Death Valley is the most barren part of the Great American
Desert. More men have died in its arid wastes than on any
other equal area of the world’s surface, barring the great
battle-fields. It lies, a great sink in the sandy plain, about
250 miles north and east of Los Angeles, Cal., and within the
boundaries of that State. The valley received its sinister
name owing to the fact that in the early fifties a party of
emigrants, some hundred and twenty in number, traveling overland
by wagon from Salt Lake City, Utah, to Los Angeles, perished in
its awful solitudes, barely a man escaping.
In the _Wide World Magazine_ is given the story of a man
who, alone and unaided, conquered Death Valley in the hottest
month of the desert year. The tale of awful suffering endured by
this man, H. W. Manton, of Rhyolite, Cal., is told for the first
time in his own words.
For almost a week Manton was lost in the heart of Death Valley.
In three days he tramped eighty miles over sands so hot that he
could scarcely walk on them, tho shod with heavy shoes. During
those never-ending days he had no food, and but one drink of
water.
When he staggered up to Cub Lee’s Furnace Creek ranch, more dead
than alive, his tongue was swollen to such a size that his mouth
could no longer contain it. His lips and eyelids were cracked
open; his clothing was in tatters, and his shoes were coated
with a heavy incrustation of borax and other alkalines, which
had eaten great holes in the leather.
At first he could not drink, and the touch of water was as fire
to his parched lips and tongue. Kind-hearted ranchmen and miners
forced the precious fluid into his mouth with a straw, with a
spoon--any way to get him revived. And eventually he spoke,
telling the strange story of his crossing the dread pit; of
how he had wandered therein for many days, with no companions
save the lizards and the snakes of the barren sands.--Boston
_Transcript_.
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