a seven hours'-journey. On the morning of train-day our bed-rolls and
duffle-bags on the station-platform, and ourselves getting into the
coach in knickerbockers and tough, high shoes created more excitement
than Silver Lake had known for some time. 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 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 conductor, 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 smoking-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 off at
Zabrisky and such places, where it is hard to see that a town exists.
The younger men, and the more prosperous looking in business-suits were
mostly bound for Tonopah, 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 prospects, the booms of Goldfield
and Tonopah, speculation in mining-shares, the slump after the 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 anything. 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 mountains. 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 leaving 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, mountainous
masses, a forbidding and stern land.
[Illustration: BEATTY, AT THE BASE OF A BIG RED MOUNTAIN]
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 appearance
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. Distant outlines stand out
boldly, and every little shining rock and bush is set firmly down.
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 dismantled and the van has not come. The landlady apologized for the
accommodations which, however, were excellent.
"We used to keep it up real nice before mining slumped," she said, "but
now there is prohibition, 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 ordinary
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 nothing 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. Moreover, 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 vegetables
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 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 worrying. 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 monumental 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 forcibly
forbidden to do so. They were added to the topmost peak.
For two days all Beatty, from the leading citizen 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 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 contained in one
frail wagon. In half an hour the desert claimed us. The sun that loves
the desert clothed it in colored garments.
V
_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 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 converged 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
corrugated-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 instrument,
making harmonics of violet and brown and 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 demonstrated. 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 the midst of a changing
pageant. Soon Ryolite 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.
[Illustration: THE OUTFIT]
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
exertion 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 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 bitter 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 bottom of a wash, lugged down
the bits of firewood 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 burros. 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, twitching 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
tranquilizing 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 morning 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. Charlotte 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 an unexpected
crash of orchestral music, lay the terrible valley, the beautiful, the
overwhelming valley.
The Official Worrier stopped the wagon. 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 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 thrilling repose, that
patience, that terror and beauty as part of the impassive, splendid
life that always compasses our turbulent littleness around. Before
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 produce 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 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 unfamiliar
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 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 mountains and the valley were named
because of tragedies down on that white floor during pioneering and
prospecting days. It is impossible to get the details of the stories
from the old-timers, each has a different version and no one is very
clear even about his own. One story is of a party of emigrants, men,
women, and children, on the way to the gold-fields with all their
household goods, who entered the valley by mistake 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 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 we 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
particular 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 continue the eastern wall of the valley. This wall is
from five to six thousand feet high, jutting into the basin in great
promontories as mountains 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 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 promontory 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. Unfamiliar
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 unbearably
heavy. Every resting-time was spent in trying to decide which ones to
throw away, but as we could not possibly throw one away on the same
day that we picked it up, this was a fruitless 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 described 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 dazzlingly. It was probably no hotter
than it had been at Saratoga, but the reflection of light from the
immense white bottom of the valley was an almost unbearable brightness.