Democratic Sentinel, Volume 16, Number 8, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 11 March 1892 — GREAT AMERICAN DESERT. [ARTICLE]

GREAT AMERICAN DESERT.

One of the Strange Corners of Our Country—lts Sad Record. The Great American Desert was almost better known a generation ago than it was to-day. Then thousands of the hardy Argonauts on their way to Calij .lorniu had traversed that fearful waste jon foot with their dawdling ox-teams, und hundreds of them left their bones to bleach in that thirsty land. The survivors of thoso deadly journoys had a very vivid idea of wlmt that desert was; but now that wo can roll across it in less than a day in Pullman palace cars, its real—and still existing—horrors are largely forgotten. I have walkod its hideous length alone aud wounded, and realize something more of it from that than a groat many railroad journeys across it have told me. Now overy transcontinental railroad crosses the great desort whioh stretches up and down tho continent, west of the Rocky Mountains, for nearly two thousand miles. The northorn routes out its least terrible parts; but the two railroads, whioh traverse its southern half—the Atlantic and Paoifio Railroad and the Southern Pacifio pioreo somo of its grimmest recesses. The first scientific exploration of this region was Lieutenant Wheeler’s United States survey about 1850; and ho was first to give scientific nssurauco that wo lmd here a desert as absoluto as tho Sahara. If Us parched sands could » speak their reoord, what a story they might tell of sufferings and death; of slow-plodding caravans, whose patient oxen lifted their feet ceaselessly from tho blistoring gravel; of drawn human faces that peered at some lying imago of a placid lake, and tolled,frantically on to sink at hist, hopeless and strengthless, in tho hot dust which the mirago had painted with tho hues and the very waves of water. No one will ovor know how many havo yiolded to tho long sleep in that inhospitable Innd. Not a year passes even now without record of many dying upon that desalt, and of many more who wander back, in a delirium of thirst. Even peoplo at tho railroad station sometimes rove off, lured by tho strange fasojmvtion of the desort, and never oome back; and of tho udventurous miners who seek to probe the golden Rocrets of thoso barren and si range-hued ranges, there ure countless victims. A desort is not necessarily an endless, level waste of burning sand. The Great American Desert is full of strange,burnt, ragged mountain ranges, with deceptive, sloping broad valleys between —though ns we near its southern end tho mountains become somowhat loss numerous, und tho sandy wastes more prominent. There nro many extinct volcanoes upon it, hundreds of squaro miles of black, bristling lava-flows. A large part of it is sparsely clothed with the hardy greasewood; but In places not a plant of any sort breaks tho surfaoo, as far as the eye can reach. Tho summer heat is unbearable, often returning 136 degrees in the shade; and a piece of motul which has boon in tho sun can no more bo handled than tv rod-lmt Btiive. Even in winter the mid-day heat is insufferable, while at night ice frequently forms on the watertanks. Tho daily range of temperature there is said to be the greatest over receded anywhere; and a change of 80 degrees in a few hours is not rare.—[St. Nicholas.