
 ledges. Soon we reached the snow, so hard that 
 steps had to be dug in it with much scuffling of 
 hobnailed shoes. The green trees growing out of 
 the white snow were very lovely, and also useful 
 to hold on to. When they were far apart we had 
 some exciting moments when we zigzagged over 
 the smooth, white crust, which was as steep as a 
 shingled roof. In about two hours we reached 
 the top of the ridge. Until then we had faced 
 the white slope, working too hard to look back 
 
 [1 86] 
 
The High White Peaks 
 
 very often at the basin that was falling away 
 below us. Suddenly we stood on top. The world 
 opened beyond into an immense white amphi- 
 theater shut in by snowy peaks with the pyramid 
 of Telescope, visible once more, at the far side. 
 After the hot, dry sands, how miraculous seemed 
 this glittering winter! 
 
 We pressed on toward Baldy along the ridge, 
 which proved to be much steeper than it had 
 looked. It was covered with trees, and great 
 patches of snow grown soft now in the sun. 
 However, by keeping a little below the crest on 
 the southern side most of the snow could be 
 avoided. There the ground fell so precipitously 
 from the ridge to the canyon below that only an 
 occasional tree grew on it, and we had an unim- 
 peded view of the two white summits and the 
 magnificent sweep of snow between them. 
 
 Noon brought us to a little saddle north of 
 Baldy, which connects it with another rounded 
 summit of the same name. Here were no trees 
 and the snow was blown off clean. With what 
 eagerness we panted up the last few yards! The 
 mountain climber has his great reward when he 
 
 [187] 
 
White Heart of Mojave 
 
 ''looks over." That is his own peculiar joy. 
 He toils for hours with the ground rising before 
 him to a ridge that seems to cut the sky, only to 
 find a higher one beyond. He surmounts that, 
 and another and another, until at last he gains 
 the highest and the mountains yield their secret. 
 Breathlessly we stood on the little saddle. We 
 looked down into Death Valley from the still 
 height to which we had looked up so long. The 
 white floor shimmered through layers of heated 
 air, 10,000 feet below. Again the valley was 
 different. That day it was full of sky, as the 
 Imperial Valley had been when we first saw it. 
 Nothing was distinguishable down there, it was a 
 well of clear blue. The Funeral Mountains 
 looked like hills. Behind them the jagged 
 ranges of desert mountains spread back with one 
 tall, snowy peak in their midst, Mount Charles- 
 ton, sixty miles away on the border of Nevada. 
 Southward on the saddle the mound of Baldy's 
 summit presented its snowy side. For the most 
 part the snow was hard enough for us to walk 
 over the crust, but sometimes we floundered in 
 nearly to the waist. That was hard work. By 
 
 [■88] 
 
The High White Peaks 
 
 one o'clock we reached the top where the snow 
 was blown off, leaving bare black rocks. It was 
 a quiet day for the desert and especially for the 
 mountains. A slight wind came from the south ; 
 the sky was cloudless, a deep, still blue. Mount 
 Baldy overlooks all the country in a complete 
 panorama, save where the beautiful pyramid of 
 Telescope Peak cuts into the view. The horizon 
 was bounded on three sides by snow mountains, 
 Mount Charleston, the San Bernadinos and the 
 wonderful Sierra Nevada. Between these white 
 barriers spread the desert, deep white valleys, 
 yellow dry lakes, ranges of rose and blue and 
 dark-violet mountains, all shining in the incom- 
 parable brightness of the sun. 
 
 Now, at last, we saw the famous "H. and L." 
 of which we had heard so much. "You see the 
 highest and the lowest points in the United States 
 at the same time," everybody had told us. From 
 the top of the Panamints we could see Mount- 
 Whitney towering in the west, while in the east 
 the mountain sides fall precipitously into Death 
 Valley, 280 feet below sea level. There must be 
 some more accessible viewpoint which com- 
 
 [189] 
 
White Heart of Mojave 
 
 mands this dramatic spectacle, for it is not likely 
 that our informants expected us to climb Mount 
 Baldy. 
 
 From the summit of Baldy the long curving 
 arete that had looked so beautiful from Death 
 Valley on one side and from Pinto Peak on the 
 other led over to Telescope Peak. It was no 
 disappointment. Sloping sharply down from 
 Baldy, level for a ways, then rising again toward 
 the white pyramid, it extended for about three 
 miles, precipitous on both sides, often not more 
 than ten feet wide on top. The exhilaration of 
 walking thus in the clear air high above the 
 spread-out world is always a boundless joy; on 
 this shining wall in the middle of the desert the 
 joy was almost unbearable. The great plain of 
 the world was clear cut, no veiling haze softened 
 its distances, it flashed and sparkled, full of 
 strong, austere lines and strong, satisfying con- 
 trasts. Like a victorious lover, you walk the 
 heights of your conquest; everything to the great 
 circle of the horizon is yours; by right of pa- 
 tience and love you possess it. 
 
 If we could only be like the three old cedars 
 [190] 
 
The High White Peaks 
 
 that have withstood the hurricanes on the ridge 
 and gaze with them until sunset, through the 
 night and the wonder of morning! They are 
 so gnarled and old, and so calm. Watchers, they 
 stand on the summit of the world, and they might 
 tell us, if we could stay, why the mountain-tops 
 are joyful. Instead, we must drag around these 
 aching bodies clamoring to be kept warm and 
 to be fed, never letting us listen long enough. 
 Already the sun was descending toward the west, 
 and we had to hasten on if we wanted to reach 
 Telescope Peak and get back to fire and food 
 before the cold of night. 
 
 When the arete began to rise it became rapidly 
 very steep. The snow became harder and harder 
 until it turned to ice. The lovely pyramid, now 
 directly overhead, shone blindingly in the slant- 
 ing sun. The only possible way to its peak was 
 up a sharp knife-edge, from which both sides fell 
 sheer for thousands of feet. Was it all solid ice? 
 The conviction that it was had been hinting 
 defeat to each of us for the last half hour of the 
 climb, but no one cared to speak of that possi- 
 bility until we were within four hundred feet 
 
 [191] 
 
White Heart of Mojave 
 
 of the top, clinging to trees and slipping badly. 
 The peak rose at a possible, but terrific angle; 
 the trees for the remainder of the way were much 
 too far apart to hold on to ; the ice was perfectly 
 smooth, and glistened like a skating rink set on 
 edge. No amount of kicking with hobnailed 
 shoes could make a foothold on it, and one slip 
 on that knife-edge either way meant a slide down 
 the ice-sheet to almost sure destruction. You 
 cannot climb such an ice wall without either an 
 ax or a rope; with either one we would have 
 tried it. We could have cut steps with an ax, or 
 we might have been able to lasso the trees above 
 with a long rope, and pull ourselves up by it. 
 So lately come from the furnace of Death Val- 
 ley, how should we suppose that we would need 
 the implements of an Alpine mountain-climber? 
 Down, down, more than ii,ooo feet, lay that 
 white pit veiled with the smoke of iridescent 
 haze. 
 
 The Worrier, who professed deep scorn of all 
 mountains for their own sakes, looked longingly 
 at the smooth peak. It fascinated us all like a 
 hard, glittering jewel. He said he "hated to be 
 
 [192] 
 
The High White Peaks 
 
 beat." So did we all "hate to be beat," but we 
 would have been ungrateful indeed for the joy 
 of that day had we not been able to turn back 
 and remain thankful. There was no sense of 
 defeat in the going-down. 
 
 The descent was easy except for the heart- 
 breaking pull up Mount Baldy again. His sides 
 were far too straight up and down to admit of 
 any going around him. On the summit we made 
 a concession to aching bodies by taking a long 
 rest and eating what was left of the bread and 
 cheese and the everlasting prunes. The Worrier 
 had long since dubbed our route "The Prune 
 Stone Trail." We jested light-heartedly about 
 building cairns along it with a prune stone 
 carved on the top of each, and insisted that we 
 owned a half interest in the Prune Stone Mine, 
 as he would never have found it had we not 
 dragged him up Pinto. Mountain-hater as he 
 was and heat-loving "desert-rat," he genially ad- 
 mitted that, snow or no snow, the top of Baldy 
 was "fine." As we sat there Death Valley turned 
 a dark, deep, luminous blue. We could see the 
 Avawatz Mountains by Silver Lake and the 
 
 [193] 
 
White Heart of Mojave 
 
 notch in the hills where the blue pool of Sara- 
 toga cherishes its little darting fish. The slant- 
 ing sunlight was resplendent on the arete and 
 the west slopes of Telescope Peak. The Worrier 
 called him an old rascal; but we were glad to 
 leave him so, with his white robes unsullied by 
 scrambling feet. His image would remain al- 
 ways to the inward eye in dull days and difficult 
 days, a reminder of how beauty watches around 
 the world. 
 
 When the sun stood just above the wall of the 
 Sierras we began the long descent down the 
 rounded, snowy side of Baldy to the little saddle, 
 and down the long, steep slope and the little, but- 
 tress slope where the cedar trees had been so 
 lovely in the snow. Night came while we were 
 still going down, and the basin of Wild Rose 
 Canyon was a violet lake. 
 
 [194] 
 
XI 
 
 Snowstorm and Sandstorm 
 
 REAKFAST was late next morning like 
 Sunday breakfasts in houses. Charlotte 
 asked if it was Sunday. No one knew 
 what day it was in the f ar-ofif world, but we pro- 
 claimed it Sunday at Wild Rose. It was a true 
 Sunday, a day of rest after hard exertion, a still 
 day washed clean by the mighty sun. Immense 
 and still. The great bowl curved tranquilly to 
 the tranquil hills, the cedars and pinons along 
 its edge glistened like little bright fingers point- 
 ing at the sky. 
 
 During the middle of the day the sun was hot, 
 in the morning and the evening the big fire 
 blazed. Camp-in-the-Cedars was lovely enough 
 to stay in forever, but shortly after noon the Wor- 
 rier announced that he must find the charcoal- 
 kilns, he could not "be beat" by them. The little 
 trees were so beguiling, the tranquil brightness 
 
 [195] 
 
White Heart of Mojave 
 
 of the mesa so inviting, that we followed him, 
 buoyed up by the cold, clear air. We wandered 
 along the base of Baldy to where a small, purple 
 mountain jutted into the great basin. Around 
 that we went, leisurely picking our way over the 
 rough ground until at the extreme northern end 
 of the bowl we found an attenuated wraith of a 
 road leading up into a heavily wooded canyon. 
 A road must once have been the way to some- 
 where, and we followed it, climbing steeply for 
 nearly a mile. It brought us to a small, level 
 spot where, made of rocks like the mountains 
 and indistinguishable until we were right on 
 them, stood seven immense charcoal-kilns like 
 a row of giant beehives. They were so big that 
 we could walk upright through their doorways, 
 that looked like arched openings in their sides. 
 Old Tom Adams had said that they were used 
 in the seventies to make fuel of the cedars and 
 pifions, to be hauled thirty miles to the smelter 
 at a lead mine. They had been deserted so long 
 that the camp rubbish had disappeared from 
 around them and they merged into their back- 
 ground, become again a part of Nature herself. 
 
 [196] 
 
Snowstorm and Sandstorm 
 
 What strenuous endeavor they denoted 1 
 Everywhere men have left their footprints on 
 the Mojave, sojourners always, never inhab- 
 itants. The seven kilns w^ere the most impres- 
 sive testimony of brief possession that we saw, 
 more impressive even than the twenty-eight- 
 mile-long trench that brought the water to 
 Skidoo. We had seen it from there cross- 
 ing high ridges; in the great bowl of Wild 
 Rose it was clearly marked, going from side to 
 side and vanishing up the first ridge which we 
 had climbed to Baldy. The cost and labor of 
 making it must have been immense. Mojave 
 was already breaking down the edges preparing 
 to brush it away, but it will be a long time 
 before she can obliterate those kilns. They 
 will still be eloquent in that remote fastness 
 long after Keane Wonder and Ryolite are 
 gone. 
 
 Behind the kilns a dim path climbed the moun- 
 tain-side to a little, secret spring, an oval rock 
 basin not more than five feet long and so deftly 
 hidden that we wondered what prospector first 
 had the joy of finding it. From the elevation of 
 
 [197] 
 
White Heart of Mojave 
 
 the spring we could look along the length of 
 Wild Rose Canyon, where the sagebrush 
 smoothed to a blue and green and purple sea, 
 and through its narrow opening to the white 
 serenity of Mount Whitney. Thus framed the 
 white peak seemed to float in the blue sky. Very 
 swiftly Mojave brushes men off, but always with 
 a fine gesture. From the midst of her most 
 obliterating desolations she never fails to point 
 at some far-off shining. 
 
 Too late we learned that the little spring at 
 the head of the canyon would have been the 
 place for our camp. Not only would we have 
 had the delight of its cold, pure water, but the 
 ascent of Mount Baldy looked shorter and easier 
 from there. Perhaps we each cherished the hope 
 of moving up next day and trying once more to 
 scale the glittering ice-wall with the help of 
 our wood-chopper's ax and the rope from the 
 wagon ; but we never discussed the idea for that 
 night the dreaded storm crept over the moun- 
 tains. It came stealthily on padded feet, putting 
 out the stars. At dawn big wet snowflakes gently 
 sifting through the still air awoke us. 
 
 [198] 
 
Snowstorm and Sandstorm 
 
 During the day the storm Increased. The 
 wind arose and blew in gusts seemingly from 
 every direction. Fortunately the trees afforded 
 plenty of big wood, so we were able to keep a 
 roaring fire, though the heavily-falling, wet 
 snow sometimes threatened to put it out. It 
 snowed so fast that we were shut in by white 
 walls not more than twenty feet away. We 
 pitched our tent with the opening toward the 
 fire and tried to get some shelter in it while the 
 Worrier hunted the horses. The tent was the 
 only serious mistake in the outfit. It was a light, 
 waterproof silk tent with a pole up the middle. 
 We had expected to use it as a shelter from the 
 wind and had tried once before at Emigrant 
 Springs. On that occasion its light-weight ma- 
 terial had flapped and rattled in the blast until 
 we were glad to creep outside and sleep under 
 the edge of a rock. Before morning it blew 
 down. The only practical tent for the desert is 
 a very low one, like a pup-tent, made of heavy 
 canvas, with extra long pegs that must be driven 
 deep and buried in the sand. During the eter- 
 nity of snowstorm in which Charlotte and I 
 
 [199] 
 
White Heart of Mojave 
 
 waited for Molly and Bill, we alternated be- 
 tween holding up the pole in the gusts of wind 
 and rushing out between them to drive in the 
 pegs with the ax. This, and the necessity of 
 constantly building up the fire, kept us wet and 
 cold all day, for the snow was not the dry, whirl- 
 ing snow of really cold climates, but was as wet 
 as a heavy rain. It clung so we could not shake 
 it off and melted on our clothes. The Worrier 
 did not retrieve Molly and Bill until four 
 o'clock. It was late to move, but the storm 
 showed no sign of abatement and we remem- 
 bered with growing affection the shack at the 
 entrance to the canyon. Hastily packing in the 
 white downpour that hissed through the air, we 
 left Camp-in-the-Cedars. 
 
 As soon as we had descended a little way into 
 the basin the snow ceased, but a white cloud con- 
 tinued to hang over the place where our charm- 
 ing camp had been. During the remainder of 
 the day and throughout the night heavy clouds 
 veiled all the mountains, occasionally dropping 
 flurries of snow around us. An icy wind rushed 
 down the canyon. When we reached the shack 
 
 [200] 
 
Snowstorm and Sandstorm 
 
 it seemed palatial. We cleared out the rubbish 
 by throwing it down the hill in front of the door, 
 the approved way of cleaning up on the desert. 
 When there are too many cans you throw them 
 behind the bushes, and we had learned to do it 
 with great vigor and accuracy of aim. Much 
 to the Worrier's amusement we scrubbed the 
 table and tried to wipe ofif the cracked, rusty 
 stove set up on three empty gasoline tins. That 
 stove was a marvel in the art of consuming much 
 fuel without emitting any heat. We took turns 
 huddling close to it. The walls sheltered us 
 from the wind, but as far as the stove was con- 
 cerned we might almost as well have been out- 
 doors. 
 
 After supper we had to reckon with the dun- 
 geon that was the bedroom. The Worrier rec- 
 ommended it highly, but we viewed it with a 
 certain awful apprehension. We had a devil's 
 choice between that and the frigid outdoors that 
 kept beating on the shack with gusts of wind. 
 We made the mistake of choosing the dungeon. 
 When the candle was blown out fear crouched in 
 the blackness. All the tales we had ever read of 
 
 [201] 
 
White Heart of Mojave 
 
 prisoners in damp cellars assailed us — horrors, 
 tortures, black holes. The terrors of these man- 
 made fears in this shut-in, man-made place were 
 far worse than the wild outdoors. Presently 
 little scratchings and gnawings apprised us that 
 we were not alone. Unbearable then was the 
 walled darkness. We gathered up the bed and 
 went outside, stepping carefully over the Wor- 
 rier who, forever faithful, was sleeping across 
 the door. 
 
 The clean outdoors! Let it snow, let it hail, 
 let the water run down the mountain and seep 
 through the bed, let the wind tear at the pon- 
 chos! It was nothing compared to being shut 
 up in a dark place. About midnight we were 
 suddenly struck awake by a terrific din. After 
 the first tense moment we recognized it as coy- 
 otes howling in the canyon. That was nothing 
 either compared to vague little scratchings and 
 gnawings in an eight-by-ten shack. 
 
 Next day the storm continued, with clear 
 intervals during which we rushed out to spread 
 our clothes and blankets in the sun that thirstily 
 drank up the snow at the bases of the mountains. 
 
 [202] 
 
Snowstorm and Sandstorm 
 
 "Scotty" beguiled the hours and the weird tales 
 of Lord Dunsany, read aloud beside the cracked 
 stove, never had a more appropriate setting. All 
 around the mountains were white except where 
 some insistently black rock heaved out. Clouds 
 hurried across the sky like Indians galloping on 
 the war-path, the wind screaming around the 
 rocks was their war-whoop. In the moments of 
 peace between their raids huge giants of cloud 
 shook their fists at us over the walls. The silence 
 of Mojave was torn to tatters. Yet, somehow, 
 we still felt it. Just as the wild tales we read 
 intimated a stillness behind, so the tumult was a 
 ripple on indomitable peace. You have seen a 
 little whirlwind plow a furrow through the 
 water of some glassy lake, making quite a bit of 
 a tumult, but leaving undisturbed the tranquil- 
 lity of the surface beyond its narrow path. 
 Though between the walls of the canyon where 
 we camped we could not see the still surfaces, 
 we sensed them. The storm was an incident. 
 Mojave took it and made a strong song. 
 
 Wild Rose Canyon was the furthest point of 
 our journey; from the old shack the going home 
 
 [203] 
 
White Heart of Mojave 
 
 began. The sun rose brilliantly on the follow- 
 ing morning and deceived us into starting back 
 to Emigrant Springs. As soon as we had 
 left the narrow canyon and could once more see 
 the expanse of the sky, we knew that the storm 
 was by no means over. We even debated return- 
 ing to our palace, cracked stove, black hole, and 
 all ; but when you have broken camp, found the 
 horses, packed up, and started, a two-hour-long 
 process, you will risk almost anything rather 
 than turn back. There were compensations, too, 
 even for the wind which shortly came to life 
 again and thrust its knife to our hearts. The 
 sky was a magnificent spectacle. It was not 
 gray, nor overcast, nor brooding, but full of 
 torn-up, piled-up, tumultuous clouds, a fitting 
 canopy for the country beneath it. The 
 top of Emigrant Pass is a big mesa sur- 
 rounded by all kinds of mountains from the 
 broken, battered buttresses and steep snow- 
 peaks of the Panamints to smooth, bare, rounded 
 hills folded over each other and dimpled like 
 upholstered sofas. In bursts of sunshine the 
 shadows of the clouds raced over them all, 
 
 [204] 
 
Snowstorm and Sandstorm 
 
 snatching at each other and getting mixed up in 
 the canyons. Sometimes a cloud spilled out its 
 contents and for a while obliterated one of them. 
 Toward noon the clouds made a concerted attack 
 on the sun, calling up new cohorts until at last 
 they succeeded in covering him entirely and 
 keeping him covered. Then a great change fell 
 upon Mojave. She became forlorn, her bright 
 colors faded into gray. The brush shivered in 
 the wind and made a cold, crackling sound. A 
 few immense Joshua palms scattered over the 
 mesa waved their grotesque arms like monsters 
 in pain. The wind whistled through their stiff, 
 spiky leaves. They were in bloom with a heavy 
 mass of waxy white flowers on the end of each 
 branch. The sun had polished the flowers, tip- 
 ping every branch with a silver ball ; now they 
 stuck up into the lead-colored sky, dull, lead- 
 colored things. 
 
 All the familiar places that had been drenched 
 with sunshine, brilliant with color, almost as 
 magical sometimes as the burning sands them- 
 selves, now appeared in this sad, gray mood. 
 After leaving the top of the pass we crossed a 
 
 [205] 
 
White Heart of Mojave 
 
 largCj/high plateau known as the Harrisburg 
 Flat/ On the way over to Wild Rose it had been 
 still and hot, the openings between the moun- 
 tains had hinted at the illusions of Death Valley 
 behind them ; now a cloud full of wind and snow 
 rolled up out of the narrow opening of Emigrant 
 Canyon. Storms were all around us, but until 
 that moment we had hoped that we might 
 escape. There was no escape. The Har- 
 risburg Flat became a white, whirling fury. 
 The wind that smote us was like a solid, 
 moving wall. The cloud was not made of snow, 
 but of ice, a fine hail that cut our faces. It was 
 so dense that we could not see ten feet in front 
 of the wagon. We had some difficulty in making 
 Molly and Bill face it, but it was necessary to 
 go on. All day the icy wind had been pressing 
 upon us, now it was so cold that we felt we 
 could not withstand it long. Fortunately the 
 sheltering walls of the canyon were not far, but 
 the half hour during which we struggled toward 
 them seemed an eternit)^/ The Worrier shouted 
 at the laboring horses and for the first time when 
 he knew that we could hear him, he cursed. 
 
 [206] 
 
Snowstorm and Sandstorm 
 
 By the time we reached the canyon the hail 
 had stopped but the terrible wind continued. It 
 seemed as though it would rip the bushes out of 
 the ground. In place of the ice, fine particles of 
 sand assailed us — had the wash not been thor- 
 oughly wet we would have had more of it. It 
 must have rained violently in the canyon, or else 
 in the dusk we missed the particular route among 
 the rocks by which we had come up, for the way 
 was so washed out that the Worrier could hardly 
 pilot the load. 
 
 Every bit of energy we had was centered on 
 reaching the ruined shack at Emigrant Springs. 
 When we were able to say anything at all 
 we speculated about how dirty it might be 
 and whether or not there was a stove in it. The 
 dirt was a certainty, but nobody could remem- 
 ber about the stove, as we had avoided the 
 shack when we were there before. After a 
 freezing eternity we came around the last bend 
 of the canyon. Home was in sight, and our 
 hope perished for smoke was coming out of 
 the chimney! Not only was there a stove, but 
 there was a man snugly camping beside it, an 
 
 [207] 
 
White Heart of Mojave 
 
 unknown man, a usurper, a robber! We were 
 full of angry, helpless indignation. 
 
 "If it's Tom Adams," the Worrier snapped, 
 ''we'll throw him out." 
 
 But it was not Tom Adams. It was another 
 old-timer, an old man, who wandered cease- 
 lessly to and fro over the desert. He was a gentle 
 soul, but we were in no mood to appreciate that 
 then. Of course he offered to move out of the 
 shack when he saw "ladies" coming on such a 
 bitter night, and equally of course we could not 
 allow it. If Charlotte and I chose to invade 
 the wilderness we must take the chances of the 
 wilderness as other people did. Our pride was 
 involved, but we had to refuse very summarily, 
 even rudely, before the old man would accept 
 our objection. Then he retired into the shack 
 with hurt dignity, while we pulled down some 
 more of the corral fence to make a blazing fire. 
 We solaced ourselves with the belief that the 
 outdoors was better than the shack anjrway, as 
 it had been better than the black hole. In the 
 course of time we were warm again and man- 
 aged to keep warm through the night. 
 
 [208] 
 
Snowstorm and Sandstorm 
 
 In the morning the innocent usurper sent us, 
 via the Worrier, a pan of hot biscuits, a most 
 welcome and delicious gift. Charlotte and I 
 called on him later to thank him and make 
 amends if we could. He entertained us for two 
 hours with the story of his travels, but he would 
 not accept our invitation to dinner, saying that 
 he wasn't used to "dining with ladies." We sin- 
 cerely hope it was not a sarcasm. The question 
 which the possession of the shack raised is rather 
 a difficult one. Was our pride worth more than 
 the true chivalry of a kindly soul? To us it was, 
 to him it was not. 
 
 The wind continued to blow with violence for 
 several days, though we had no more rain nor 
 snow. It is easy to see how the desert has been 
 torn to its rough harshness. That steady-blow- 
 ing wind alone could wear the mountains to their 
 jagged outlines, crumbling the softer rock down 
 to fill the valleys. It picks up the sand and uses 
 it to grind the mountains smooth. It piles it 
 against the cliffs to make new foothills and hol- 
 lows it out to make new canyons. It drives the 
 rain against the mountains to rush down, rolling 
 
 [209] 
 
White Heart of Mojave 
 
 rocks along the gorges and digging the deep 
 trenches across the mesas. Where no network of 
 roots holds a surface soil wind and rain work 
 rapidly. On the homeward journey from Wild 
 Rose we understood the cut-up mesas and the 
 gouged-out canyons better. 
 
 Down in the Mesquite Valley, where we took 
 the sandy road along the edge of the marsh in- 
 stead of the rocky one by which we had come 
 because Bill had lost a shoe, we saw what the 
 wind can do with sand. In the afternoon we 
 reached the foot of the mesa that leads from 
 Emigrant Canyon to the bottom of the valley 
 and were at the beginning of "Old Johnnie's" 
 sand-dunes. It had been a sparkling day with a 
 clear sky, but the wind was still blowing. The 
 Mesquite Valley was as hot as we remembered 
 it, but, after the ice-cloud on the Harrisburg 
 Flat only two days before, it seemed a delicious 
 hotness. With the assurance of seasoned trav- 
 elers able to make a dry camp an)rwhere, Char- 
 lotte and I insisted on stopping there for the 
 night. Molly and Bill would take four hours to 
 make the nine miles of deep sand to Salt Creek, 
 
 [210] 
 
Snowstorm and Sandstorm 
 
 and we always hated to make camp in the dark. 
 The Worrier wanted to go on. He said he had a 
 hunch that we ought to, but he allowed himself 
 to be persuaded. We should have heeded that 
 hunch of an old-timer. 
 
 Hardly had we unpacked the wagon and made 
 a fireplace before we noticed that the wind was 
 increasing. Little whirligigs of sand began to 
 run across the valley. Soon they were charging 
 at us down the mesa. First they came singly, 
 then merged into a cloud of sand that rattled 
 against the pots and the wagon. Luckily for us 
 the wind was blowing from the mountains over 
 the mesa where there was comparatively little 
 sand to pick up, for had it been coming across 
 the dunes we would have been buried alive. Of 
 course it was impossible to cook; in a very few 
 minutes it was impossible to do anything but 
 crouch in the lea of the sand-heap around the 
 roots of the biggest mesquite. The Worrier 
 seemed to shrink up and draw in his head like a 
 turtle. He shouted something at us, of which 
 we could only hear the word "hunch." The air 
 was full of a rushing, hissing sound. 
 
 [211] 
 
White Heart of Mojave 
 
 Charlotte and I covered ourselves v^^ith the 
 ponchos, drawing them over our heads when 
 the sand came hurtling through the top of the 
 Mesquite. Molly and Bill huddled close to- 
 gether about fifty feet away with their backs to 
 the blast, and much of the time the sand was 
 so dense that we could not see them. The Wor- 
 rier also was lost in the yellow cloud. The sand 
 was very fine and, in spite of the ponchos, sifted 
 into our hair and ears and clothes. It gritted in 
 our teeth so we felt as though we were eating it. 
 We could see it piling up around the next mes- 
 quite, and could imagine it whirling through the 
 valley over the tops of "Old Johnnie's" dunes. 
 
 Often the wind goes down at sunset, but that 
 day the sun sank invisibly and the fury increased. 
 We felt a queer excitement not unmixed with 
 fear. Thus, only a hundred times worse, must 
 the sand blow over the vast Sahara Desert while 
 the Arabs cover their heads, calling on Allah. 
 When the solid ground itself arises there is no 
 help but Allah. 
 
 After sunset the Worrier emerged again from 
 the flying yellow mass. His shirt was blown 
 
 [212] 
 
Snowstorm and Sandstorm 
 
 tight to him and the loose sleeves whipped in 
 the wind. He leaned against it bending forward. 
 He shouted that we might possibly get some 
 shelter by continuing along the road toward Salt 
 Creek, where it winds further around the side 
 of Sheep Mountain. He advised us to move, 
 because if the storm continued he could not keep 
 Molly and Bill. 
 
 "Tie them up!" we yelled. 
 
 "Can't. Go crazy." Then, as we did not 
 move, his voice rose peremptorily: 
 
 "Come on! If it gets worse we can't go." 
 
 We had disregarded his first hunch; now, if 
 he had another, far be it from us to raise diffi- 
 culties, though we could hardly see how it was 
 possible to travel even then. Charlotte and I 
 staggered up from the mesquite and all three of 
 us packed as speedily as we could. It was a 
 disorderly packing, as we could scarcely stand 
 before the wind, and were almost blinded by the 
 sand. Molly and Bill were wild with excite- 
 ment. I remember vividly bracing myself 
 against the wall of wind, holding on to Molly, 
 who objected to backing around to the wagon- 
 
 [213] 
 
White Heart of Mojave 
 
 pole, unable to open my eyes and hardly able to 
 breathe. 
 
 We all piled into the wagon. The excited 
 horses were willing to travel with their backs to 
 the wind. There was a track to follow, but its 
 edges were already rounding full of sand. If 
 the storm should continue long enough it would 
 be smoothed out. 
 
 The Worrier's hope was justified, for at the 
 end of three or four miles the wind seemed much 
 less furious. We were among the dunes and 
 found a fairly quiet little gully full of deep sand 
 as fine and soft as the sand on a beach. Some- 
 thing in the set of the wind through the moun- 
 tains left this oasis of peace. We were even able 
 to cook the long-delayed dinner. We did it by 
 moonlight, slowly and carefully handling things 
 and keeping them covered as much as possible, 
 like having a picnic on a windy seashore. 
 
 The Worrier suggested that we climb to the 
 top of the dune which partially sheltered us, if 
 we wanted to see what a sandstorm looked like. 
 We did so. From that vantage point of com- 
 parative calm we saw the whole Mesquite Val- 
 
 [214] 
 
Snowstorm and Sandstorm 
 
 ley filled with a dense yellow cloud that com- 
 pletely shut out the surrounding mountains, ris- 
 ing higher than they, swirling at the top like 
 smoke ascending into the dark night sky. 
 
 In the morning we climbed the dune again 
 and looked across over the others. The blowing 
 sand was less dense and we could see them all. 
 "Old Johnnie" had been right, they were a hun- 
 dred feet high. Their shapes were very beau- 
 tiful, with knife-edge tops ridged in pure, clean 
 lines from which fringes of fine sand blew up 
 like the wind-tossed manes of white horses. The 
 masses and outlines of the dunes suggested Egyp- 
 tian architecture; the pyramids and the crouch- 
 ing sphinx were there. Sand dunes must have 
 been familiar to the Egyptians dwelling beside 
 the Sahara. What is the huge sphinx, brooding 
 and massive, gazing with strong eyes across the 
 emptiness, but an interpretation of the desert 
 carved in stone? 
 
 We reached Salt Creek early and spent the. 
 rest of the day there. The wind continued to 
 blow, the sand still swirled of? the dunes, and 
 the yellow dust-cloud still obscured the moun- 
 
 [215] 
 
White Heart of Mojave 
 
 tains; but we were in the shelter of Tucki and 
 the ground was so stony that we were not much 
 troubled by the migrating sand. Once more 
 Charlotte and I climbed the ridge from which 
 we had watched the Worrier's remarkable hunt- 
 ing. The whole big basin of Death Valley be- 
 tween its high walls of rock was blurred with 
 dust, clouds of sand with wind-frayed edges rose 
 into the sky, not a gleam of radiance showed 
 through. The green and white snake of Salt 
 Creek coiled sullenly among the sulphur-colored 
 hills. Only the blue eye was bright, poisonous, 
 unwinking. The fair water that was too pol- 
 luted for human drinking seemed to mock us. 
 We waited for the enchanter to come at sunset, 
 but as the day merged into evening the scene be- 
 came inexpressibly dreadful. 
 
 Suddenly Charlotte arose from the rock on 
 which we were sitting. 
 
 ''Let us go," she whispered, and without fur- 
 ther comment we hurried back to camp and 
 made the Worrier collect enough wood from the 
 swamp for a truly cheerful fire. 
 
 The following day we traveled once more up 
 
 [216] 
 
Snowstorm and Sandstorm 
 
 the long, northern mesa of Death Valley, but by 
 a different route from that by which we had 
 descended. This way was shorter, avoiding the 
 long pull across the valley, though it was rockier, 
 steeper, and cut by more islands of hills to cross 
 or go around than the other. In many places 
 the road vanished utterly, and only a "desert- 
 rat" could have piloted a wagon safely to its des- 
 tination over that maze of ridges and gullies. 
 
 The day was fine. At last the wind had died 
 down and the dust-clouds were slowly subsiding. 
 Both Death Valley and the Mesquite Valley 
 were veiled in heavy haze, but the brightness of 
 their changing color now shimmered through. 
 All day the white blaze of the sun was around 
 us and the silence, after a week of tumultuous 
 wind, was a mighty dreaming. It was the living 
 silence which we had first known on the night 
 when we wandered away from Silver Lake, the 
 silence in which the earth moves. The moun- 
 tains dwelt in it majestically. Mojave was 
 again making her fine gesture, unconscious of 
 the discomforts and terrors of small living things. 
 Her pointing at the far-off shining is always a 
 
 [217] 
 
White Heart of Mojave 
 
 conquest of grimness, as though sorrow were a 
 stepping-stone to beauty. 
 
 By the out-jutting cliff of Daylight Pass, from 
 which we had first beheld Death Valley, we 
 made a long stop. Familiarity had only en- 
 hanced its splendor. With different eyes we saw 
 the shining floor, the sad Funeral Mountains, 
 the calm, white curves of the high Panamints. 
 What had been a picture was now a living ex- 
 perience. The rose and silver shifting over the' 
 white valley-floor had new meaning. We^ 
 knew that floor, we knew the feel of it, and 
 its ever-changing beauty was a miracle. We 
 were justified in the pilgrimage, for only by 
 going thus to the White Heart, making stones 
 and brush and jagged rocks our companions, de- 
 pending on the springs to keep us alive and the 
 roots of the greasewood to warm us, could we 
 have known what a miracle it was. The words 
 "terror" and "beauty" which we had spoken dur- 
 ing the first look down into the valley and had 
 thought that we understood, had real content 
 now. We knew that they belonged together and 
 that one covered the other and changed its 
 meaning. 
 
 [218] 
 
XII 
 
 The End of the Adventure 
 
 IT was April when we returned to Silver 
 Lake. Spring was walking on the desert. 
 The sand and the stony mesas were decked 
 with flowers. Great patches of California-pop- 
 pies bent on hairlike, invisible stems before the 
 wind, little floating golden cups. Blue lupins, 
 like spires of larkspur, glistened in the sun. A 
 four-petaled, waxy flower with a shining, satiny 
 texture spread in masses on the sand. Daisies 
 with yellow centers and lavender petals clustered 
 beside rocks. A little plant like the beginnings 
 of a wild rose tossed tiny pink balloons in the 
 air. The shoots of the purple verbena ran over 
 the ground, sending up little stems to hold its 
 many-floretted crowns. Even the thorny cactus 
 bloomed with a crimson, poppy-shaped flower. 
 When we went on excursions to the mountains 
 the bayonet-leaves of the yucca guarded tall 
 
 [219] 
 
White Heart of Mojave 
 
 spikes which bore aloft white, shining blos- 
 soms, and the grotesque branches of the Joshua 
 palms were tipped with brightness like lighted 
 candles. Everj^vhere high clumps of yellow 
 coreopsis rivaled the sun. Beyond the dry lake 
 at the base of the sand-ridge which had been so 
 terrifying on our first drive through the desert 
 stood stately Easter lilies hung with great white 
 bells. Easter morning we went over there and 
 gathered armfuls for our kind German hosts. 
 Their house and ours were abloom during our 
 stay, for we could no more resist gathering these 
 amazing flowers than we could resist picking up 
 the many-colored stones. Every dish and bowl 
 was full and tin cans rescued from the dump 
 were promoted to be vases. 
 
 The gallant little flowers in such a stern envi- 
 ronment! They were touchingly lovely, bloom- 
 ing wherever they had the smallest chance and 
 looking trustingly at the sun. It was as though 
 we had never seen flowers before, never really 
 seen them. 
 
 Indeed, until we went on pilgrimage to the 
 White Heart, we had never seen the outdoors, 
 
 [220] 
 
The End of the Adventure 
 
 never really seen it. How could we not see it 
 when the outdoors is always on the doorstep? 
 We had thought we saw it, we had talked about 
 it, a place for pleasant dalliance when work in- 
 side the walls was done, or a sort of glorified 
 gymnasium to make the blood race and the heart 
 beat faster. The outdoors is the awe-full, mag- 
 nificent universe moving along, inexpressibly 
 fearful and beautiful! 
 
 And we might have seen it anywhere! The 
 drama is always going on with its terror and 
 beauty. The gentlest countryside is a part of it. 
 Everywhere the grim touches hands with the 
 fair, storm alternates with calm, flowers grow 
 out of death, and the fairness, the calm and the 
 flowers are the stronger. Poets and artists know 
 this when they step across their thresholds in 
 the morning — whence their unreasonable joy at 
 being alive — but most of us have to be shaken 
 awake before we can see what is in front of our 
 eyes. 
 
 The desert shook us awake. We had come 
 looking for mysteries and "terrible fascinations" 
 and found only the mystery of the old outdoors 
 
 [221] 
 
White Heart of Mojave 
 
 and the terrible fascination of the old outdoors. 
 Beauty pressing around sorrow — the desert is 
 simply a very forceful statement about that. 
 
 For the adventure with the outdoors is the 
 adventure with beauty. And when you have that 
 adventure the jealous walls, however engrossing 
 their contents, and they may be very interesting 
 and amusing and serious and exciting, can 
 never bully you again. They have doors and 
 windows in them and beauty is around them like 
 a garment. You and I, unaccountably split off 
 from the vast drama and blessedly able to be 
 aware of it for a little while, shall we let the din 
 and bother inside the walls, the frantic lunging 
 at the still face of time, raise such a dust in our 
 eyes that we cannot see? 
 
 ''Beauty is truth, truth beauty — that is all 
 Ye know on earth and all ye need to know." 
 
 Every day while we rested at Silver Lake we 
 looked the length of the barren lake bed to the 
 bright mirage at the base of the black mountain 
 that was no mountain at all, and northward over 
 sandy emptiness to the enchanted pathway lead- 
 
 [222] 
 
The End of the Adventure 
 
 ing behind the Avawatz. Fourteen of the still, 
 bright days of the desert were strung on the end- 
 less string before we had to say good-by to our 
 hosts and to the Worrier. 
 
 Never can we forget any of the people whom 
 we met during our adventure with the outdoors, 
 neither the few whom we have mentioned in this 
 inadequate telling of it, nor the many whom we 
 have not. They were all unfailingly kind. It 
 was very hard to part from our guide, and noth- 
 ing reconciled us to it except his cheerful prom- 
 ise to act as Official Worrier again. Our host- 
 ess invited us to come any time and stay as long 
 as we liked, an invitation of which we have 
 gladly availed ourselves. 
 
 We piled our baggage into the automobile, 
 abandoned so long at Silver Lake, and through 
 a whole sunny day drove away from the White 
 Heart. The dim road led past sinister little 
 craters that long ago spilled ugly, black lava 
 over the hills, through acres and acres of blue 
 lupins blown to waves like a sea, across two 
 ranges of enchanted mountains arxd down into 
 and over the white Ivanpah Valley where the 
 
 [223] 
 
White Heart of Mojave 
 
 heavy sand made the engine boil. Several times 
 we left the car to w^alk on the savage, torn-up 
 hills made gentle by flowers. When the noise 
 of the engine w^as hushed the silence was full of 
 the singing of birds. 
 
 In the rose and orange of evening we reached 
 Needles on the bank of the red Colorado River, 
 and came out of the wild and lonely place onto 
 the great highway that joins the Atlantic and 
 the Pacific. The sand and rock trail follows 
 the steel road of the Santa Fe . Transcontinental 
 trains roar past and pennants flutter on automo- 
 biles from Maine and Florida, Michigan and 
 Texas, Oregon and California. Dust clouds 
 roll over the edge of Mojave as America goes 
 by. Some travelers look at her curiously, some 
 look longingly, some shudder, some pass with 
 the window shades pulled down. All the time 
 she is singing on her rosy mountain-tops and in 
 her deep, hot valleys where the blaze of the sun 
 is white. 
 
 [224] 
 
APPENDIX 
 
 ". . . That part of California which lies to the 
 south and east of the southern inosculation of the 
 Coast Range and the Sierra comprises an area of 
 fully 50,000 sq.m. For the most part it is exces- 
 sively dry and barren. The Mohave Desert — em- 
 bracing Kern, Los Angeles and San Bernardino, as 
 also a large part of San Diego, Imperial and River- 
 side counties — belong to the 'Great Basin.' . . . 
 The Mohave Desert is about 2,000 ft. above the 
 sea in general altitude. The southern part of the 
 Great Basin region is vaguely designated the Colo- 
 rado desert. In San Diego, Imperial and Riverside 
 counties a number of creeks or so called rivers, with 
 beds that are normally dry, flow centrally toward 
 the desert of Salton Sink or 'Sea' ; this is the lowest 
 part of a large area that is depressed below the 
 level of the sea, at Salton 263 ft., and 287 ft. at 
 the lowest point. In 1900 the Colorado River 
 (q.v. ) was tapped south of the Mexican boundary 
 for water wherewith to irrigate land in the Imperial 
 Valley along the Southern Pacific Railway, adjoin- 
 
 [225] 
 
White Heart of Mojave 
 
 ing Salton Sea. The river enlarged the Canal, and 
 finding a steeper gradient than that to its mouth, 
 was diverted into the Colorado Desert, flooding 
 Salton Sea, and when the break in this river was 
 closed for the second time in February, 1907, 
 though much of its water still escaped through 
 minor channels and by seepage, a lake more than 
 400 sq.m. in area was left. A permanent 60 ft. 
 masonry dam was completed in July, 1907. 
 
 ". . . Death Valley surpasses for combined heat 
 and aridity any meteorological stations on earth 
 where regular observations are taken, although for 
 extremes of heat it is exceeded by places in the 
 Colorado desert. The minimum daily temperature 
 in summer is rarely below 70° F. and often above 
 96° F. (in the shade), while the maximum may for 
 days in succession be as high as 120° F. A record 
 of six months ( 1891 ) showed an average daily rela- 
 tive humidity sometimes falls to 5. Yet the sur- 
 rounding country is not devoid of vegetation. The 
 hills are very fertile when irrigated, and the wet 
 season develops a variety of perennial herbs, shrubs 
 and annuals." 
 
 The Encyclopaedia Britannica: "California." 
 "It is often said that America has no real des- 
 erts. This is true in the sense that there are no 
 
 [226] 
 
Appendix 
 
 regions such as are found in Asia and Africa where 
 one can travel a hundred miles at a stretch and 
 scarcely see a sign of vegetation — nothing but barren 
 gravel, graceful, wavy sand dunes, hard, wind-swept 
 clay, or still harder rock salt broken into rough 
 blocks with upturned edges. In the broader sense 
 of the term, however, America has an abundance of 
 deserts — regions which bear a thin cover of bushy 
 vegetation but are too dry for agriculture without 
 irrigation. ... In the United States the deserts 
 lie almost wholly between the Sierra Nevada and 
 the Rocky Mountain ranges, which keep out any 
 moisture that might come from either the west or 
 the east. Beginning on the north with the sage- 
 brush plateau of southern Washington, the desert 
 expands to a width of seven hundred miles in the 
 gray, sage-covered basins of Nevada and Utah. In 
 southern California and Arizona the sagebrush 
 gives place to smaller forms like the salt-bush, and 
 the desert assumes a sterner aspect. Next comes 
 the cactus desert extending from Arizona far south 
 into Mexico. One of the notable features of the 
 desert is the extreme heat of certain portions. Close 
 to the Nevada border in southern California, Death 
 Valley, 250 feet below sea-level, is the hottest place 
 in America. There alone among the American 
 
 [227] 
 
White Heart of Mojave 
 
 regions familiar to the writer does one have the 
 feeling of intense, overpowering aridity which pre- 
 vails so often in the deserts of Arabia and Central 
 Asia. Some years ago a Weather Bureau ther- 
 mometer was installed in Death Valley at Furnace 
 Creek, where the only flowing water in more than a 
 hundred miles supports a depressing little ranch. 
 There one or two white men, helped by a few In- 
 dians, raise alfalfa, which they sell at exorbitant 
 prices to deluded prospectors searching for riches 
 which they never find. Though the terrible heat 
 ruins the health of the white men in a year or two, 
 so that they have to move away, they have suc- 
 ceeded in keeping a thermometer record for some 
 years. No other properly exposed out-of-door ther- 
 mometer in the United States, or perhaps in the 
 world. Is so familiar with a temperature of loo ° F. 
 or more. During the period of not quite fifteen 
 hundred days from the spring of 19 ii to May, 
 1 91 5, a maximum temperature of 100° F. or more 
 was reached in five hundred and forty-eight days, 
 or more than one-third of the time. On July 10, 
 1913, the mercury rose to 134° F. and touched the 
 top of the tube. How much higher it might have 
 gone no one can tell. That day marks the limit of 
 temperature yet reached in this country according 
 
 [228] 
 
Appendix 
 
 to official records. In the summer of 19 14 there 
 was one night when the thermometer dropped only 
 to 114° F., having been 128° F. at noon. The 
 branches of a pepper-tree whose roots had been 
 freshly watered wilted as a flower wilts when broken 
 from the stalk." 
 
 — The Chronicles of America. — Volume I. 
 "The Red Man's Continent," by Ells- 
 worth Huntington. 
 
 [229] 
 
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