IN MINERS MIRAGE-LAND 
 
To the courtesy of the editors of the Los Angeles "Times" and the 
 San Francisco "Chronicle" in which publications many of these sketches 
 have already seen print is due their reappearance in more permanent form. 
 
^\BRA^ 
 o- r ,e 
 
 UNIVtKSITY 
 
 or 
 
In Miners 9 Mirage-Land 
 
 by 
 
 Idah Meachom Strobridge 
 
 LOS ANGELES 
 MCMIV 
 
Copyright, 19O4, by 
 Idah Meacham Strobridge 
 
 Printed by the 
 
 Baumga^rdt Pvibllshlng Compevrvy 
 
 Los Angeles, California. 
 
Of this autographed edition of 
 In Miners Mirage-Land," one 
 thousand copies were made; this 
 one being number 
 
 RTEMISIA 
 
 AT TWO THIRTY-ONE EAST AVENUE FORTY-ONE, IN LOS ANGEL 
 
TO THE MEN OF THE DESERT; 
 but more especially those miners who 
 have grown gray while waiting for 
 their dreams to come true, I dedicate 
 these stories that I found in that land 
 where I, too, dreamed dreams. 
 
FOREWORD 
 
 "The palpable sense of mystery in the Desert air 
 breeds fables, chiefly of lost treasure. Somewhere 
 within its stark borders, if one believes report, is a hill 
 strewn with nuggets ; one seamed with virgin silver ; an 
 old clayey water-bed where Indians scooped up earth 
 to make cooking pots and shaped them reeking with 
 grains of gold. Old miners drifting about the Desert 
 edges, weathered into the semblance of the tawny hills, 
 will tell you tales like these convincingly. After a 
 little sojourn in that land you will believe them on your 
 own account." 
 
 MARY AUSTIN, 
 In "The Land of Little Rain." 
 
Mirages of the Desert, 
 
MIRAGES OF THE DESERT. 
 
 jWAY back in the old days when the slow- 
 moving ox team dragged its weary way, 
 foot by foot, over the alkali flats and the 
 long streatches of sun-baked soil, where 
 the only growth was the gray sage and 
 the greasewood away back in those far 
 days the mirage, that Lorelei of the Desert, was there 
 to lure men on to their destruction. 
 
 Great lakes of shining water, where little waves ran 
 up to lap the shore ; wide fields of clover and blue grass, 
 that looked so green and cool under the burning sun; 
 forests which reached miles away in a tangle of vine 
 and tree those were the visions that the Siren of the 
 Dry Lakes showed to the water-starved emigrant of 
 old, and beckoning led him on and on, in the pursuit 
 of the unreal, until the picture grew fainter and fainter, 
 and at last down the diminishing perspective of the 
 vision as he looked he saw it fade away. The grassy 
 fields where the oxen might have fed, the sparkling 
 waters at which they might have drunk, the broad- 
 leafed shade under which man and beast might have 
 found refreshing rest, were gone ! A tantalizing glimpse 
 of Paradise in the great and awful desolation of those 
 Desert days. 
 
 Many a poor traveler, led far astray by following the 
 ever-calling, ever-retreating enchantress, has laid down 
 
 Mirages 
 of 
 the 
 Desert* 
 
In Miners Mirage-Land 
 
 Mirages 
 of 
 the 
 Desert, 
 
 at last to die alone in that vast waste, where his bones 
 must bleach in the sun, and his dust must become the 
 sport of the winds of the Desert. 
 
 I can recall instances innumerable of emigrant trains 
 deceived by the mirage and led far out of their course, 
 in the hope of reaching the lakes of water that looked 
 so deep and pure. 
 
 Down through the valley of the Humboldt, in that 
 part of the great American Sahara which the old emi 
 grant knew so well, they traveled they whose faces 
 were set toward the land of gold and the setting sun. 
 And there, as they passed along the banks of the long 
 and tortuous Humboldt, they were told a fable that was 
 believed by many a wayfarer of the early days; that, 
 except fish could be seen swimming about, the waters of 
 the river were poisonous if one drank of them deeply. 
 So people became afraid of it, and went far out of their 
 route to avoid, if possible, drinking the fatal waters of 
 the " River of Death," as it came to be called. Then, 
 when alluring lakes and ponds, and lovely forests and 
 fields spread out, a picture of enchantment before their 
 gaze, is it any wonder that they eagerly hurried onward 
 toward the prospect held out so invitingly toward 
 them? 
 
 Only those who have suffered like disappointment 
 can imagine the despair of beholding such a vision 
 dissolve into thin air palpitating in heat waves over 
 the wide plain as far as the eye could see, only a 
 shimmering haze. 
 
 The mirage is, in very truth, a part of the Desert 
 itself just as the sagebrush, and the coyote, and the 
 little horned toads, and the sand-storms are part. To 
 those who know Desert-land, the picture would be in 
 complete without them. 
 
In Miners Mirage-Land 
 
 Perhaps the commonest form the mirage assumes is 
 that of bodies of water from tiny ponds only a few 
 feet across, to great lakes so broad that the farther shore 
 seems beyond the range of vision. I have seen such 
 lakes under the heat of mid-day sun when the quiver 
 ing air gave them the appearance of crested waves, so 
 like those of reality that were it not for my acquaint 
 ance with the topography of the country, as well as the 
 knowledge that I had of the strange forms the mirage 
 takes, I should have felt tempted to believe in their 
 tangibility. 
 
 In a few instances I have seen small boats on the sur 
 face, the reflection of them in the water being in perfect 
 mimicry of nature s mirroring; and on one occasion, a 
 great ship under full sail though mistily seen, and 
 seemingly far rose and fell with the swell of the waves. 
 
 Such of these as I myself have seen, have always 
 appeared near the centre of some large alkali flat, where, 
 upon almost any hot spring or summer day, small 
 bodies of water may be seen reflecting the heavens with 
 a deeper blue than the sky was ever known to wear. 
 Sometimes, on the far side of these ponds you may see 
 
 a wavering border of what? You look, and look 
 
 yet again ; and still you cannot tell what strange things 
 they may be. Not trees; not human beings; neither 
 are they creatures of the earth, nor of the air, that are 
 moving on the opposite shore. It is something unreal, 
 the presence of which you feel, but cannot explain; 
 something you watch with a delighted fascination; 
 something exquisitely intangible, like the dream of a 
 dream, and as impossible to describe. It must be seen 
 to be understood; no writer s pen, no painter s brush 
 can faithfully portray it. 
 
 Early Spring mornings, when the sun rising from 
 behind the purple range of mountains, still cold and 
 
 Mirages 
 of 
 the 
 Desert, 
 
In Miners Mirage-Land 
 
 Mirages 
 of 
 the 
 Desert, 
 
 dark on its western slope, has filled the valley with 
 a soft, golden glow, and lighted the mountains across 
 the way till they begin to take on that delicate tint 
 which only early morning gives, then far down in the 
 valley where the East Range rises up at the left of 
 the southern gateway, the mirage runs riot with its 
 fantastic fashioning. 
 
 The mountains alter their outlines so rapidly that 
 the eye can scarce note all their changes. They change 
 Tom great heights to a low chain of hills; and leap 
 Dack again, to shoot in spires innumerable into the 
 violet sky, or drop into a long, flat table-land with 
 overhanging top; while, above in the air here and 
 there float elongated islands that but a moment before 
 were a part of the mountains beneath mountains that 
 are being pierced by gigantic caverns through which 
 the sky can be seen. Then they disappear, and island 
 and table-land once more unite ; and again a myriad of 
 pinnacles lift themselves from the mass of changing 
 panorama, and the slender shafts reach far into the sky. 
 Then even as you are watching one by one they dis 
 solve, and the mountains have resumed their wonted 
 shapes. 
 
 Farther down the valley (for this is a particular 
 valley I know, that I am describing here, and for more 
 than a score of years it was my home ; and in my heart 
 I have named it the only Home I have for we loved 
 each other, the Desert and I) before the days of track 
 and train there was a station built for the accommoda 
 tion of passing teamsters. The building had been con 
 structed of time-stained lumber, torn out of the old 
 houses of deserted mining camps in the adjacent moun 
 tains. The small, dull-toned, unpainted cabin stood, 
 uncompromising in its plainness, in the midst of a broad, 
 staring, white alkali flat, where the owner of the sta- 
 
In Miners 9 Mirage-Land 
 
 tion had previously assured himself of a sufficient water 
 supply. For the establishing of such stations depends 
 largely upon one s being able to obtain an unfailing if 
 only fairly good supply of well water. And the lo 
 cation of this station here in the very centre of a 
 barren, snow-white flat was the result of his having 
 found the only place where water could be g;ot, by dig 
 ging for it, within a distance of forty miles. Travel to 
 and from the mines northward was increasing, and with 
 it came an increase in the station-man s sales; for he 
 not only had a "general merchandise store" though 
 of diminutive proportions and conducted what he was 
 pleased to call a "stable," but he set forth food for man 
 as well. With his success, came the knowledge that it 
 had created envy in the breast of another one who 
 would be a rival; for this other declared his inten 
 tion of erecting at the same point on the road the emi 
 grants traveled, a like establishment, and thus compet 
 ing with him for their custom. 
 
 Much bitter feeling was expressed, and many hot 
 words passed between them. Finally the station keep 
 er made a threat to kill the other man at sight should 
 he ever bring material there for the construction of a 
 rival house. Matters stood thus for some time, each 
 man waiting for some decisive move on the part of the 
 other. Then the one who claimed prior right to the lo 
 cation, taking his four-horse team, went in to Virginia 
 City for goods to replenish his stock, which 
 the fast increasing Idaho travel was reducing to a small 
 quantity. 
 
 On his return trip, when within a mile or two of home, 
 he suddenly noticed opposite his own plainly built 
 little cabin, a fine, large building of new lumber the 
 brightness of the fresh pine boards putting to shame his 
 own unpretentious and almost shabby-looking house. 
 
 Mirages 
 
 of 
 
 the 
 
 Desert, 
 
In Miners Mirage-Land 
 
 Mirages 
 
 of 
 
 the 
 
 Desert, 
 
 Enraged at the thought that his rival had taken such 
 an advantage as the week s absence had given him, he 
 reached back into the wagon, and got out his Henry 
 rifle. With the cocked weapon laid across his knees 
 revengeful and determined he waited impatiently for 
 the heavily laden team to draw near to the spot where 
 he was resolved that his threat, made weeks before, 
 should be put into execution. 
 
 There it stood ! A two-story house of unpainted pine ; 
 its gable to the road, its front door invitingly open, its 
 shutterless windows looking toward tne South, as if 
 watching his approach. 
 
 He saw it all as plainly as he saw his own poor little 
 home across the way; then when within less than a 
 hundred yards of it there was a shivering of the whole 
 scene, and the "opposition" station disappeared into 
 nothingness, leaving but the one building there the 
 small, solitary house that for several years thereafter 
 stood without rival on the alkali plain. 
 
 With the going of the larger building, went also the 
 station-keeper s desire for vengeance; and scarcely a 
 traveller ever stopped at his place afterward who did 
 not hear from him the story of the strange mirage. The 
 name "Mirage clung to the place, and finally it came 
 to be so christened by the railroad company whose lines 
 passed its door. A siding is there for waiting freights 
 that you glimpse as you flash by in a train made up of 
 "Pullmans;" but the railroad men when you ask 
 them will call it "My-ridge." Shadow pictures waver 
 about the place when the summer sun shines hot, but 
 the station built of new pine has never reappeared. 
 
 Some localities seem specially adapted to the condi 
 tions whih invite a mirage. I know of a bush a large 
 greasewood out near the middle of a certain smooth, 
 level flat that is over two miles broad and fully twice 
 
In Miners 9 Mirage-Land 
 
 as long, that during the summer months seems always 
 to be wrapped in the mystic mantle of a mirage. Some 
 times it has no definite shape, but always the mirage- 
 like effect is there. A road crosses this flat two hundred 
 yards away, and after I first observed the bush, I took 
 pains to notice it particularly, scarcely ever passing it 
 when the days were full of shimmering heat that it 
 did not take on some semblance of flesh and blood. So 
 repeatedly did this seem to occur that I came to call 
 it "My Ghost-Bush," and watched it with an interest 
 that was generally rewarded by having some apparently 
 living form evolve itself from the greasewood s scant 
 and ragged branches. 
 
 It is apt to make the shivers run up one s spine to see 
 a harmless looking bush, of a sudden, metamorphose 
 itself into a tall man, and see the man come striding 
 toward you with a long, swinging step ; and then while 
 you are still intently gazing, and wondering where he 
 could have sprung from on that barren Desert bit as 
 suddenly discover that he is walking away from you 
 and backwards, at that. An uncanny thing, you may 
 be sure ; yet one gets used to it, after a while, and to the 
 knowledge that, after all, it is only one of the many 
 Desert marvels. And dozens of times did I see this 
 great, gaunt man go striding across the level, white 
 plain, and then disappear as though touched by a magi 
 cian s wand, leaving the lone greasewood standing there 
 instead. Sometimes he seemed to be carrying a roll of 
 blankets on his shoulders, as some poor wayfarers in 
 Desert-land do ; and at other times one could have sworn 
 that he was visibly swinging a walking-stick as he 
 went. There were days when the bush, instead of stand 
 ing there so tall and thin, settled itself down into the 
 semblance of some heavier body; and then one could 
 see a sheep standing at the edge of a little pond as if 
 
 Mirages 
 
 of 
 
 the 
 
 Desert, 
 
In Miners Mirage-Land 
 
 Mirages 
 of 
 the 
 Desert. 
 
 nibbling at the grass that seemed to grow there. At 
 times, it would lift its head as though it looked at you ; 
 then as the shimmering of the heat waves increased, it 
 trotted away into the white glare of the summer sun 
 light, and was no more. Sometimes there were two ob 
 jects instead of one; but whether moving away across 
 the flat, or standing still by the little patch of imaginary 
 water, their movements were always identical if the 
 mirage was of two. 
 
 Once, I remember, it seemed to be an awkward, half- 
 grown girl that moved there; and the point of her big 
 gray shawl too big, by far, for her slim body 
 was trailing behind her on the ground. 
 
 There have been gulls ten or twelve seagulls walk 
 ing about in the shallow imaginary water, picking at 
 imaginary weeds. And once when there was a large 
 flock of them, and they began to melt into the ether, I 
 found that there were real gulls among them three of 
 them that had come far inland from their home by the 
 salt sea, going toward the Lake that is Salt. 
 
 But all of these things that were of the mirage-world 
 and without the breath of life, whether slim-built girl, 
 or the man who was of sturdier mould, or the sheep, or 
 the seagulls all had the trick of moving when I moved, 
 of standing still when I stood still. Then, when I had 
 driven past a certain point in the road, they invariably 
 dissolved, leaving only the heat glimmering across 
 the landscape, and the "ghost bush" there, quiet and 
 alone. 
 
 Once, in a rage at the mocking thing, I turned my 
 horses heads toward it, determined to drive onto it, 
 over it, and crush it down. It irritated me to feel that 
 I could not go by it there on the road without the sense 
 less bush taking unto itself the likeness of some living, 
 breathing thing. I drove hard and straight at it, and 
 
In Miners Mirage-Land 
 
 although there was not a particle of wind stirring the 
 stifling air, yet that miserable bush was swaying back 
 and forth as if waving defiance at me. Whipping up 
 my team, I drove over it, the "off" horse crushing more 
 than half its branches down to the ground. A shiver 
 that ran over me, in spite of the heat of that 
 Desert-day, for the thing had become so real to me as 
 a creature of life, that I almost expected it to shriek out 
 in pain as its crooked, misshapen branches cracked and 
 snapped under the hoofs of the horses. 
 
 It has never been my good fortune to meet any of the 
 old-fashioned ghosts that go up and down the earth 
 with rattling bones and a musty smell the kind that 
 leave a splotch of blood on everything they touch, but 
 I doubt if they are any more uncanny than a gray 
 wraith evolved out of a greasewood bush by the aid of 
 a mirage. 
 
 We do not always recognize a mirage as such when 
 we see one, or experience the "creepy" feeling that a 
 meeting with ghosts is supposed to engender. Among 
 the memories I have of things that were, in the gray 
 country, is one of driving along a dusty road on a 
 hot August day, and seeing some little distance ahead 
 of me, through a blur of dust that seemed to rise from 
 the road, a six-horse wagon driven by a man wearing 
 a red shirt. The wagon, which looked to be heavily 
 loaded with sacks of grain, appeared to have been once 
 painted a bright blue, and the running-gear an equally 
 vivid red colors now dulled by dust and time. A 
 cloud of fine, flour-like alkali arose about the wheels 
 and around the horses hoofs. 
 
 With my thoughts elsewhere, though with eyes upon 
 this not unusual sight upon the traveled roads of Desert- 
 land, I watched it for more than a quarter of an hour, 
 as it seemed to jolt and bump along its way. Although 
 
 Mirages 
 
 of 
 
 the 
 
 Desert, 
 
10 
 
 In Miners Mirage-Land 
 
 Mirages 
 
 of 
 
 the 
 
 Desert, 
 
 was driving rapidly that I might reach it and pass 
 it, and so be beyond the dust that seemed to be stirred 
 up by the wheels, and which would soon be floating 
 back and covering me, yet I did not seem to gain upon 
 it. Finally I noticed that it moved only as I did. Then, 
 when horses, and wagon, and driver, and the dust from 
 the powdered white earth had disappeared, I realized 
 that it had been but a mirage. Accustomed as I had 
 long been to seeing them in all their varying guises, not 
 for one instant had I suspected what it really was. I 
 have counted it among the most remarkable mirages 
 
 have ever known of, because its coloring was so 
 bright; the apparently new, vivid red shirt the man 
 wore was a quite unusual bit of mirage color. For 
 these Desert wraiths choose robes of dull grays, 
 or browns that are dull and dim; unless it may 
 be in the blue of sky and the water, or the green of grass 
 and the trees. 
 
 Then, I remember once seeing the red dress of a 
 woman reflected in a mirage that took the form of a 
 small and shallow pond that seemed to lie between that 
 part of a "dry lake" over which a road passed, along 
 which she was driving with a companion, and another 
 point half a mile away where I was driving along 
 another and parallel road. The bright color of 
 her dress, the man s darker clothing, the horses (one 
 black, the other white), the wagon, were all reflected 
 with wonderful exactitude in the simulated water. 
 These people I knew; and afterward; when speaking 
 to them about it, they too said they had seen the mirage 
 of the pond lying between us, and had remarked upon 
 the vividness with which my reflection was shown 
 there. Although we were such a distance apart, yet 
 each of us could see the movement of the horses feet 
 reflected in the water. Unlike the former mirage I had 
 
In Miners Mirage Land 
 
 seen where the red had shown with such brilliancy, here 
 the color was real only the reflection of the woman s 
 red dress in the mirage-lake being the unreality. 
 
 Of all the wonderful pictures painted by this artist 
 of the atmosphere and I have seen many there was 
 never one which in magnitude, in grandeur, in beauty 
 of form and tinting, even remotely approached one 
 which I witnessed in the spring of 1869. 
 
 It was about two hours after sunrise the magic time 
 the mirage chooses for its most ideal forms when I 
 happened to notice that the portion of Eugene Moun 
 tain known as the Woody Canon district was under 
 going one of those marvellous transformations so fre 
 quent in the rarified air and high altitude of that sec 
 tion. The change from the dull reddish hue of the rug 
 ged mountain to all of the loveliest tints that the mind 
 can imagine, was rapid. The early morning sun had 
 filled the valley with a warm yellow light, and one 
 seemed to be looking through a golden veil at the gigan 
 tic castle that fashioned itself from the mountain s 
 rocky top. Turrets, and round towers, and battlement- 
 ed walls; graceful arches, and windows, narrow and 
 long, were all there parts of a structure stupendously 
 magnificent in its beautiful gradations of color, violet, 
 purple and lightest rose. But even as with subdued 
 breath lest a sigh of delight or a word ever so softly 
 spoken might dispel it I watched its rare and exquisite 
 beauty, it faded away, and again the rough contour of 
 Eugene Mountain loomed up where the mystical, mythi 
 cal castle had been but a moment before. Such a gor 
 geous representation of magnificent architecture in such 
 beautiful coloring never again was presented to the de 
 lighted quartette which witnessed that bewildering 
 fantasy of Nature. 
 
 Mirages 
 of 
 the 
 Desert* 
 
12 
 
 In Miners Mirage-Land 
 
 Mirages 
 
 of 
 
 the 
 
 Desert, 
 
 To those who know the Desert s heart, and through 
 years of closest intimacy have learned to love it in all 
 its moods, it has for them something that Is greater than 
 charm, more lasting than beauty, yet to which no man 
 can give a name. Speech is not needed, for they who are 
 elect to love these things understand one another with 
 out words; and the Desert speaks to them through its 
 silence. 
 
 To others those who need words and want people in 
 numbers the Desert is but a gray waste of sand and 
 sagebrush, lying in pitiful loneliness under a gray sky. 
 
 Utter desolation! To-day is like yesterday to-mor 
 row will be like to-day. The sun rises each morning 
 upon a scene which never alters, except when a change 
 is wrought by the mirage in its illusive, elusive mystery. 
 
THE MYTHS OF THE DESERT. 
 
 UT the Desert showed another mirage 
 than that! of grass-bordered water- 
 stretches, to the men who came a-search 
 for gold in the Days of Forty-Nine; so 
 that even to this hour some are still 
 striving to reach it, away out there in 
 the sand wastes. 
 
 The mines of old called men out of the East, to seek 
 a fortune in the State that borders the sunset sea. And 
 there they washed gold from the creek and river-bed 
 in quantities sufficient, one would think, to stay the 
 prospector s feet from wandering further. Yet many 
 there were who after crossing the plains were lured 
 back to sagebrush-land by the fabulous tales of gold 
 and silver there ; and so have lived more than a double 
 score of years in the land of the mirage, seeking some 
 mirage-mine. 
 
 Rich ledges in plenty are there, but not to the North 
 in the lava country. Some knew where to find them; 
 and the men who mined them have grown rich and gone 
 away. Of them I do not speak. My tales, instead, are 
 of those fanatical prospectors who are ever striving for 
 the rainbow s end in their quest for rainbow-gold. 
 
 Into the gray Desert (a land of gray sage, and gray 
 sand; of lizards, and little horned-toads that arc gray; 
 a land where the coyote drifts by you, like a fragment 
 
 Myths 
 of 
 the 
 Desert* 
 
In Miners Mirage-Land 
 
 Myths 
 
 of 
 
 the 
 
 Desert, 
 
 from gray fog-banks blown by the wind), half a cen 
 tury ago, they came the prospectors seeking silver 
 or gold. And some yet seek, in places where there is 
 none. Some are following the mirage still. 
 
 Once long ago my horse and I went away into the 
 mirage-land of these old miners ; and there I heard them 
 voice the stories of their hopes the dreams that they 
 believe will some day come true. By camp-fire smoke, 
 or in the dim light of sod cabins, I have sat in the silence 
 the Desert teaches, and have listened as they talked, 
 and believed while I listened. Yes, even believed; as 
 you, too, will believe if you hear from their own lips 
 the fables that seem so true during the hour you are 
 under the story-teller s charm, with no sound break 
 ing in save the crooning of the Desert wind or the cry 
 of a lone coyote. One must sleep well, and dream of 
 other things, before the coming of the time that will 
 bring disbelief. 
 
 They are only miners fables ; but they sounded true. 
 And for an evening and a day I believed them. And 
 I am glad I believed. If I had not if I had been a 
 doubter those hours would have lacked just what 
 makes them now among my dearest kept memories. 
 And if you, who read these re-told tales, are of those 
 who have heard the Voice of the Desert speaking, I 
 know you will understand. 
 
THE SECRET MINE OF THE BROWN MEN. 
 
 ;IDING for weeks up and down trails that 
 took me into canons and over roads that 
 crossed the alkali levels of the wide, still 
 I country tucked away under the northern 
 most shelter of Nevada, it was no difficult 
 mental process to put myself back half a 
 century in time s reckoning and feel that I was one of 
 those Desert voyagers of long ago. 
 
 As they saw it, so can we see it today; so little has 
 man disturbed the landscape. Nature s visible processes 
 are slow, and few people find their way here, for man 
 kind to make "improvements." The broad, far-reach 
 ing picture remains, as the still years slip by, mostly 
 unchanged. 
 
 On the earth s well-traveled roads you never saw 
 such pictures as these! Not only are they beautiful, 
 but they are different and all that implies! Look! 
 Under a summer sun s shimmering light, distance paints 
 the far ranges faintly in all the colors of the spectrum, 
 while the near mountains rise about you, gray and 
 grim. Over there is the blending of the mountain s 
 blue and violet tintings ; here a gray-banded cone rises, 
 its western side furrowed and seamed like an old fron 
 tiersman s face. Between, lie miles and miles of drab- 
 colored plain spotted with leper-patches of alkali 
 wide plains that reach from ridges of gaunt, gray slate 
 
 The 
 
 Secret 
 
 Mine 
 
 of 
 
 the 
 
 Brown 
 
 Men 
 
i6 
 
 In Miners 9 Mirage-Land 
 
 The 
 
 Secret 
 
 Mine 
 
 of 
 
 the 
 
 Brown 
 
 Men 
 
 to far-away hyacinthine hills. Someone tells you that 
 those distant ranges are red-brown when you reach 
 them ; but now they are a lovely, delicate mauve, veiled 
 as they are by the mists of distance. 
 
 And so, before you, day by day, as you go riding 
 away out of noisyland into the big silence, you find 
 thousands of pictures to delig-ht the eye and charm the 
 senses into a long-continued joy such joy as only the 
 Desert can give. 
 
 Turn your horse s head to the right, here! Ahead 
 of you are the foothills a double row of saffron- 
 colored buttes, each capped with outcroppings of 
 rough and craggy brown-black rocks. Ride over them, 
 and you will see fissures where, down in the cleavage, 
 are clay cliffs among buried coal cinders left by the 
 great conflagration. Higher, the mountain is striped 
 horizontal- wise in vivid coloring; each shade marked 
 in broad, glaring bands, bench above bench, with the 
 vigor and boldness of a painter who lays his colors on 
 with a pallette-knife. Rocks run riot In their medley 
 of coloring; striking indescribable. You lope your 
 horse along a "wash" leading down from the higher 
 slopes, thick strewn with brightness as a springtime 
 hillside in bloom. It is graveled with water-worn 
 pebbles, brilliant and of variegated shades, with here 
 and there big cobbles of the same. Not striped, not 
 mottled, not merely faint tints of coloring, but of a 
 uniform depth of rich purple, or blood-red, green, or 
 yellow, or blue every stone. So bright, and so many ! 
 Yet among them all is never a hint, so far as you can 
 see, of galena, iron pyrites, or mineral of any sort 
 minerals of value or valueless ones that might suggest 
 the proximity of others of real worth. In all your ex 
 perience you have never come across a district so bar 
 ren in its "indications." Yet among these van-tinted 
 
In Miners 9 Mirage-Land 
 
 mountains many a miner still is hunting for silver or 
 gold that he heard of in the long ago one of the many The 
 mythical mines that are believed in still. 
 
 Your eyes are never at rest, but go seeking new de- Secret 
 lights all the while, as you ride through the enchanted Mine 
 silence. Over there are vaporous mountains soft, vio- of 
 let visions of mystic regions far, far beyond; here is 
 all that is grotesque, freaks in color and formation. the 
 Such odd mountains, such fantastic hills, they are! Brown 
 Look at those lying northwest! Below, they are low Men 
 and smooth round buttes of lemon-yellow, shading 
 into a glaring ochre; back of them, and higher, rise 
 beetling crags that lift crests in battlement and turret, 
 all ebony or burnt umber. On the one hand, perhaps, 
 the hills are grimly gray ; on the other, they are wrapped 
 in wavering tints soft as the coloring on a wood-dove s 
 breast. 
 
 The delight of it all, the charm, grows on you as the 
 miles lengthen out; and you forget heat and fatigue 
 and the comforts you left back where civilization waits 
 your return. You only know that it is good vastly 
 good to live ! Just to feel yourself drawing the breath 
 of life is enough, while taking your outing in this far 
 away corner, where you seem to have the whole earth 
 and sky to yourself. What more would you? The big 
 gest, most beautiful of pictures make the rim of the 
 world here, to repeat themselves in wavering mirages 
 on the levels that lie within the circle of the skyline. 
 
 It is, in truth, a land of mirages ; but those you see dis 
 solving into the ether, as you draw close to their fanciful 
 outlines, are not the ones that were the lures bringing 
 many a traveler into this enchanted land. Scarcely 
 a day, riding through its length and breadth, did I jour 
 ney there that I did not hear tales of fairy- weave about 
 hidden gold of mines that men search for year in and 
 
i8 
 
 In Miners 9 Mirage-Land 
 
 The 
 
 Secret 
 
 Mine 
 
 of 
 
 the 
 
 Brown 
 
 Men 
 
 year out, never finding, but always expecting to find 
 tomorrow the next day next week or the week 
 after. They are always sure of standing on the very 
 brink of discovery. You look about you, you look at 
 them, and you wonder at their faith. To the average 
 prospector, there is nothing suggesting either gold or 
 silver thereabouts; yet among the old guard that 
 brought Nevada into prominence as a mining State, are 
 many who have grown old in the service they have given 
 a useless quest. Scarcely a canon of these rainbow- 
 ranges alternated with others of Desert-gray, that does 
 not have its story of a "lost mine." Dozens of such 
 have I listened to in that country. At nightfall when 
 we would sit outside the cabin door, an old man, 
 between puffs on his pipe, would tell a tale he fondly 
 believed ; or on some rainy day before a huge sagebrush 
 fire, have I hearkened as the story-teller poked at the 
 coals with a poker made from a miner s "spoon" ; or up 
 on the heights, while I sat in the saddle and leaned down 
 to some old prospector who declared his certainty that 
 those very mountain heights held the long unfounded 
 mine his very own. Mirage-mines are they; yet the 
 men who tell the myths, alas! believe them true. 
 
 One night, as the stars came out, after we had eaten 
 by the campfire s warmth, at a camp made on the edge 
 of one of the "dry lakes" in which the Desert abounds, 
 looking into the glow of the greasewood coals, I heard 
 this tale from one of its believers: 
 
 Years and years ago, over the California State-line, 
 Job Taylor kept a trading post in Indian Valley, He 
 was one of the earliest pioneers ; and after establishing 
 the post much frequented by Indians who sometimes 
 paid for their purchases in gold dust he was greatly 
 astonished one day at having payment tendered him, by 
 one of the Indians, in nuggets of extraordinary size. 
 
In Miners Mirage-Land 
 
 These, he declared (when relating the Incident after 
 ward), were as large as hen s eggs. The questions he 
 put to the Indian as to the locality where they were pro 
 cured, brought forth no answer. No satisfactory re 
 plies whatever were obtained from the brown man, who 
 hastened to get away. 
 
 The following year the same Indian came again to 
 the trading post; and again he offered nuggets of un 
 usual size in payment for his purchases. Again Taylor 
 importuned him to tell where they were found; but he 
 met with no satisfaction. It was not until a year later 
 that Taylor succeeded in making a sufficiently good im 
 pression on the Indian to encourage his confidence. 
 Then he said that, for a certain amount of goods from 
 the post, he would tell Taylor all he knew of the place; 
 and for a further consideration he would take him 
 there. The agreement being satisfactorily made, Capt. 
 Wetherell an old Indian fighter of experience was 
 induced to join them. Well equipped for such an un 
 dertaking, the three started out, setting their faces to 
 the east, to find the place that the Indian described as 
 containing so great a number of mammoth nuggets. 
 It was a creek, he said a fine stream filled with moun 
 tain trout, and sheltered in part by many trees. 
 
 From Indian Valley they went to Susanville, and 
 then keeping on the Honey Lake road camped one 
 night by the springs at Deep Hole. It was while they 
 were there that the Indian said to them: Two more 
 sleeps, and we get there! I know." 
 
 Just at that time the precise year I have forgotten- 
 old Winnemucca, chief of the Paiutes (he for whom the 
 town of Winnemucca was named), was camped on Gran 
 ite Creek Mountain ; and to him the Indian bore a mes 
 sage from some of his people, across the line in Cali 
 fornia. It was while they were at Deep Hole that the 
 
 The 
 
 Secret 
 
 Mine 
 
 of 
 
 the 
 
 Brown 
 
 Men 
 
20 
 
 In Miners Mirage-Land 
 
 The 
 
 Secret 
 
 Mine 
 
 of 
 
 the 
 
 Brown 
 
 Men 
 
 Indian said: "I got go see ol Winnemuc , an tell um 
 what them Injun say. You wait here. I come back 
 pretty quick." 
 
 On the following day he returned to them, downcast, 
 and the bearer of disheartening news. He had told the 
 old chief, he said, of their expedition, and Winnemucca 
 had become very angry he was "heap mad," he said. 
 Further, the chief declared he would have him killed if 
 he took these men farther on their quest; for he had 
 argued to the younger man if white men found gold 
 there, they would come in numbers so great as to 
 frighten away much of the game the deer, the ante 
 lope, and the mountain sheep on which the Indians 
 principally relied for subsistence. The Indian would 
 be the sufferer if the white man came ; in no wise would 
 he gain by their coming. Hence, the search must be 
 abandoned. 
 
 Entreaties threats promises bribes ! they all 
 availed nothing. The old man s edict was irrevocable, 
 so it would be useless for the white men to go to him 
 (as they discussed doing) for favor. The Indian him 
 self would do nothing more. That, under the changed 
 conditions, he would forfeit all the goods at the trad 
 ing post that he had bargained for, seemed, to him, a 
 matter of utter indifference. 
 
 So the two men made their way back to California; 
 and neither Captain Wetherell nor Job Taylor ever saw 
 the Indian again. Whether it was that the old chief had 
 given him orders to shun the White Man lest the secret 
 be wrested from him, or whether he had no more 
 gold to offer in exchange for clothing and food, no one 
 could say. Only of this were they sure; never again 
 did he come to the post. 
 
 However, the following year, a young Indian a mere 
 boy came with nuggets similar to those that had been 
 
In Miners 9 Mirage-Land 
 
 previously offered to Taylor. The boy had no hesita 
 tion in talking about them and said, in reply to his ques- The 
 tioners, that some of the old men of the tribe had gath 
 ered the gold, but that he, himself, had never seen the cret 
 
 place from whence it was obtained. They had told him, 
 he said, that he was yet too young to be shown the way 
 to the canon, though he had been taken by them to 
 other canons near by. But he declared that though he 
 had never seen the exact place, he had attentively lis- Brown 
 tened to the talk of his elders each time they returned Men 
 with treasure, when the whole camp had gathered about 
 in council as to the best method of disposing of it ; and 
 from their description of the canon, and his own knowl 
 edge of adjacent localities, he was sure he could find 
 the nuggets hiding place. 
 
 The white man made tempting inducements for the 
 boy to guide him to the spot; but he was reluctant to 
 do so. He repeated the declaration of the old men of 
 the tribe that he was "too young," and that they would 
 "get heap mad" should he take white men there. But, 
 finally, he admitted that he knew an old man who was 
 in disfavor with the rest of the tribe, who had gathered 
 some of the gold, and might be induced to act as 
 their guide. "I take you go see him," said the boy; 
 "then maybe he show you place. Him live by Deep 
 Hole." 
 
 Taylor, Wetherell and the boy set out; and over the 
 same road they had traveled when the older Indian 
 was guide. At Deep Hole, too, they found the old In 
 dian whom the boy declared they would find. They saw 
 him, but that was all. There was more to be desired 
 than the mere sight of the old gray-haired Indian,! 
 whom they believed to have taken nuggets from the; 
 
 Mine 
 
 of 
 
 the 
 
22 
 
 In Miners Mirage-Land 
 
 The 
 
 Secret 
 
 Mine 
 
 of 
 
 the 
 
 Brown 
 
 Men 
 
 unknown canon. Alien he might be from the rest of 
 the tribe, yet he was loyal to their interests. The eager 
 prospectors found him absolutely dumb when informa 
 tion was desired. He would give them no intelligent 
 answers whatever. To all questioning they got but 
 the stereotyped reply of the Indian who does not want 
 to talk: "Me no savvy. Me no know." Nor could 
 they get more than that from him through the two 
 days they lingered there for that purpose. Every ar 
 tifice to induce him to disclose his secret, failed. He 
 had evidently been impressed by the warning of Chief 
 Winnemucca; and tribal traditions constrained him to 
 silence. And when an Indian elects to keep closed lips, 
 the Sphinx is not more dumb. 
 
 Then the two men got the boy to one side, and stern 
 ly demanded some knowledge of the gold s locality. 
 The little fellow was frightened at the threatening man 
 ner Capt. Wetherell assumed, and half-cryingprom 
 ised to take them there if he could. He was far from 
 sure of the precise canon it might be, but he knew 
 of the locality, and had a general knowledge of the 
 mountain itself. He would make an effort he would 
 try maybe he could take them there; the things the 
 old Indians had told in his presence, when returning 
 to their camps with the great nuggets of gold, were not 
 forgotten, and these memories would be his guide?. 
 
 "Come on. I think may be so I fin it," he said; and 
 the journey was resumed. 
 
 Both men noticed that their route continued in 
 the same direction indicated by the other Indian as 
 being "two sleeps" further on. At the end of the first 
 of these two days of travel, while lying In their blan 
 kets at night, supposing the boy asleep, Capt. Weth- 
 
In Miners Mirage-Land 
 
 Mine 
 
 of 
 
 the 
 
 Brown 
 
 Men 
 
 erell said to Job Taylor: "If that Injun fails to show 
 us the place, I ll make short work of him!" It is to The 
 be doubted if the captain meant more than to express 
 his emphatic annoyance at the way their progress was 
 being discouraged by guides who deserted, and guides 
 who would give no information as to things one wanted 
 to know. But certainly the threat must have sounded 
 ominous enough to one small guide to warrant his de 
 sertion. For the captain s indiscretion cost him and 
 Taylor dear. Morning came; but the boy was gone. 
 
 Gone, as a whirlwind that dissolves itself in the 
 Desert! And the place, so far as they knew, nor the 
 men, ever knew him more. He had overheard the 
 threat ; and fearing, no doubt, that he might not suc 
 ceed in the search, and in terror of possible results, at 
 day-dawn he had put miles and miles between him and 
 the rough-spoken white man who had planted terror 
 in his young heart. 
 
 Frequent search was made afterward for the lost 
 Indian diggings, but they keep their secret still. There 
 is a canon a mile and a half east of Ebling s, in Virgin 
 Valley, in northeastern Humboldt county, that men 
 declare to be the one the Indians worked in days of 
 old. It is also believed by many to be the one where 
 the famous "Blue Bucket" gold was found. The tale 
 goes that these two lost placers are the same the 
 "Blue Bucket" mines, and those which the Indian has 
 always kept hidden from the White Man. 
 
 Though it is now impassable for wagons, yet the old 
 er Indians living there, say that, years and years ago, 
 when the first white men came into the country on their 
 way to the West, many of them passed down the nar 
 row and deep gorge above Ebling s, which though al- 
 
24 
 
 In Miners 9 Mirage-Land 
 
 The 
 
 Secret 
 
 Mine 
 
 of 
 
 the 
 
 Brown 
 
 Men 
 
 ways difficult, is now impossible to travel of any sort- 
 even passage on foot may be won only at great risk of 
 life or limb. No faintest trace of wagon road, nor even 
 the slightest mark of trail is there. During the last 
 forty years great masses of rock have been continually 
 falling, and have choked the way. The few of recent 
 years who have undertaken it afoot, have stories of un 
 counted hardships to tell. 
 
 It may be (if you choose to believe it so), that this 
 is truly the canon of the Indians secret diggings. It 
 may be that this is really the canon of the lost "Blue 
 Bucket" gold. It may be that these were, after all, 
 but mirage mines; but whatever the truth, the search 
 goes on goes on. 
 
THE CHARM OF THE DESERT. 
 
 likely such a tale seems absurd to 
 you, as you read it between the covers of 
 a book, the while surrounded by the 
 things that make a busy, people-full 
 world. But do not give voice to that dis 
 belief. Not even to yourself must you con 
 fess your own incredulity, lest it may prove a thorn in 
 the flesh if you should go into Desert ways some day. 
 For there may come to you some time a twilight hour 
 that shall find you in greasewood-land, and a guest at 
 the campfire of some one of those old prospectors whose 
 guest I, too, have been. Then he himself, you may be 
 sure, will tell you this story. He will tell it to you in al 
 most the very words I have used; but it will have a 
 quality which my own story-telling has not that of 
 carrying conviction to your heart. 
 
 For you will believe. Ay ! you will believe it is true ; 
 you will believe that there is a marvel of gold there 
 for the lucky one who is to find it. 
 
 There, at the end of day, by the drifting blue smoke 
 from the sagebrush campfire where he has boiled the 
 coffee that you will declare the best that was ever 
 brewed with the Desert s weirdness creeping up to 
 you with the dusk, while you eat of the strips of bacon 
 your host has cooked and the bread he has baked 
 in the ashes, you will gladly and greedily listen to the 
 
 The 
 
 Charm 
 
 of 
 
 the 
 
 Desert* 
 
26 
 
 In Miners 9 Mirage-Land 
 
 The 
 Charm 
 of 
 the 
 
 Desert, 
 
 story again. And then when you hear him tell it in 
 the way that he told it to me you will believe it true. 
 The charm of the Desert will be all about you ; the mys 
 tery of the Desert will move you in ways that you have 
 never known. Strange thoughts will be yours, of things 
 that in that strange land in your heart, you feel 
 might very well be. And of the truth of what you may 
 hear, you will not question. 
 
 There are those who have asked me: "What is the 
 charm of the Desert? What is there in the Desert that 
 makes you care for it so? What constitutes its hold 
 on those who have love for its solitude?" 
 
 I would answer the last question first. Its hold upon 
 its lovers is the very love they give. For to love is to 
 hold out one s wrists for the shackles to be snapped 
 thereon. It does not matter to what or to whom love 
 is given, it is so always. So I have answered you this 
 question. But, the others Its charm? And why does 
 one care? 
 
 How can one convey meaning to another in a lan 
 guage which that other does not understand? I can 
 only tell you the charm of the Desert, when you, too, 
 have learned to love it. And then there will be no need 
 for me to speak. 
 
 But this much I may say that you will understand: 
 In the Desert all things seem possible. If you ask me, 
 again, "Why?" then I cannot tell you; only I know 
 it is so. 
 
 Perhaps that accounts for the faith of the old pros 
 pectors. 
 
THE QUEST OP OLD MAN BERRY. 
 
 HE faith of the old prospectors ! There is 
 no other such blind faith in the world. 
 
 Take up your map of the Western 
 States. There, where the great Oregon 
 lava flow laps over the State line 
 of Nevada, in the northwestern corner, 
 lies the Black Rock country. Out there in that sweep 
 of gray sand and sage-levels, and grim heights the 
 scaling of which taxes the soul sorely, I found him 
 the typical prospector, "Old Man Berry," or "Uncle 
 Berry, they called him. Over eighty years old he was, 
 and for more than fifty years of his life led by the lure 
 of a mirage. 
 
 All day I had been traveling over alkali flats and 
 greasewood-covered mesas, to reach in late afternoon 
 the upper tablelands. They were dotted with moun 
 tain mahogany, and slashed with canons where streams 
 ran bordered with cottonwood and aspen. 
 
 It was already dusk when we began our descent of 
 one of the larger canons, and quite dark when we 
 stopped at the ranch-house doorway, through which the 
 lamplight streamed the friendliest sight a Desert way 
 farer ever "meets up with." 
 
 We had come upon one of those small ranches that 
 are tucked away in the heights, where old pros 
 pectors are as sure to drift to, when not out in the 
 
 The 
 
 Quest 
 
 of 
 
 Old 
 
 Man 
 
 Berry 
 
28 
 
 In Miners Mirage-Land 
 
 The 
 
 Quest 
 
 of 
 
 Old 
 
 Man 
 
 Berry 
 
 mountains with poll-pick and hammer, as though they 
 like the ranchman s collie or the cat curled up on 
 the bunk were among the assets of the place. 
 
 He was tall and spare gaunt, you would have called 
 him ; and you would have noticed at once how bowed he 
 was. But not as other old men on whom age has rested 
 a heavy hand. It was the head, not the back, that was 
 bowed as though he had walked long years, and 
 far, with his eyes upon the ground. When he lifted 
 them quickly looking directly into your own you 
 found they were bright and piercing, with a keenness 
 that belonged to a man forty years his junior; and you 
 felt that his sight reached away beyond to things not 
 of your reckoning. 
 
 We speak of beards that are "snow- white/ and 
 and usually it is a misapplied term. His was really 
 white as snow white as freshly fallen snow is white, 
 with thick and long hair to match. A patriarch of the 
 mountains, he; you would have declared. 
 
 Except as you noted his trembling hands, and saw 
 how heavily he leaned his weight against the staff he 
 carried as he walked, you did not feel he was old 
 rather it was as though, of his own choice, he wrapped 
 himself in a dignity of years wearing it as a monarch 
 wears his robes of state, in no wise to be counted as 
 the mark of flying Time. 
 
 Indeed, there was something royal about the old 
 man; and you might join the others (the ranch hands, 
 and the teamsters, and the cowboy crew) in good- 
 humored scoffing at the old man himself, as well as his 
 hobbies, when his back was turned. Yet, not you, nor 
 any man among them dared to jest ever so lightly to 
 his face. He commanded your respect. And you, too, 
 would have shown him the same deference as they did, 
 whenever he spoke. Somehow, one feels more or less 
 
In Miners Mirage-Land 
 
 a coward to try to disabuse a man of his faith in a thing 
 that he has believed in with all his soul for a lifetime. 
 So it is the kinder way, even as it is the easier way, 
 to listen as they tell of such things as you, perhaps, may 
 doubt. 
 
 That night, after the supper dishes had been cleared 
 away, and the others had gone out to sit in the dark 
 ness, and smoke, and talk over the day s work and the 
 plans for the morrow, while the crickets sang their 
 night-song to the stars, Old Man Berry and I sat by 
 the bare pine table, by the wind-blown flame of a flar 
 ing kerosene lamp, while he told me of his quest for a 
 mine he had been seeking for more than half a hun 
 dred years. 
 
 Back in the days of the young century when he had 
 crossed the plains, while camping at the point of 
 Black Rock, he had found a bit of "float." Small, it 
 was, but so rich in gold that it scarcely seemed real. 
 It was lying at the edge of the well-traveled road where 
 it almost touches the foothills. He looked about every 
 where for others of the same sort. That one wonder 
 ful nugget was all that he found. 
 
 The old man unfastened his shirt-front, and drew 
 from his breast a buckskin bag a crudely constructed 
 affair that bespoke his own handiwork. It hung sus 
 pended from his neck by a buckskin string. Old Man 
 Berry handled it as though it were something holy, 
 turning it over and over, as though weighing it. 
 Finally he untied the string, and turned the bag up 
 side down. The nugget struck heavily on the boards 
 of the table. It was a wonder! Enough, and more 
 than enough to drive any man mad with the gold fever. 
 
 "Nuggets like these don t just happen anywhere 
 as if they were made in the sky, and let fall," he said. 
 "They come from a ledge carried down to the flats 
 
In Miners 9 Mirage-Land 
 
 The 
 
 Quest 
 
 of 
 
 Old 
 
 Man 
 
 Berry 
 
 by the forces of Nature. They are like strangers down 
 there their home is in the mountains. This came 
 from the mountains the mountain back of Black 
 Rock. There is a ledge there somewhere. Where 
 in what canon or on what ridge? Maybe it is a long, 
 long way from there; for float travels a long way 
 sometimes. Where is it where? Where will I find 
 it, and when? But I will find it! I ll find it, so help 
 me God! Why, I have almost found it now almost, 
 but not quite. For I ve found a place that tallies with 
 the Frenchman s story, and what the Padre told. I 
 may find it next week; and it will be MINE! There 
 are tons and tons of gold like this, where this came 
 from." 
 
 He was talking fast and feverishly, and I saw he was 
 no longer talking to me, but rather thinking aloud. He 
 had forgotten me his surroundings everything, ex 
 cept the one thing he never forgot, sleeping or waking. 
 
 For a long time he sat there, turning his fetish over 
 and over in his knotty and weathered hands. I hardly 
 breathed as I watched him never moving, my eyes on 
 the nugget, too. Somehow I had caught sight of the 
 face of the Siren, and was one with him, for the time. 
 
 Suddenly he seemed to remember me, and he hastily 
 put the nugget back in the little bag, and slipped it 
 again into his breast. I could hear the men lazily talk 
 ing where they leaned back against the walls of the sod 
 house ; and an owl hooted over at the barn. The chirp 
 ing of the crickets sounded shriller than ever from their 
 cover in the tall weeds and nettles down by the creek. I 
 heard it all as in a dream. There was something unreal 
 in all the sounds. Nothing seemed real and believable, 
 except the sight of the nugget of virgin gold, and the 
 tale of Old Man Berry. 
 
 By and by, I heard him talking again telling me 
 
In Miners 9 Mirage-Land 
 
 how, at that time, he had ventured to stay in the coun 
 try for a few days, to prospect in the hope of finding 
 the ledge. Not for long, however ; for he dare not risk 
 the savages, or draw too heavily on his food supply 
 which was barely enough to see him through to Cali 
 fornia. The delay brought him no reward. He found 
 no ledge ; neither did he find any sign of mineral in all 
 the district. He was forced to abandon, for the time 
 being at least, his quest, and to push on to the sea. 
 Once there, however, he was impatient to get back; 
 and again he returned to the sagebrush country. Once 
 more his quest brought him nothing, and he was forced 
 to return to the coast. So he went back and forth be 
 tween the sea and the sagebrush; and finally he came 
 to stay. Now he had been here for so long, that he 
 could not count the years. And, anyway, what did it 
 matter? Few, or many, it was all the same to him. 
 
 "There are others reliable people, I d have you 
 know who know that there is gold here," he said. 
 Then he went on to tell me the Padre s story: 
 
 Away back in the years that were gone, a California 
 miner, while journeying through Mexico, took the op 
 portunity offered him by a Mexican friend, to examine 
 some of the old Spanish archives preserved there. The 
 friend had noted in what he had read, that gold had 
 been discovered in a locality that as he rightly 
 thought would be crossed by the old emigrant road. 
 Knowing this friend from the North was well ac 
 quainted with the country, he called his attention to it. 
 
 There recorded by a Padre long dead was an elab 
 orate account of a wonderful find of gold, made by the 
 Padre himself when he was a Desert-voyager through 
 a country hundreds of miles to the North, in what was 
 then Spanish possessions. The record gave latitude and 
 longitude of the place, and noted many important 
 
 The 
 
 Quest 
 
 of 
 
 Old 
 
 Man 
 
 Berry 
 
In Miners 9 Mirage-Land 
 
 The 
 
 Quest 
 
 of 
 
 Old 
 
 Man 
 
 Berry 
 
 landmarks, to guide the ones whom the Padre was to 
 lead there when he could organize an expedition. But 
 the Padre had fallen ill was sick unto death, and had 
 died. Yet not before he had made a map of the coun 
 try, and which was on record with the description of 
 his journey s discovery. 
 
 With these to assist him in his search, the miner 
 started on his northward way into the country of the 
 great plains. The Padre s description of certain boiling 
 springs which this miner found, and camped at for a 
 number of days, tallies precisely with that given by 
 Fremont in his journal. The latter says: 
 
 "The basin of the largest one has a circumference 
 of several hundred feet; but there is at one extremity 
 a circular space of about fifteen feet in diameter en 
 tirely occupied by boiling water. It boils up at irregu 
 lar intervals, and with much noise. The water is clear, 
 and the spring is deep. A pole about sixteen feet long 
 was easily immersed in the centre; but we had no 
 means of forming a good idea of its depth. It was sur 
 rounded on the margin with a border of green grass," 
 (the date of this entry was January) "and near the 
 shore the temperature of the water was 206 degrees. 
 We had no means of ascertaining that of the centre, 
 where the heat was greatest; but, by dispersing the 
 water with a pole, the temperature of the margin was 
 increased to 208 degrees, and in the centre it was doubt 
 less higher. By driving the pole towards the bottom, 
 the water was made to boil up with increased force 
 and noise. There are several other interesting places, 
 where water and smoke and gas escape, but they would 
 require a long description. The water is impregnated 
 with common salt, but not so much as to render it un 
 fit for general cooking; and a mixture of snow made 
 it pleasant to drink." 
 
In Miners 9 Mirage Land 
 
 33 
 
 Now the miner found the boiling springs that the 
 Padre found, and that Fremont tells of. The latitude 
 and longitude, as given by Fremont in his journal, is 
 precisely that given by the Padre. Then the record 
 of the Padre s travels tells how he went still farther 
 north, and to what is now the Oregon State line, or 
 very nearly so far. The miner and the companion 
 on the trip followed as their compass led, while 
 they neared the place where the holy father had seen 
 the fabulous gold ledge, along the Honey Lake Val 
 ley road, as far as Buffalo Springs in Northern Nevada. 
 There, their course took them away from the traveled 
 road, and they struck out across an unknown country, 
 going N. N-E. To Pueblo Mountain it led them not 
 so far north as the road that goes through High Rock 
 canon, though up to the mountain s very edge. 
 
 But of ledge they found no sign. Yet when leaving 
 there, the morning they were paqking up their camp 
 outfit, they found two small nuggets, which proved 
 that there was gold there ; and these nuggets were simi 
 lar in appearance to the large one Old Man Berry had 
 found. 
 
 How did they come there? "Uncle Berry" declared 
 that they had been carried away from Black Rock moun 
 tain by some prospector, who had lost them from his 
 pack while journeying farther north. Though why he 
 should say that, I don t know; for he believes that there 
 is a continuous ledge, over a hundred miles long, reach 
 ing from some point near Double Hot Springs, away 
 to Pueblo Mountain the Giant Ledge of the World! 
 
 So, though the nugget he had found and those found 
 by the miner lay that distance apart, yet Old Man 
 Berry declares they could only come from one and the 
 same ledge. 
 
 Then he reminded me that Pueblo Mountain was 
 
 The 
 
 Qwest 
 
 of 
 
 Old 
 
 Man 
 
 Berry 
 
34 
 
 In Miners 9 Mirage-Land 
 
 The 
 
 Quest 
 
 of 
 
 Old 
 
 Man 
 
 Berry 
 
 but a short distance from the place where Stoddard 
 had found nuggets in the " Three Little Lakes of Gold," 
 nor was it far from where the emigrants found the gold 
 that came from the "Blue Bucket Mines"; so that it 
 is easy to account for all the scattered bits of gold 
 found through the length and breadth of that barren 
 land. A mammoth ledge is there miles upon miles 
 wide, and hundreds of miles long but only in one or 
 two places does it show itself in croppings; and only 
 by the few nuggets that men have found, has it ever 
 made itself known. 
 
 Then the old man commenced telling of another 
 proof (he calls it) of his theory. Years ago, a French 
 man who was traveling eastward through Surprise 
 Valley, found a cave that was studded with gold. It 
 lies about forty miles distant from the California State 
 line. The Frenchman had gone in to seek shelter 
 from a storm. The day was cold, and it was snowing 
 bitterly, so that he built a fire of the roots and stumps 
 of sagebrush that he brought in from outside. As the 
 fire blazed up, and the light flooded the cavern, he 
 saw scattered over the floor great nuggets of gold that 
 shone in the fire-glow. The floor sloped away up to 
 the rear, where the cave narrowed to a mere slit in 
 the rock, and so barred a man from going farther. 
 Taking up a firebrand, he thrust his arm in there as 
 far as he could stretch it ; it lit up the farther recesses, 
 and he beheld there far beyond his reach innumer 
 able nuggets of the shining yellow metal. It seemed 
 unbelievable ! 
 
 From the floor of that portion where he stood, he 
 gathered all there were ; and these he tied up in a cot 
 ton flour-sack, and fastened behind his saddle when 
 he went away. The jogging motion of the horse, wore 
 a hole in the sack, and many of these (in fact, most of 
 
In Miners 9 Mirage-Land 
 
 35 
 
 them) he lost upon the way. When he missed them 
 he retraced his steps as nearly as he could, but the 
 drifting snow had covered up his horse s footprints 
 and he found none of those he had dropped. Some 
 however, remained in a corner of the sack that was 
 tied with the buckskin strings of his saddle. These, he 
 took with him to his home in Sacramento, where he 
 lived with a couple named Butler. He was exhausted 
 from the long trip, and ill from exposure. He became 
 desperately ill. Until he died, he was nursed by But 
 ler and his wife, to whom he gave the nuggets. And 
 to them he gave a detailed description of the locality 
 in which he found the wonder-cave of the Desert. He 
 described the formation of the cave as being of water- 
 worn pebbles and fine crumbled rock, embedded in a 
 formation similar to concrete. All through that dis 
 trict he had found great cliffs and many caves caves 
 of all sorts. Just about there, he found a number that 
 were in form like unto this one as of water- worn rock 
 that was burrowed full of holes. But in none of them, 
 except this particular one, did he find gold. Here, they 
 were either lying loose on the floor of the cave, or em 
 bedded in the soft rock, from which he dug many of 
 them with his penknife aiding the work by breaking 
 away the rock with a loose stone. 
 
 He gave the Butlers a rough chart he made of the 
 country. To the south, it showed the boiling springs 
 that Fremont and the Padre found; and the dotted 
 line he drew took one on the way to Pueblo Moun 
 tain. The Butlers went there, after their friend had 
 died; and they spent many a month in a useless quest. 
 But it did not lessen their belief that the cave of the 
 wonder-gold is there somewhere. They have the nug 
 gets still, and will show them to you as proof. 
 
 A dozen other instances did Old Man Berry tell me, 
 
 The 
 
 Quest 
 
 of 
 
 Old 
 
 Man 
 
 Berry 
 
In Miners Mirage-Land 
 
 The 
 
 Quest 
 
 of 
 
 Old 
 
 Man 
 
 Berry 
 
 as we sat there in the little sod house, and the men gos- 
 sipped and smoked outside. But by and by they came 
 in, and then the old man would say no more. Perhaps 
 he knew they were skeptics, and so would not invite 
 derision. 
 
 The next morning, after I had gone down to the 
 cabin from where I had slept the sleep of those who 
 are elect to find rest under the arching, star-studded 
 sky, I found myself the last one at the breakfast table. 
 So that, when I had finished, and had gone outside 
 again, I found the others gathered about the corral 
 where they were assisting "Uncle Berry" get his 
 horses hitched to what passed for a wagon. Such a 
 marvel of inadequacy I never have seen, as the "team" 
 he was to use in getting off into the Desert where the 
 lure of the gold a veritable mirage was calling him ! 
 
 Originally intended for a small delivery wagon, it 
 had long borne no likeness to any sort of a vehicle 
 whatever. There was no dashboard. There was no 
 seat. The double-trees were home-made ; and the tongue 
 was a cottonwood pole. Missing spokes in the 
 wheels were replaced by the limbs of the quaking asp ; 
 and the reach itself was pieced with a pole used as a 
 splice. The tires were wired on with baling wire- 
 wound round and round with the wire, till the tire it 
 self was scarcely to be seen. Wire all over the wagon ; 
 wire to mend the harness. The reins were of bits of old 
 straps fastened together; and wouldn t have held a 
 runaway pair of kittens. He had a dry willow switch 
 for a whip. One of the horses was too old to have 
 been properly apportioned to anything in this world, 
 except to the filling of a grave in a horse-graveyard. 
 The other was a half -broken colt. 
 
 Again, he was starting off for Black Rock. Alone, 
 of course; for he would have none with him on a trip 
 
In Miners Mirage-Land 
 
 37 
 
 like this, lest they see where he went, and so perhaps 
 some time wrest the Mine of the World from him. 
 No ; there were none he would trust. Did not a nephew 
 come out of the East to pave the way to becoming his 
 heir, against the hour the old man should discover the 
 
 ledge and then die. And did not this same nephew, 
 
 who began by calling him "Dear Uncle Berry," end 
 by cursing him for an "old fool," and then go away 
 leaving the old man laid up with a crushed ankle 
 Did he not, all the while, and secretly, try to find the 
 ledge for himself? No; he would have none of them. 
 He was sufficient unto himself. He needed no one. 
 
 The colt was acting badly, and two of the cowboys 
 were getting him into the harness lightly dodging 
 his heels which he lashed out viciously at them, or 
 springing quickly aside as he reared and came down 
 "spiking" at them with his fore-legs. 
 
 After a good deal of manoeuvering, they got him 
 blindfolded, and finally into the harness. One of the 
 men held the colt by the head, while old "Uncle 
 Berry" climbed up and seated himself on his roll of 
 blankets, which in lieu of any other served as a seat. 
 
 There was a look of determination on his face that 
 did me good to see. It was the grim look that a face 
 takes on when its owner has the knowledge that he has 
 met a worthy foe, yet he has willed to fight to the end. 
 It stirred my blood with admiration to see him. 
 
 There he was more than eighty-four years of age, 
 and yet able to climb cliffs, and peck away at the rock 
 that lies at the tops of the mountains. Why ! they told 
 me, he would ride this unbroken colt and did, often 
 if the men would help him to mount. 
 
 Such goods as he got for his small needs, must come 
 from towns a hundred miles distant; and to them 
 (through the winter s snow-drifts, or under the Desert s 
 
 The 
 
 Quest 
 
 of 
 
 Old 
 
 Man 
 
 Berry 
 
In Miners 9 Mirage-Land 
 
 The 
 
 Quest 
 
 of 
 
 Old 
 
 Man 
 
 Berry 
 
 dizzying sun) alone in that old rattletrap of a 
 wagon, would he go. Truly, the old man was the per 
 sonification of "Western pluck." 
 
 He was thinly clad, and through the threadbare cot 
 ton shirt he wore, one could see the framework of the 
 great, gaunt body. Somehow, the other men standing 
 about (cowboys, and ranch hands, and teamsters), 
 seemed puny beside him, feeble though he was, and 
 an octogenarian. 
 
 He nodded "good by" to us. Then "Ready!" and 
 a pause. "Let them go!" he said; and the man at the 
 young horse s head, pulled off the blind and jumped 
 back. The colt reared on his haunches pawed the air 
 with his hoofs, and leaped forwardalmost jerking 
 the old buckskin horse off his feet, as he went. Old 
 Man Berry sat there his feet braced far apart; his 
 gray hair blowing back in the rush of wind that came 
 up the canon; his knotted hands gripping the reins; 
 and that grim look on his face that made you feel that 
 he, after all, was master of whatever he undertook. 
 
 So, down the steep canon, through a cloud of alkali 
 dust he went. And every instant I expected to see the 
 old wagon go to pieces. 
 
 "God! but he s got pluck!" said one of the cowboys, 
 turning away as "Uncle Berry" went out of sight round 
 a bend. "They ain t nary thing that old feller won t 
 tackle, just give him the chanst. He s clean grit, 
 through and through!" 
 
 He was grit. 
 
 Two days later, when we came down to the ranch 
 after a day of deer-hunting on the heights, there at 
 the haystack, contentedly feeding stood Old Man 
 Berry s horses. They were necked together just as he 
 had left them when he had turned them out at night, 
 to graze on the scant growth of artemisia down on the 
 
In Miners 9 Mirage-Land 
 
 39 
 
 Desert, and they led by the instinct that guides home- 
 lovershad come straightaway to their mountain home, 
 
 The horses were well and safe, but Where was Old 
 
 Man Berry? 
 
 There was not one of us who did not feel (though 
 no one dared voice that fear) that down on the alkali 
 flats somewhere far from water they would find 
 Something that would be a horror to see. 
 
 The ranchman ordered work in the corrals stopped, 
 and hurried the men on swift errands he directed. To 
 the creek, to fill canteens and demijohns with water; 
 to the house for blankets ; to the barn for horses to be 
 put to the wagon, and others to be saddled. Every 
 man was to aid in the work of rescue. Scarcely one 
 of them spoke, but all wore sobered faces. Not one 
 among them but that loved the old man; "loco" though 
 they declared him to be. 
 
 I watched them go down the canon, as I had watched 
 him go such a short time before. Then I went back to 
 the sod-house, and wondered where they would find 
 him, and how. Ah ! that is the thought when we know 
 some one is astray in the Desert that grips one s 
 throat, making it hard for them to swallow. It is as 
 though one s mouth was parched, and without moist 
 ure; and as though one had been long without water 
 to drink. Strange, is it not? that our fears for another 
 should in that way hold the prophecy of what is to come 
 to them. 
 
 After an hour or two of restless wandering about the 
 place, I, too, went down the road that led to the Desert. 
 I wanted to sight, if I could, the coming of the men. 
 Then less than a hundred yards down the canon 
 I came upon them. They were bringing Old Man Berry. 
 
 Alive. And quite determined to go back, just as 
 
 The 
 
 Quest 
 
 of 
 
 Old 
 
 Man 
 
 Berry 
 
In Miners 9 Mirage-Land 
 
 The 
 
 Quest 
 
 of 
 
 Old 
 
 Man 
 
 Berry 
 
 soon as he could arrange with some one for another 
 wagon, Pluck to the last! 
 
 When he found his horses had gone, he started back 
 on foot after them, thinking to find them but a short 
 distance away. Following their tracks, for twenty- 
 five miles he went up and down gullies weary and 
 faint for want of food ; over sun-baked alkali flats where 
 the warped mud-crust had dried in up-curled flakes 
 like feathers blown forward on the back of some wind- 
 buffeted fowl (it showed where water had been) ; 
 along foothills where he stumbled and fell, while the 
 sharp stones cut into and bruised his flesh ; through the 
 burning sand where the sun seethed and bubbled in 
 his brain, and he wondered if he was going mad. 
 
 It was the old story of the earth in those places where 
 it is far between water-holes. He fought with Death 
 in the Desert. Fought, and won! 
 
 The cowboys, after the fashion of their kind, cursed 
 him roundly (but with a ring of tender feeling for the 
 old man in every word they said), and they called him 
 many kinds of an old fool for getting lost. All of which 
 he took in the spirit in which it was meant. Yet more 
 than one of them had wet eyes as he tried to talk to 
 them with thickened tongue that was still black be 
 tween his lips; and we saw that his palms which he 
 tried to hide from us were all bruised and blood 
 stained from sharp stones where he had fallen. 
 
 He was pluck itself yes, sheer grit; for he fought 
 his way through to victory over age, and infirmities, 
 and Death. Yet, the end is not yet. Some day there 
 on the sun-bleached levels they will find him Old 
 Man Berry when the Desert has taken its toll. 
 
THE LOVERS OF THE DESERT. 
 
 (OR all the toll the Desert takes of a man 
 it gives its compensation in deep breaths, 
 deep sleep, and the communion of stars. 
 It comes upon one with new force in the 
 pauses of the night that the Chaldeans 
 were a Desert-bred people. It is hard to 
 escape the sense of mastery as the stars move in the 
 wide, clear heavens to risings and settings unobscured. 
 They look large, and near, and palpitant; as if they 
 moved on some stately service not needful to declare. 
 Wheeling to their stations in the sky, they make the 
 poor world-fret of no account. Of no account you who 
 lie out there watching, nor the lean coyote that stands 
 off in the scrub from you and howls and howls. 
 
 And she who wrote the words knows. She speaks 
 from the heart that understands, because it voices the 
 language of love for the vast, gray, silent mystery that 
 means so little to those who flit by in a day and night 
 of car travel, and then talk about "how lovely" the 
 Desert is, and how "it appeals" to them. And to those 
 I would say that the real Desert, and all its grave mean 
 ing, is farther away from them than it is from those 
 who say nothing except that they do not know the 
 Desert, and do not care anything about it. The Desert 
 does not need such lovers. Its voice will never speak 
 
 The 
 Lovers 
 of 
 the 
 
 Desert 
 
In Miners 9 Mirage-Land 
 
 The 
 
 Lovers 
 
 of 
 
 the 
 
 Desert* 
 
 Yet 
 
 there are many such good folk, too ; but they are those 
 who use, for the decorations of their "cosy corners," 
 Indian baskets and Indian blankets that they buy at 
 the stores and most of them made by white men or 
 women. The Indian his work and wares have been 
 the fashion for a little day among those who set the 
 styles for the ornamentation or disfigurement of our 
 homes; but I fear me his devotees (those who are de 
 voted to him in this special way) are feeling that he 
 is getting to be just a little bit just a trifle passee. 
 And they are already beginning to look about for an- 
 other to take his place. There is just the shadow of a 
 sign that they will choose the Desert. Suppose it should 
 be? We who reverence and love the gray land, can 
 only hope, with a hope that is half a prayer, that they 
 
 will pass it by. Yet If this thing should happen! 
 
 What could we do the Desert and I to prevent it? 
 The Desert and its lovers are helpless against vandals. 
 
 If you love the Desert, and live in it, and lie awake 
 at night under its low-hanging stars, you know you 
 are a part of the pulse-beat of the universe, and you 
 feel the swing of the spheres through space, and you 
 hear through the silence the voice of God speaking. 
 
 Then you will come to know that no better thing is 
 in the world for man than just this the close-touching 
 of great things ; the un-desire of the small, such as the 
 man-crowded places give you; and just enough food 
 and clothing and shelter to support life, and enough 
 work to fill one s days. 
 
 Now, all this belongs to the old men of the Desert 
 the prospectors who have made the Desert their own. 
 
 So you do not know, neither do I dare say, how much 
 of the joy of life these old prospectors find in follow 
 ing the mirage of a mine that leads them away to life s 
 
In Miners 9 Mirage Land 
 
 43 
 
 end with empty palms, till at last they lie down in the 
 alkali wastes to be one with the great silence of the 
 plains. If it gives them much of joy to deny themselves 
 all that you would deem vital, as they live out 
 the measure of their days, dare you give them of your 
 unasked pity? Perhaps they know more of the joy 
 of life than you, in all the devious ways your quest for 
 happiness has led you, have ever found. 
 
 Sometime, your destiny may lead you there; and 
 lying in your blankets some night under a purple-black 
 sky that is crowded with palpitating stars, while the 
 warm Desert-wind blows softly over you caressing 
 your face and smoothing your hair as no human hands 
 ever could and bringing with it the hushed night- 
 sounds that only the Desert knows; then all alone 
 there with only God and the Desert you will come at, 
 last to understand the old prospector and his ways. 
 But not now; not till you and the Desert are lovers. 
 
 The 
 
 Lovers 
 
 of 
 
 the 
 
 Desert* 
 
Forman* 
 Find 
 
 FORMAN S FIND. 
 
 PEN Fremont s journal; turn to the en 
 try he made on New Year s day, 1844, 
 and here is what you will read : 
 
 "We continued down the valley be 
 tween a dry-looking, black ridge on the 
 left, and a more snowy and high one on 
 the right. Our road was bad along the bottom by being 
 broken by gullies and impeded by sage, and sandy on 
 the hills, where there is not a blade of grass ; nor does 
 any appear on the mountains. The soil in many places 
 consists of a fine, powdery sand covered with saline 
 afflorescence, and the general character of the country 
 is desert. During the day we directed our course 
 toward a black cape at the foot of which a column of 
 smoke indicated hot springs." 
 
 And so it was, that the great Pathfinder journey 
 ing west through the unknown, eerie land, vast and 
 Band-strewnon that first day of a year now more than 
 half a century dead, came to know that certain part 
 of Nevada where rises a great, gaunt promontory, its 
 bold front to the Desert, grand in its gruesome barren 
 ness, that afterward came to be such a well-known 
 landmark. Seemingly devoid of every vestige of ani 
 mal or plant life, it stands there defiant of any soften 
 ing touch of nature. Down where steam clouds from 
 the hot springs show white like sea spume, the moun- 
 
In Miners 9 Mirage-Land 
 
 45 
 
 tain s base is lapped by little hills that make creamy 
 ripples against the other s black ruggedness. 
 
 On the following day after the entry just quoted, 
 Fremont s journal bore these words: "At noon . . 
 . . we reached the hot springs of which we had seen 
 the vapor the day before. There was a large field of 
 the salt grass here, usual to such places. The country 
 otherwise is a perfect barren, without a blade of 
 
 grass We passed around the rocky 
 
 cape, a jagged broken point, bare and torn. The rocks 
 are volcanic, and the hills here have a burned appear 
 ancecinders and coal occasionally appearing as in a 
 blacksmith s forge. We crossed the large dry bed of 
 a muddy lake in a south-easterly direction and en 
 camped for the night, without water and without grass, 
 among sage bushes covered with snow. The heavy 
 road made several mules give out today; and a horse 
 which had made the journey from the States suc 
 cessfully was left on the trail." 
 
 On the sixth day of January Fremont tells of as 
 cending a mountain "in the south-west corner of a basin 
 communicating with that in which we encamped, and 
 saw a lofty column of smoke ten miles distant, indicat 
 ing the presence of hot springs." 
 
 In describing them, further on he says: "This is 
 the most extraordinary locality of hot springs we have 
 met during the journey." 
 
 After the Pathfinder, came others ; and the way grew 
 worn with many hoofs and wheels that moved west 
 ward. As the road became traveled, the places gained 
 names; the "black cape" became Black Rock, and the 
 twin hot springs at its point were known as Double 
 Hot Springs, while the great cauldron of hot water 
 across the valley bore the name of Granite Creek Hot 
 Springs. Fremont gives the location of these latter 
 
 Forman s 
 Find 
 
In Miners 9 Mirage-Land 
 
 Forman s 
 Find 
 
 as being in latitude forty degrees, thirty-nine minutes, 
 forty-six seconds. His second day s camp from Black 
 Rock was made in latitude forty degrees, forty-eight 
 minutes, fifteen seconds. But one must remember that 
 on January second and third his journeys were, each 
 of them, short, as one day they traveled but eight miles, 
 and on the other did not start out till afternoon he 
 having waited for the fog to lift. 
 
 These are the things we know. So much for Truth. 
 Now to the Legend if Legend it be. 
 
 If you go out these days into the Black Rock coun 
 try, you will find dozens of camp-fire story-tellers who 
 will relate it to you just as they did to me ; and no one 
 will vary in the telling not in the slightest detail 
 from the way scores of others tell it. 
 
 One night, of the year eighteen hundred and fifty- 
 two, an emigrant party crossing the plains camped at 
 the foot of the mountain due west of, and in the next 
 range from the one since known as Hardin Mountain. 
 Being out of fresh meat, two or three of the men were 
 chosen, as was the custom among emigrant parties, 
 to go out afoot and hunt along the higher parts of the 
 mountain for game. One of these men was named John 
 Forman. 
 
 The following morning, Forman and two of his com 
 panions started out early after antelope, deer, moun 
 tain sheep, or such smaller game as they could find- 
 going up the mountain at whose base they had made 
 their camp, which was just across the valley from the 
 point of Black Rock. Game being scarce on that side 
 of the ridge, they ascended to the mountain top, intend 
 ing to cross over to the farther side. On reaching the 
 summit, where they could look down on the plain be 
 yond, they saw what they thought to be smoke from 
 Indian-made fires. Such were generally the signal fires 
 
IB Miners Mirage-Land 
 
 47 
 
 of the hostiles, so the white men kept well away from 
 points where their movements would attract attention. 
 But they did not cease their search for game, while 
 bearing up from the foothills, and working their way 
 along on the side of the mountain. 
 
 Porman had dropped behind the others, and was con 
 siderably higher on the slope, when he stepped on 
 some metallic substance that at once attracted his at 
 tention. It was entirely unlike anything else he had 
 seen in that volcanic district especially so in the top 
 of this mountain of ashes and cinders, gray pumice and 
 black lava. It protruded from the ground in a slab 
 five or six feet in length, and was twelve or fourteen 
 inches wide, at the lower end it stood at least sixteen 
 inches out of the ground. Its surface was as though 
 at some remote time it had passed through some extra 
 ordinary heat as if it had been melted in the fires of 
 a great furnace. 
 
 Forman hallooed to the others, who came back and 
 examined it with him. It was not at all like any metal 
 lic stuff such as any of the three had ever seen. No 
 one could guess what it might be ; though Forman him 
 self was half inclined to declare it melted silver. With 
 their hunting knives they cut off bits of the metal which 
 they carried away with them in their pockets as they 
 continued their quest for game; for, though it might 
 mean a fortune for each of them, meat was of more im 
 mediate importance to them all than a mountain range 
 of solid silver, or even gold. So the hunters went on, 
 climbing the mountain and clambering over the rocks; 
 then, as the afternoon wore away, getting a better sight 
 across the valley, they discovered that what they sup 
 posed to be Indian signal fires, was but the rising vapor 
 from distant hot springs; springs that Forman long 
 afterward came to know as Granite Creek Hot 
 
 Forman s 
 Find 
 
In Miners 9 Mirage-Land 
 
 Forman s 
 Find 
 
 Springs. They found no game on the barren heights, 
 so went down to the valley again, and joined the rest 
 of their party that night at Mud Meadows where camp 
 had been made. 
 
 Some days after, during idle hours in camp, find 
 ing that the metal would melt when subjected to ex 
 treme heat, Forman took the bits he had cut from the 
 great metal slabs found on the mountain, and molded 
 them into bullets. What the metal was, he had not yet 
 determined; but other members of the party had fully 
 convinced him that whatever it might be it certain 
 ly was not silver. 
 
 Going down Pit river, in an encounter with hostile 
 Indians, Forman found use for the bullets. He shot 
 them all away. 
 
 In the varied excitement and interests incident to 
 life in a strange and newly-settled country, he soon 
 in California completely forgot the matter, until 
 it was recalled to him later when he was shown some 
 specimens of pure lead. Satisfying himself that it 
 was identical with the mineral he had discovered five 
 or six years before, he saw the gleam of fortune bright 
 ening those far off plains for him. His decision was 
 formed at once. He would forsake the gold-seeking 
 that had, thus far, but ill repaid him ; he would return 
 to the mountains where he had every reason to believe 
 were tons of lead to be had with but little expenditure 
 of labor or money. 
 
 He confided in no one. If it should prove, when he 
 investigated it, to be after all some worthless metal 
 (which he did not for one moment believe), there would 
 be none but himself the loser, or to laugh at the mis 
 placed faith. On the other hand, if a fortune was there 
 awaiting the finder, then it would be all his own. 
 
 During the months that intervened before he could 
 
In Miners Mirage-Land 
 
 49 
 
 arrange his trip, he became acquainted with a Mis 
 sourian, who told him of a supposed lead mine away 
 back on the desert, that was seen by one of Fremont s 
 party in 1844. The discoverer had never thought it 
 worth his while to return to it (he was too little im 
 pressed with it to know its real value) ; but he told the 
 Missourian the latitude of the place they had encamped 
 the night before ascending the mountain where he saw 
 a huge, protruding slab of the metal. He also drew 
 a rough map of the surrounding country. It was in 
 latitude forty degrees, forty-eight minutes, fifteen sec 
 onds, he said; and across the valley rose a column of 
 steam from immense hot springs, that looked as one 
 gazed down on it from the crest of the mountain, like 
 the signal fire of hostile Indians. Forman listened with 
 keen interest, thinking of his own discovery, and 
 which he believed to be the same. The Missourian ad 
 ded that he intended going there in the following 
 spring. 
 
 Forman kept his knowledge of the great lead 
 mine to himself; but after hearing the Missourian ^s tale, 
 his anxiety to go back to the Desert increased. He has 
 tened his preparations, and early in 1859 he was back 
 at the spot where he and his companions had encamped 
 seven years before. He was back at the foot of the 
 mountain that lies westerly from Hardin mountain, and 
 in the very next range. Everything seemed familiar 
 he recognized every well remembered landmark. He 
 was sure of success. 
 
 By the roadside, when arranging his own camp for 
 the night, he noted that some one had camped there 
 but a short time before perhaps the previous day 
 as ashes and footprints showed. Early morning found 
 him clambering over the mountain, stumbling over 
 lava rock, or floundering through cinder and ash, as 
 
 Forman s 
 Find 
 
In Miners 9 Mirage-Land 
 
 Forman s 
 Find 
 
 he directed his course to the farther side. At last he 
 gained the summit, all out of breath and eager, and 
 looked down again upon the "Indian signal fire" ris 
 ing across the plain. But he saw something more- 
 something he was unprepared for. He was not alone. 
 
 Just below him, where he knew the treasure lay, was 
 the Missourian, going back and forth, up and down, 
 over the ground as though seeking that which he was 
 not able to find. Presently he looked up and saw For- 
 man. Forman went down to him, and the result was 
 the inevitable. 
 
 Each man accused the other of trespass, and hinted 
 at treachery. Each of the men friends before eyed 
 the other with suspicion. Then, covertly, they began 
 looking for the slab of metal, each feeling himself handi 
 capped in the search by the presence of the other, with 
 whom he determined there should be no division of 
 the treasure. So Forman and the Missourian alike car 
 ried on the search surreptitiously or tried to but, 
 with another striving for the same possession, the quest 
 was a failure. At last they departed from the place to 
 gether; neither daring to trust the other there after 
 he should himself be gone. 
 
 The next year the search was renewed by both men, 
 but at different times; and renewed again and again 
 in the aftertime. But after that first meeting on the 
 mountain, they never chanced to encounter one another 
 there ; which was perhaps fortunate, for their animosity 
 toward each other grew with the years. 
 
 Neither of them ever found the slab of pure lead 
 that stood for a mine or which to them represented 
 a mountain that might well be, for all they knew, of 
 solid lead, and might form the bulk of the mountain. 
 Prospecting year after year, neither of them ever came 
 upon any sign that spoke of lead in any form or any 
 
In Miners 9 Mirage Land 
 
 quantity. It seemed strange that neither of them, af 
 ter so many years of searching should fail in their quest ; 
 for both claimed such accurate knowledge of the exact 
 locality. Yet if you will but think of it in so favor 
 able light the reason is not hard to find. Only you 
 must not be of a sceptical turn of mind. It is this: 
 The Missourian was forever declaring that Forman 
 had covered it up to keep him from finding it. 
 And Forman always said the same of the Missourian. 
 
 Forman s 
 Find 
 
The 
 
 Lessons 
 
 of 
 
 the 
 
 Desert, 
 
 THE LESSONS OF THE DESERT. 
 
 IT a little flour, a piece of bacon, a 
 handful of coffee, one s blankets, enough 
 clothing for comfort that is all. When 
 one stops to think of it, it is astonishing 
 to find how little one really needs, to live. 
 It is only after you have been on a rough 
 trip of weeks, when it was needful that you should de 
 bate well and long over not every pound, but literally 
 every ounce of extra weight that you were to carry 
 casting aside all things but those that were vital to your 
 absolute needs that you came to realize how much 
 useless stuff one goes through life a-burdened with. 
 
 I have a friend an Indian who tells me he would 
 be more apt to think the White Man a great man, were 
 he not forced to see he is a fool for doing fool things. 
 "Heap big fool," he says. He says that the White 
 Man voluntarily strives for the acquisition of such 
 things as bring but added care into one s measure of 
 days; which is fool s work. Then he says; that to 
 breathe full and strong, and to have a straight back, 
 and carry the head high, one must not bear a load. 
 And that to have long years of peace, and to live glad 
 ly, one must not do the things that "make worry." 
 
 So he asks me why the White Man (who thinks 
 himself wise because of his different color) should of 
 
In Miners 9 Mirage-Land 
 
 53 
 
 his own free will make of himself a burden-bearer; 
 and so be less wise (in the eyes of the Brown Man) than 
 his Indian brother, whom he in his heart calls a 
 fool? But I have been unable to make answer to that; 
 because I, too, have also asked myself: "Why, in 
 deed!" 
 
 Now, the least of us know that the possession of one 
 thing calls for the immediate acquirement of some other 
 thing to supplement it. And then, to that one, must 
 be added another to answer the new demands the lat 
 ter creates. And the third calls even more insistently 
 for a fourth; and so on forever and forever the last 
 one calling for still another, if we are of those fools 
 who listen to the cry of their folly for more, and yet 
 more. 
 
 And, if we only found satisfaction in the pampering 
 and pleasing of the tastes and desires we encourage! 
 But we don t. So that the Indian has license to laugh 
 at our ways, when we ourselves can give no rational 
 excuse for what we are doing, and keep doing. We 
 burden ourselves with things that we buy, with no other 
 
 excuse for the act than "They are the things other 
 
 folk have ! " So we go on getting and getting, whether 
 we want them or no. Very like sheep that follow the 
 sheep with the bell, are we. 
 
 And I wonder if he who follows the bell-wether is 
 any wiser than that one who trails after the story of 
 a will-o -wisp mine that leads him across Desert val 
 leys and rough mountain ridges where there is never 
 a sign of gold? Which is the fool; and which is the 
 wise man? And who has the right to judge? 
 
 You may jeer and deride as you will, but the old 
 prospectors do not care. They go their ways, letting 
 you alone; and they ask, in return, that you let them 
 
 The 
 
 Lessons 
 
 of 
 
 the 
 
 Desert, 
 
54 
 
 In Miners Mirage-Land 
 
 The 
 
 Lessons 
 
 of 
 
 the 
 
 Desert. 
 
 alone also. They will give you help if you need it; 
 but they will ask nothing from you. 
 
 Their needs are so few that they want but little to 
 live ; and that they can earn. They have little ; but they 
 can earn a little by work. So it happens that those 
 who know them may give now and then of their 
 own stores, asking no toll for what they may do. Yet 
 the kindness does not go unpaid. For, you must remem 
 ber that these live in the Desert ; and the Desert teaches 
 one how to forget self. The help that an extra pair 
 of hands can give to those who live in the far places 
 where men do not congregate, is much; and for what 
 is done for a comrade there, one gets payment in labor 
 that is done with a willing hand not because payment 
 is exacted or expected, but because there is that in the 
 blood of those who live there, that teaches them to be 
 grateful. 
 
 It is only in those places where human life is hived 
 in houses that touch elbows, so close are they huddled 
 together, that one holds out one s hand for the final 
 dimes and nickels in the payment of debts; or for the 
 ultimate and absolute settlement of each and every ob 
 ligation incurred. True, when you have become one 
 with them that live there, you, too, fall into their ways ; 
 yet it is a good thing to remember that there are places 
 lonely and far though they be where one may find 
 those who have souls that are not shrivelled and dry; 
 wrinkled and weather-worn men who are great of heart, 
 and who would give half of their little all to you in 
 your need, and with never a thought that payment was 
 due. 
 
 So, in this way, and because of the fellowship there, 
 the mirage-miners manage to live to buy the few 
 things that even a simple life makes needfuL 
 
 A little flour, a piece of bacon, a handful of coffee, 
 
In Miners 9 Mirage-Lana 
 
 55 
 
 your blankets, and such clothing as the season calls 
 you to wear. 
 
 Then to live in the big, still plains that inspire a big, 
 serene life, learning the best the Desert can teach you 
 these things, namely: 
 
 That we are what we think and feel, not what others 
 think and feel us to be ; and that in such wise does God 
 surely judge us. That mankind is a brotherhood, each 
 needing the other, and that not one can be spared from 
 the unit ; brothers are we, born of a common parentage, 
 and you shall know there is small difference between 
 man and man, except in so far as they are good or bad 
 not as the veneer of environment makes them. That 
 we shall be more censorious of our own faults less 
 critical of the failings or follies of others. 
 
 To feel that the best life is the simple life ; and, if one 
 can, to live it out in such a companionship somewhere 
 that you may have the great stretches of earth as God 
 gives; to read as from printed pages in the grains 
 of the far-reaching sand; to listen to a speech that is 
 voiced by the stars and the four winds. 
 
 All these belong to the men who live there; so that 
 it is hardly worth while to try to make the old pros 
 pectors give up their quests and go back to the places 
 where people live. Even if the fairy stories of the 
 fabulous mines were true, and they should, some day, 
 find each his own treasure, I doubt if the end of the 
 search would bring joy. To have money in the Des 
 ert, makes little change in one s ways of living. And 
 
 to go back to cities ! They are alien to all the 
 
 cities could give. So, the joy of life, for them, lies in 
 the search for not in the finding of gold. 
 
 The 
 
 Lessons 
 
 of 
 
 the 
 
 Desert* 
 
The 
 Marvel 
 ous 
 
 Hardin 
 SUver 
 
 THE MARVELOUS HAEDIN SILVER. 
 
 INGE that far time when Fremont 
 found himself under the lee of Black 
 Rock, one gloomy New Year s day, the 
 sullen and bare promontory has been 
 guide and landmark to thousands of voy 
 agers crossing the great American Sa 
 hara. Westward more than half a hundred miles from 
 the Central Pacific Railroad s traveled ways that go 
 through Humboldt County, Nevada, lies Quin River 
 Desert forbidding and grim and Black Rock rises 
 abruptly from its levels. It is a dark and unfriendly 
 looking point, with all the gruesomeness Fremont de 
 scribes; but through all the years the emigrant wound 
 his way toward the State that sees the setting sun sink 
 downward to touch salt water, it has been his unfailing 
 friend. For once seen, there is no mistaking Black 
 Rock for any other landmark ever described, and to the 
 wayfarer across the vast, lonely land, it was compass 
 and star. The range of mountains from which it juts is 
 of gnarled and misshapen masses of lava rock mixed 
 with miles of ashes. About, are vast stretches of alkali 
 plain, of whitened hummocks of hardened earth, of 
 wide reaches of sand flats swept into waves by the 
 wind. 
 
 It is all fierce, hard and repellant. Farther away the 
 mountains bear rocks that burst into color> and their 
 
In Miners 9 Mirage-Land 
 
 57 
 
 broken and rainbow-hued bits besprinkle the "washes" 
 in the foothills. Their graveled floors are thick strewn 
 with variegated flakes of beauty dark blue and light 
 blue, purple and pink; a green that is like to emeralds, 
 and ruby and amber in all their beauty of clarity and 
 coloring. And where these jasper fragments are not, 
 are burned and black volcanic boulders; and then you 
 will come across places thickly strewn with fragments 
 of vivid red rock rock that is red as if blood-stained; 
 and you say to yourself: "Why this is the waste and 
 refuse from nature s great brick-yards!" so like unto 
 that artificial building material does it seem. 
 
 All through this weird and wonderful valley, where 
 white plumes of steaming springs wave here and there 
 along the foothills, are things to hold your curious at 
 tention acres of obsidian, others of petrified wood; 
 turquoise, geodes, onyx, and a thousand other things 
 beneath your horse s crunching hoofs, to make the rid 
 ing of this range well worth your while. 
 
 Away back in 1849 a long train of emigrant wagons, 
 fourteen in number, was crossing the plains on its 
 journey to the West. Following the Humboldt river 
 down the valley of the same name, at the Lassen Mea 
 dows they found so little feed for their stock, where 
 the stock of the emigrant usually grazed for a day or 
 so, that the travelers decided upon abandoning that 
 route and, instead, crossing over toward Black Rock, 
 and following the old Lassen road into California. But 
 at Black Rock, also, they found but scant feed when 
 they arrived. So they pushed on six miles farther to 
 make camp, and rest, at those water demons called 
 Double Hot Springs. About that steaming twin vent- 
 hole of the old Earth s anger was always to be found 
 grass green and growing grass moist with steam-pearls, 
 and of the tender hue of hot-houss plants. Go there 
 
 The 
 Marvel 
 ous 
 Hardin 
 Silver 
 
In Miners Mirage-Land 
 
 The 
 Marvel* 
 
 ous 
 
 Hordin 
 Silver 
 
 when you will, you will find such sweetly fresh vege 
 tation sparkling with the ever-moist breath of the 
 springs that you leave it with regret to take up your 
 journey again through the baked plain with its lep- 
 rous-like spots of alkali. 
 
 At Double Hot Springs they made a temporary camp 
 to give the stock the opportunity to rest and recover 
 from the journey thus far passed. Brown men with bow 
 in hand, and the soft tread of a wildcat, were all about 
 the emigrant in those days; but at the springs there 
 was no shelter under which an Indian could creep upon 
 them, so they made a halt of a number of days there. 
 
 Their next move was to Mud Meadows, around on 
 the farther side of the range. 
 
 Now it so happened that on the day they broke 
 camp there, three of the party were deputized to hunt 
 along the mountain ridge for game to replenish the 
 well-nigh depleted larders of the camp-wagons. It 
 was their custom to have two or three hunters- each 
 "crew" taking its turn go out, when the meat sup 
 ply was low, to kill such game as the country afforded. 
 These three were directed to hunt along the moun 
 tain tops, while the wagons worked their way up the 
 valley s edge to Mud Meadows where, later, they would 
 all meet. 
 
 One of the three hunters selected for that occasion 
 was a man named Hardin, a wheelwright and black 
 smith by trade. He was an uncle of J. A. Hardin, of 
 Petaluma, California, a well-known cattle man of that 
 State and Nevada. 
 
 The hunters were to cross a near-lying mountain, 
 and then go over to the farther side to join the wagons. 
 In leaving their camp at Double Hot Springs they 
 crossed, first, a piece of tableland, and then made their 
 way to the higher parts of the mountain. No game 
 
In Miners 9 Mirage-Land 
 
 59 
 
 was seen. Keeping along the east side of the mountain 
 for some distance, they finally worked their way up 
 ward to the summit, from whence they had an un 
 obstructed view of the valley. 
 
 Then they discovered they had lost their bearings, 
 for no sign of the wagons was to be seen. They were 
 about to descend to the plain to find (where the wagons 
 had passed) the wheel-tracks, and so follow them into 
 camp, when they espied, away down the Desert, a team 
 that had stopped on the road. The three hunters 
 glad in this lonely land, to find a fellow voyager at 
 once started down the mountain side, heading directly 
 for the halted wagon below. 
 
 They had gone, perhaps, a third of the way when 
 of a sudden they found themselves floundering through 
 a soft, gray deposit like sifted ashes, in which at every 
 step they sunk ankle-deep. And here in the powdery 
 stuff, was embedded something which shone so bright 
 ly in the sun that their gaze was arrested, and the far 
 away team, for the time, forgotten. One of the trio 
 had, years before, been in the Mexican War, and after 
 receiving his discharge had been employed on the pack- 
 trains of the famous Potosi mine for some time before 
 leaving that country. He instantly recognized the 
 great slabs of whitish metal as melted silver and 
 perfectly pure, so far as he could judge. It looked as 
 though the awful fires that had scattered the lava rock 
 over the land and burned and blackened the face of 
 the country in some places or blanched it in others 
 in the blaze of flames we wot not of had run the metal 
 white-hot through the ashes that covered that side of 
 the mountain for several hundred square feet. Every 
 where it was sticking up pieces protruding that were 
 the size of bricks others in uneven masses of four or 
 five feet long. 
 
 The 
 Marvel 
 ous 
 Hardin 
 Silver 
 
6o 
 
 In Miners 9 Mirage-Land 
 
 The 
 Marvel- 
 
 cms 
 Hardin 
 
 Silver 
 
 One is slow to realize good fortune, and they could 
 but vaguely comprehend the meaning of what they 
 saw. Then gathering up all they could carry, they 
 started down the mountain to the place on the plain 
 where they could still see the wagon stopping by the 
 way. Arriving there they found an emigrant and his 
 wife and child, who had been overtaken by disaster, 
 for their oxen all but one yoke were dead, and there 
 were yet many miles to travel ere they could reach 
 California. The man was engaged in trying to re 
 model his wagon to fit the circumstances of his mis 
 fortune. He was cutting down his wagon from a four- 
 wheeler to a cart, that the remaining yoke of weak, 
 half-famished cattle might be able to draw it, loaded 
 with their most important belongings, the rest of the 
 journey, on and into the Land of Gold. 
 
 The excited Hardin showed them his find, and told 
 them of the uncountable wealth they had discovered; 
 and then asked the emigrant to take as many of their 
 precious slabs into California as his wagon (after being 
 cut down) would carry. But in vain did he and his 
 companions plead. Not even the promise that he should 
 share equally with the others had any effect on the man 
 who kept busy with hammer and saw. They poured 
 out their glowing wonder-tale, but he remained un 
 moved. 
 
 "Silver!" he exclaimed, at last, straightening him 
 self from his work. "Maybe tis, and maybe tisn t. 
 But I wouldn t do what you ask, even if it was solid 
 gold ! If I can get through to California with my little 
 family alive, and with such things as we must have, 
 it will be all that I can do. I ve got to leave the bulk 
 of my belongings here on the road, because I can t 
 carry them in a cut-down wagon. No, Friends, you ll 
 
In Miners 9 Mirage-Land 
 
 61 
 
 get no help from me; for all the silver in the world 
 wouldn t help me in my present predicament." 
 
 Finding all importunities of no avail, they threw the 
 largest piece the one Hardin himself had been carry 
 ingdown by the roadside. The remainder was then 
 divided among the three and they started for Mud 
 Meadows, where they arrived long after dark. There 
 they showed their marvelous "find"; and the stir the 
 shining stuff made, as it was passed from hand to hand, 
 was excuse for the wild rejoicing of the two hundred 
 emigrants, which was continued by the camp fire, 
 more or less, all night. There was cause enough for re 
 joicing; for Hardin had declared there was enough of 
 that silver in sight to load all fourteen of the wagons. 
 So one and all declared that so soon as they could prop 
 erly equip themselves for a return trip and the trans 
 portation of the silver, they would come back into this 
 Desert-land of treasure that seemed beyond the most 
 extravagant of dreams. 
 
 The following morning they left Mud Meadows, re 
 suming their journey toward the West. Whether by 
 accident or not, no one can say, but some pieces of the 
 silver were left where they had camped that night, and 
 were found later by others making camp there. 
 
 The emigrants found no further signs of silver or of 
 other metals, and finally reached California, where the 
 story of Hardin s find spread, as the emigrants repeated 
 the tale. The three men, however, kept the secret of 
 the exact locality where they had found this marvel 
 ous deposit. They were impatient to return at once, 
 but the growing depredations of hostile Indians, as 
 well as other affairs, deterred them. As soon as all 
 arrangements could be made, and traveling in that land 
 of the murderous arrow was safe, they would go; but 
 
 The 
 
 Marvel- 
 
 ous 
 Hardin 
 
 Silver 
 
62 
 
 In Miners Mirage-Land 
 
 The 
 Marvel- 
 
 ous 
 Hordin 
 Silver 
 
 it was many a month thereafter before they could put 
 their plans into execution. 
 
 Among those who, on that memorable trip into the 
 West, had seen the marvelous silver, was Steve Bass 
 so well known the West through and his brother. 
 They had seen it, handled it and had heard Hardin tell 
 the tale over and over again. And Bass himself often 
 told how he had seen Hardin melt some of the bits into 
 silver buttons. Taking an axe handle it being of hard 
 wood that would not ignite easily Hardin hollowed 
 a little place in the side of it, and laid therein bits of 
 the silver which he had previously cut from the larger 
 pieces of the metal, with his pocket knife. He then 
 covered these over with live coals, and by blowing 
 steadily on them for some time, the silver was melted 
 into a button one that he carried in his pocket for 
 years afterward. And subsequently, when telling the 
 tale of the fabulous find to a collector of minerals and 
 curiosities, he showed him this button. Interested in 
 its history, the man bought it of Hardin and took it 
 to England, where, no doubt, it is now in some collec 
 tion of minerals and curios, on the shelves of an Eng 
 lishman s cabinet. 
 
 Hardin settled in Petaluma and opened a wagon 
 shop, doing blacksmithing and such work. Men con 
 gregated there in the early days to "swap" mining 
 stories; and one day when some one began talking to 
 Hardin of his discovery away back on the plains, a 
 new-comer a man named A. B. Jennison, who had 
 just come in from Rogue River, to settle in the val 
 leyexclaimed : 
 
 "Why, I ve heard that same story told by another 
 man one of the three who found it. I knew him well. 
 But he declares that he s found since he got to Cali 
 fornia that other men know of gold in quantities as 
 
In Miners Mirage-Land 
 
 great as was the deposit of that silver, and that he is 
 going to look here for gold, instead of going back there 
 to get a less valuable mineral and perhaps be butch 
 ered by the Indians, in the bargain." 
 
 Hostilities were increasing back on the emigrant roads 
 where the brown man watched for the wayfarer from his 
 hiding-place in the rocks, and the Desert country had 
 no great attraction for miners who believed in like for 
 tunes being found farther toward the West, and in 
 more settled districts. But there were those whom the 
 Hardin Silver lured, and of these was a doctor who had 
 come to his knowledge of it through another source. 
 
 In 1859 this doctor came into the Honey Lake coun 
 try, and took up his home in the lower end of the val 
 ley. He was a silent, uncommunicative sort of a man, 
 and had no confidants. In those troublous times there 
 were many desperate characters about, In that local 
 ity. If a man knew aught of any valuable possession 
 whether of something material or only a secret knowl 
 edge of things he was very careful in his selection of 
 those in whom he reposed confidence. 
 
 The doctor had no doubt of being able, some time, 
 to trace his way back to a place on the plains where 
 he had once seen something, the value of which he had 
 not known till long afterward. The years went by, and 
 he said nothing of it to any man. He was certain of a 
 treasure-house there in the Desert; and the time would 
 come when he would be able to go a-search for it, tucked 
 away somewhere in the mountains. He could wait. 
 
 It was in 1852, when crossing the Desert near Mud 
 Meadows, just after Hardin s party had passed through, 
 that the doctor had found lying by the roadside where 
 Hardin had dropped it, the larger piece of silver that 
 the emigrant had refused to carry for him that lone 
 emigrant whom Hardin had left cutting down his 
 
 The 
 Marvel 
 
 ous 
 
 SUver 
 
6 4 
 
 In Miners 9 Mirage-Land 
 
 The 
 Marvel- 
 
 ous 
 Hardln 
 Silver 
 
 wagon. At the time of finding it, the doctor had failed 
 to recognize its value, and so had left it there. But 
 many months afterward he came to know that it had 
 been pure silver that he had held in his hands. Others 
 who camped there later, and were questioned about it, 
 knew nothing of any such thing being there; so that 
 it is not known who took it away from the 
 place where it lay in plain sight. Probably it was 
 picked up by some one who knew as little of its value 
 as did the doctor. Or it might have been some one who 
 did indeed know its value, and to this day is seeking 
 the place from whence it came as so many other pros 
 pectors have done, and are still doing. 
 
 The doctor finally laid plans for the return trip to this 
 spot where he so well remembered having seen the 
 melted silver ; but the very month set for his start found 
 him sick sick unto death. When he realized that re 
 covery was impossible, he called two of his friends to 
 him, and there on his death bed told Tommy Harvey 
 and George Lathrop all he knew of it, and of the local 
 ity where it could, no doubt, be found. Even to the 
 minutest particulars he described that place in Desert- 
 land where he had held in his hand what he believed 
 to be the key to a treasure-house of uncounted wealth. 
 
 "If I could only have lived long enough to go there, 
 myself," he said. "If it had only been safe for a man 
 to go there at any time since I saw that country, I know 
 I should have found the ledge itself I know from what 
 I have heard Hardin and others tell, that I could have 
 gone directly to it." 
 
 So the doctor died one of the many who believed 
 in the mirage-mine if it be but a mirage-mine, yet who 
 knows? and the two who went found nothing. The 
 mountains were so many, and so bewildering. 
 
In Miners Mirage-Land 
 
 Nor was the doctor the only one who, in crossing the 
 plains, found evidence of the truth of Hardin s story, 
 there where the old camping ground had been. One 
 party of emigrants, in particular, made their camp 
 near Mud Meadows, in the spring of 1852; and there 
 they, too, found some of the smaller pieces of silver 
 that Hardin and his companions had dropped. They 
 gathered together all they could find, though it was but 
 a small amount, and took it to the town of Shasta with 
 them. There, it was bought by a jeweler by the name 
 of Lewin, who paid for it by giving in exchange its 
 weight in Mexican dollars. He displayed it in the win 
 dow of his jewelry store; and there it was seen by 
 scores of people among them such men as L. D. Vary, 
 Governor Roop, and others whose word was relied upon 
 as of those who "speak of a verity," and who have 
 many a time since told of having seen the Hardin Sil 
 ver with their own eyes. It attracted much attention 
 by reason of its romantic history, until the store was 
 burned. Yet, in raking over the ashes when they had 
 cooled, Lewin found it there a melted mass of smoke- 
 blackened metal. 
 
 Hardin dreaded (as who did not dread in those days 
 when the Indian held the Desert?) to undertake the 
 hardships and perils of a trip, even though it held out 
 such glorious promise of fortune quickly made. Peo 
 ple who crossed the plains in the old days were not 
 eager to retrace their steps immediately, or to repeat 
 their experiences. Hardin felt, too, that the treasure 
 was safe though he might not go to it at once. But, 
 finally in 1858 he determined to hazard Indians and 
 like evils, and to retrace his way to where in ashes and 
 lava lay those great blocks of silver no one knew how 
 many, no one could guess. 
 
 On this trip he took with him, as a precaution 
 
 The 
 Marvel 
 ous 
 Hardin 
 
 Silver 
 
66 
 
 In Miners Mirage-Land 
 
 The 
 
 Marvel 
 ous 
 Hardin 
 SQver 
 
 against any surprises from Indians, two men, one of 
 whom was named Alberding. When, at length, they 
 arrived at Double Hot Springs, Hardin looked ahead 
 and saw Black Rock point the monument he so well 
 remembered that was the landmark of the wondrous 
 slabs of silver. Pointing to it, he said to his com 
 panions : 
 
 "Look ahead, boys! Do you see that spring on the 
 hillside?" (It was afterward named "Ram s Horn 
 Spring" by the later emigrants, and is known by that 
 name today.) "Do you see the canon that lies below 
 it? I ll tell you this, now; I didn t find the silver be 
 low that place ; nor did I Snd it more than half a mile 
 above; and it is somewhere there at the left." 
 
 They all went to the spot he had indicated. They 
 searched and searched. Up and down, back and forth, 
 and retracing their steps again and again, as they 
 looked for the strange ash deposit. Of silver there was 
 no sign. Even ash there was none. The face of the 
 mountain seemed completely changed. Waterspouts 
 and cloudbursts are of frequent occurrence in that 
 country, and now there were deep gullies and cuts that 
 had not been there before. The whole surface of the 
 mountain had altered beyond recognition. 
 
 Avalanches of broken, sliding rock had been set 
 moving downward by the restless elements, and what 
 had been bare ground before was now hidden under 
 tons of boulders and smaller bits of rock. Avalanches 
 of water had bared rocks once covered with earth. 
 Moving shifting changing with the years, nothing 
 was now the same. No sign of silver was ever seen 
 in that mountain again, either then or thereafter. 
 
 So, at last, Hardin and his companions went away. 
 He knew the silver was there; but it was to be his 
 never. 
 
 Others came, after them, and the search went on. 
 

 In Miners 9 Mirage-Land 
 
 The 
 Marvel- 
 
 oiis 
 
 Silver 
 
 Several prospecting parties were there in 1859, and 
 again in the 60 s; and year after year, even down to 
 our own day, do they go. 
 
 There have been those (guided by a divining rod 
 that showed them, they aver, the exact spot where the 
 stream of molten metal flowed and cooled in its bed of Har<J j n 
 ashes) who have put minted silver by the thousands 
 into the mountain in tunnels, and shafts, and inclines 
 driven and sunk in absolute faith in the hidden treasure 
 of the heights. Silver a-plenty has been sunk, but none 
 ever brought to light. 
 
 Every summer sees one or more wagons, carrying 
 prospectors, crawling across the furnace-hot alkali 
 levels that border the Black Rock land. The mirage 
 of Quin River Desert dances about them, as the mirage 
 of Hardin Mountain beckons them on. 
 
 And though they always return with empty palms, 
 hope is never absent from them ; and they will tell you 
 that some one, some day, somewhere in that grim, still 
 mountain that even the birds shun, will find the lost 
 treasure vault the three men stumbled on that day in 
 the long ago. 
 
 Perhaps. I do not know. Such is the story of the 
 marvelous Hardin Silver the story just as I heard 
 it out by the foothills of the grim old mountain, and by 
 the dry Desert-sea that creeps up to its feet. If you 
 hacl heard it in that strange land you would not have 
 marveled at the strangeness of the tale, but would have 
 had the faith that the others have had, no matter how 
 you might have doubted when afterward you had 
 shaken off the mystery and charm of the Desert. 
 
 I give you the story just as I got it. Believe it or 
 not, as you choose. 
 
 "I dare not say how true t may be 
 I tell the tale as twas told to me." 
 
The 
 
 Lure 
 
 of 
 
 the 
 
 Desert* 
 
 THE LURE OF THE DESERT. 
 
 XCEPT you are kindred with those who 
 have speech with great spaces, and the 
 Four Winds of the earth, and the infinite 
 arch of God s sky, you shall not have 
 understanding of the Desert s lure. 
 
 It is not the Desert s charm that 
 calls one. What is it? I know not; only that there is 
 a low, insistent voice calling calling calling. Not a 
 loud voice. The Desert proclaiming itself, speaks gent 
 ly. And we every child of us who has laid on the 
 breast of a mother while she rocked slowly, and hushed 
 our fretting with a soft-sung lullaby song we know 
 how a low voice soothes and lulls one into sleep. 
 
 You are tired of the world s ways? Then, if you 
 and the Desert have found each other, surely you will 
 feel the drawing of your soul toward the eternal calm 
 the brooding peace that is there in the gray country. 
 Does the beautiful in Nature thrill you to your fin 
 ger-tips? When your eye is so trained that it may dis 
 cover the beauty that dwells in that vast, still corner 
 of the world, and your ear is attuned to catch the mu 
 sic of the plains or the anthems sung in deep canons 
 by the winds; when your heart finds comradeship in 
 the mountains and the great sand-seas, the sun and the 
 stars, and the huge cloud-drifts that the Desert winds 
 set a-rolling round the world when all these reach 
 
In Miners 9 Mirage-Land 
 
 your heart by way of your eye and your ear, then you 
 shall find one of the alluring ways that belongs to the 
 Desert. 
 
 Do you seek for the marvelous? Or do you go a-quest 
 for riches? Or simply desire to wander away into little 
 known rifts in the wilderness? By these lures and a 
 hundred others will the Desert draw you there. And 
 once there, unprejudiced, the voice by and by will 
 make itself heard as it whispers at your ear. And when 
 you can lay your head on its breast, and hear its 
 heart-beats, you will know a rest that is absolute and 
 infinite. Then, you will understand those who yearly 
 go a-searching for the mythical mines of mirage-land, 
 and those who have lived apart from others for a life 
 time, and are forgot by all their kindred and friends 
 of a half-century ago. You will say: "It is the Des 
 ert s lure. I know they cannot help it. And yes! 
 it is worth all the penalty the gray land makes them 
 pay!" 
 
 If you go to the Desert, and live there, you learn to 
 love it. If you go away, you will never forget it for 
 one instant in after life; it will be with you in memory 
 forever and forever. And always will you hear the 
 still voice that lures one, calling and calling. 
 
 "The Desert calls to him who has once felt its strange 
 attraction, calls and compels him to return, as the sea 
 compels the sailor to forsake the land. He who has 
 once felt its power can never free himself from the 
 haunting charm of the Desert." 
 
 The 
 
 Lure 
 
 of 
 
 the 
 
 Desert* 
 
The 
 
 Rise 
 
 and 
 
 Fall 
 
 of 
 
 Hordin 
 
 City 
 
 THE RISE AND FALL OF HARDIN CITY, 
 
 KITE as bleached bones and level as a 
 coffin lid, Quin River Desert fills the 
 miles and miles of space lying between 
 the Antelope and Black Rock mountain 
 ranges. A sea of alkali, the Desert winds 
 set waves of drifting sand lapping the 
 western shore, where Black Rock point itself (that 
 famous landmark for all who have voyaged here, from 
 Fremont down to the lonely prospector of today), juts 
 promontory-wise into the great silence. So vast and 
 level it is, that Quin River itself a considerable stream 
 after the spring thaw has sent the snow-fed creeks rush 
 ing down the river is but a varnish of moisture, miles 
 in width, on the surface of the great plain where sun 
 and wind soon combine to rub it all away. 
 
 A sea without a sail, save those that like mine own 
 have gone drifting over its desolation into that won 
 derful beyond; that weird world made of strange rock 
 forms and lavish splendor of color that lies a hundred 
 miles away from the railroad, undisturbed and almost 
 unknown. A land of marvels, of wonder upon wonder, 
 where you may ride for hours, never out of sight of 
 petrified tree stumps that stand like grim ghosts of dead 
 centuries; where you may ride for days among hills 
 honey-combed with caves whose linings are beautiful 
 frescoes of color, or freaks in their oddity of form; 
 
In Miners 9 Mirage-Land 
 
 where you may ride for weeks among springs warm 
 hot, or furiously boiling never finding one that run 
 cold water. And riding so, you will find life a gooc 
 thing. That is, if you have the eyes that see and the 
 heart that beats in brotherhood to vast silence and space 
 and the thousand and one alluring things that we may 
 find anywhere on the far edges of civilization anc 
 surely here, where the world is rich in rare surprises 
 as it waits you under the wide-arching, steel-brighl 
 Nevada sky. 
 
 So one day I beached my boat beyond the cliffs and 
 rippled hills that cluster about the point of Black Rock ; 
 beyond those terrors, Double Hot Springs, whose 
 wickedly boiling waters change their coloring green 
 as copperas, or blue as indigo according as the light 
 falls. Walking about their funnel-shaped rims, peer 
 ing down into that inferno, you see the wheel-barrow 
 that since the early 50 s has balanced itself twenty feet 
 under water on the edge of the shelf that is above a 
 depth that is bottomless, and one falls to wondering 
 what wayfarer on that great continental Desert-road 
 brought it from out the far-away East to leave it here ; 
 and why. 
 
 Half a dozen miles beyond Double Hot Springs, 
 stands tall and alone a chimney of squared, whitish 
 stone blocks ; sole relic of the buildings that once made 
 Hardin City. About it the Desert is broken into hum 
 mocks of hard alkali ground that being opened 
 yields the only fuel of the place. Hidden there are 
 the roots of giant sagebrush long dead roots that give 
 no sign that sagebrush had ever thrived there till 
 pick and shovel uncover them. That this particular 
 spot was chosen for the townsite of Hardin City, was 
 no doubt due to its plentiful, if peculiar, fuel supply. 
 
 Behind, are the Harlequin Hills ribbed ridges of 
 
 The 
 
 Rise 
 
 and 
 
 Fail 
 
 Of 
 
 Hardin 
 
 City 
 
In Miners Mirage-Land 
 
 The 
 Rise 
 and 
 
 Fall 
 Of 
 
 Hardin 
 City 
 
 color, motley, and unreal in seeming. And here it was 
 just where, no man may say in these hills that the 
 famous Hardin Silver was found, and lost the mar 
 velous Hardin Silver that has since sent many a man 
 half mad in his always fruitless quest. To this day 
 there are those of great faith who yearly seek the myth 
 ical silver in those mountains of strange geological 
 formations so unlike any of their neighbor heights 
 and hills. Many are the men who, since the stir it made 
 in 1849, have been constantly searching; and not the 
 least well known among them have been Ladue Vary 
 and Leroy Arnold. Feeble, with palsied hands and 
 frost-white hair, these two men stir one s pity by their 
 useless faith. 
 
 It was years after the Hardin Silver excitement that 
 there journeyed down from Idaho a miner named 
 Frank Peed, bringing with him samples of ore from 
 the famous Poor Man s mine bits that had that soapy 
 appearance peculiar to some rock from that district. 
 These pieces he showed to two men, O Donnell and 
 Jennison, who at once declared it to be similar to, if 
 not identical with, ore that they had once seen near Har 
 din Mountain ; but which at the time had not impressed 
 them as being valuable. Taking some three or four 
 pounds of samples from the Poor Man s mine for com 
 parison, they at once went into the Black Rock country. 
 Soon they returned with a large quantity that seemed 
 of the same character, and suggested the same values. 
 An assay made by the assayer of the American Valley 
 Smelter, gave a return of $117. Other tests under the 
 direction of such men as Kingsbury, Bowman, and 
 Major Smith of the fort at Smoke Creek gave uniform 
 results. 
 
 Men were at once set at the task of taking out a large 
 amount of ore; and work, buoyed by hope, went for- 
 
In Miners Mirage-Land 
 
 73 
 
 ward with the mining, as the miner s mirage beckoned 
 them on. An assayer of good repute was engaged to 
 work exclusively for that mine at a monthly stipend 
 of $250. He devoted himself to the work with a whole- 
 heartedness most commendable. The results he got 
 from his assays were fabulous. Also, the results were 
 unquestioned by the mine owners. 
 
 Encouraged by the assay returns, several tons of 
 the ore were selected from that which had been taken 
 out, for a working test, and one of the Thacker brothers 
 undertook to haul it to Union ville, nearly if not 
 quite a hundred miles away. It was worked at the 
 John C. Fall mill at the mouth of Unionville canon 
 the mill at the old Arizona mine that made Fall a several 
 times millionaire, known all over the West but Fall 
 could not, for some inexplicable reason, cope with it. 
 Nothing was obtained from the rock; and, as is usual 
 in such cases, the mill received the full measure of cen 
 sure and blame. 
 
 Disappointed, but not disbelieving, they determined 
 upon another, if smaller, working test; so a man by 
 the name of Giddings, with a thousand pounds or so, 
 trudged with it into the Washoe country to Ball s 
 Mill. When the millmen there (experienced in the ap 
 praising of ores to the degree of being able almost to 
 recognize values at sight) saw it, they at once declared 
 the stuff to be worthless, and laughed at Giddings for 
 bringing it all that great distance to be milled by them. 
 
 So, in pity for his delusion, they refused to work it. 
 They declared it would be robbery on their part; and 
 on his, time and money thrown away. 
 
 But Giddings was obdurate. He had faith in the 
 rock; and he wanted it worked. And what faith so 
 absolute, what belief so obstinate, as that of a man with 
 a mine he believes in ! At last the man who had charge 
 
 The 
 
 Rise 
 
 and 
 
 Fall 
 
 of 
 
 Hardin 
 
 City 
 
74 
 
 In Miners 9 Mirage-Land 
 
 The 
 Rise 
 and 
 
 Fall 
 Of 
 
 Hardin 
 City 
 
 of the mill Hiskey more to quiet Giddings than for 
 any other reason, said they would take it; and having 
 an entire distrust of there being any ore values what 
 ever in the lot, agreed to make no charge for the mill 
 ing should the result show any such values. 
 
 The rock was worked; the returns were great! 
 Hiskey proved himself a man of his word and made 
 no charge for the milling. 
 
 Then the original owners of the mine, having taken 
 others in with them to assist with capital in the con 
 struction of suitable works, began the erection of the 
 mill and other necessary buildings. That was the 
 founding of "Hardin City." Satisfied that they had 
 "a big thing" at the foot of Hardin Mountain, they 
 felt that the work was warranted. Major Bass, Judge 
 Harvey, Larry Bass, Alvaro Evans and Chancellor 
 Derby, as well as many others, had tests made time and 
 time again, with the same uniform result. Perhaps 
 eighty tons, as working tests, were milled by them 
 the net result being about $4,000 handed over to them 
 in silver bullion. The more the tests, the greater were 
 the returns. On an average, they ran higher than the 
 average workings of the Comstock. Also, there was 
 a greater amount of gold than the Comstock carried. 
 It seemed in the face of such evidence that there was 
 no good reason for disbelieving in the mine s genuine 
 worth, and so the fame of the Desert s mining claim 
 spread. 
 
 Soon a cluster of substantial adobe buildings were 
 grouped around a mill modeled on precisely the style 
 of Dall s the one that had so successfully worked 
 their second ore shipment. To reproduce as nearly as 
 possible the mill they knew could, and did, work such 
 ore as they had, was the thing to be done to ensure 
 them unfailing results; so they secured the services of 
 
In Miners Mirage-Land 
 
 75 
 
 the furnace man from Ball s, together with two other 
 men that understood perfectly the working of that 
 mill in all particulars. With every hope of success the 
 owners looked anxiously forward to the clean-up of 
 their first run. 
 
 In the meantime a new assayer, Cheatham, had been 
 engaged. The man s name was a misnomer, for he was 
 honesty itself; and with the result of his first assay 
 before them, came the first chill of fear, lest they had 
 been over sanguine. The results obtained by Cheat- 
 ham were not at all those got by his predecessor. The 
 mine-owners began to look dubious, outsiders said 
 things looked queer, and all awaited the start of the 
 mill with the keenest of anxiety. 
 
 At last everything was complete the ore was wait 
 ing, the machinery was set in motion, the stamps went 
 to chunk-chunk-chunking the ore into powder. They 
 were now to know the truth. 
 
 Several tons were run through. The result was 
 nothing ! 
 
 Absolutely nothing ! Not even a trace. Of metal of 
 any sort, none ! Not so small a particle as the point of 
 a fine cambric needle did it yield. 
 
 Over and over again they tried. Always, the result 
 was the same. The rock from Hardin Mountain was 
 barren of ore values as a bit of Bath brick. 
 
 What was the explanation, then, of the bullion they 
 had received from the run at Ball s Mill? 
 
 I, myself, can offer no explanation. I can only tell 
 you what was told me. An old miner Buffy, of Beer 
 Creek whose superstitions would put to the blush 
 many a Southern mammy s faith in spooks and spirits, 
 has solemnly averred to me that the mine had been 
 placed under a spell by some evil spirit changed by a 
 
 The 
 
 Rise 
 
 and 
 
 Fall 
 
 of 
 
 Hardin 
 
 City 
 
In Miners 9 Mirage-Land 
 
 The 
 
 Rise 
 
 and 
 
 Fall 
 
 of 
 
 Hardin 
 
 City 
 
 genius of ill from rich rock into worthless. " Hoo 
 dooed," he said. 
 
 But when I repeated this to one who had, in days 
 of old, known the men and the mine, he only smiled 
 and said that an assayer receiving $250 per month 
 would naturally want to hold onto his job," and 
 (unconsciously, of course) would be optimistic. 
 
 "But the bullion that was worked at Ball s Mill?" 
 I queried. 
 
 "Comstock." 
 
 "I don t understand," I said, rather bewildered. 
 
 "They hadn t made a thorough clean-up of Ball s 
 Mill after running those rich old Virginia ores through, 
 before they took hold of this ore, and these fellows got 
 about $4,000 in bullion that originally came up to the 
 light of day from out of Comstock shafts." 
 
 Its buildings are quite dismantled and destroyed. 
 The winds of the Besert the rains of the years have 
 nibbled and gnawed at the adobes until only the faint 
 est traces that they once were, remain. Of the mill 
 itself, part of the whitish-gray stone of its walls, 
 and most of the tall chimney, stand out in sharp relief, 
 discernable miles away against the darker background 
 of Hardin Mountain. 
 
 Buffy told me the other day that now the mill is 
 haunted. 
 
THE MEN OF THE DESERT. 
 
 N THE Pine Forest range, tucked away 
 in a canon that is hard for a stranger to 
 find, is a little group of cabins where 
 some of the oldest prospectors in the 
 State have made their homes for this 
 many a year. There, away from kindred 
 even civilization they have lived for a third of a 
 century, seeking for the gold they have never found. 
 They have isolated themselves from the rest of the 
 world for half a lifetime, and have lived a life of hardest 
 toil in that land of which such wondrous stories are told 
 of mines of fabulous worth. It savors of romance to 
 read of men going there to seek their fortunes; but to 
 endure the hardships such quests involve is quite a 
 different matter. 
 
 Apart from the world, and by the world long forgot, 
 these men are in reality path-findersblazing the way 
 for future generations. 
 
 So the quiet years go by, while they go on looking 
 for fairy-gold for the mines that are found only at 
 the rainbow s end. Yet, fairy-gold though it be, still 
 will they keep on seeking the Three Little Lakes of 
 Gold, and Forman s Find, and the silver that Hardin 
 saw, or the long lost Blue Bucket mines. They are not 
 miners, after all only prospectors ; for they have never 
 had a mine. They have, for all their busy years, found 
 
 The 
 
 Men 
 
 of 
 
 the 
 
 Desert* 
 
In Miners Mirage-Land 
 
 The 
 Men 
 of 
 
 the 
 
 Desert, 
 
 nothing to be mined. So they are but prospectors, at 
 most. Neither are they looking for mines. Only for 
 a mine. Just one certain mine, that each one believes 
 in and each one has named as his. Only It is in dream 
 land still. 
 
 Some of these men have met starvation and thirst 
 in the Desert, and have been down to the edge of 
 things where Death claims his own and have yet 
 lived, coming back from the horror of it all, to tell of 
 the hours of the Black Night, and to warn other men 
 from the trail that leads that way. Some there are 
 who have gone through battles of Indian warfare; and 
 they will show you arrow-point scars, and those that 
 came from slits in the flesh that were made by the 
 Redskins. That was when the State was a Territory ; 
 and they themselves were young. These men all have 
 their stories to tell; and if you linger long In the land, 
 you will find yourself often by their campfires, as the 
 darkness falls on the foothills and they whittle from a 
 square of tobacco that with which they crowd the bowls 
 of their pipes. When a glowing greasewood coal is 
 laid there, and the pipe is made to draw, you will 
 hearken to things (as they tell them) worth crossing 
 the world to hear. 
 
 But other men than miners live in this lava-land; 
 and here have made homes. So small are the ranches, 
 you scarcely call them by that name. You come upon 
 them up on the heights where are found wee meadows 
 wet by the mountains melted snow, or the flow that 
 comes down from hot springs. There men toil, and till 
 the ground, and find life good. There one fills his 
 lungs with air that is like wine in the blood, and his 
 soul with the gladness of living. You will have to dis 
 cover these places for yourself; for the roads that men 
 
In Miners 9 Mirage-Land 
 
 79 
 
 make in that country mostly run through the valleys, 
 and these skyland ranches do not lie on your route. 
 
 As you go journeying away over these little used 
 highways, you note that the country can be in no 
 wise changed from that which men found as they voy 
 aged through here in the years of long ago. 
 
 Railroad steel has been laid, and the wires have been 
 strung on poles set away to the North, and far, far to 
 the Southward; but here there is nothing to mark hu 
 man life in the land, except the dim and dusty road 
 that is but little more than a thread through the val 
 ley s expanse. 
 
 Desert stretches reach to far mountains. Be 
 yond are still other barren plains; beyond these yet 
 other lonely mountain ranges. And these keep re 
 peating themselves over and over again as you go 
 as you travel farther and farther away to the North. 
 
 A picture of vastness. And as you view it from 
 afar one with no detail; only the great sky-touching 
 mountain ranges, the wide Desert and over them the 
 immensity of the ocean-blue of the heavens, lending 
 the picture its only vivid coloring. But go up into 
 the mountains, and there you find a wealth of tint and 
 tone. Go up into the mountains, and you will there 
 find the men that are good to know the prospectors 
 who came into the country in the days of their youth. 
 
 The 
 
 Men 
 
 of 
 
 the 
 
 Desert* 
 
Three 
 
 Little 
 
 Lakes 
 
 of 
 
 Gold 
 
 THREE LITTLE LAKES OF GOLD. 
 
 SEP-DOMED heavens a wide-reaching 
 Desert. Above, the sapphire blue of a 
 summer sky without one cloud below 
 the nun-grey of a Nevada plain without a 
 vestige of verdure. And (at the rim 
 where they meet and blend) distant 
 mountains, dim and uncertain in outline and coloring. 
 
 Here you are far, far beyond the locomotive s whistle 
 or the moaning of the railroad telegraph wires, with 
 the plaintive chords drawn from them by the plain s 
 winds. You travel farther still into the North, across 
 those level, lonely sand-wastes, going toward vague 
 mountains wrapped in violet and blue shroudings, and 
 so bring them out of their uncertainty, until you reach 
 the first waves of foothills that lap their feet; then 
 the mountains misty outlines are dissipated, and they 
 stand in all their mightiness before you ruggedly mag 
 nificent and quite unlike anything you imagined them 
 to be. For you find there hidden canons holding 
 groves of leafy shade, and beautiful streams, delicious- 
 ly cold on the hottest of summer days. 
 
 Cross the mountain chain, and there will be another 
 Desert like unto this you have but just passed over. 
 Then (as breastworks on its farther side) there are 
 other mountains so like these that you grow bewildered 
 
In Miners 9 Mirage-Land 
 
 8r 
 
 in looking. Another wide plain, dry and deathly still; 
 another great ridge, vague and uncertain. 
 
 Half a century ago in 1851 a little party of emi 
 grants, with faces turned toward the West, moved 
 slowly along here in their ox-teams, and one night 
 camped at what is now known as Massacre Springs. It 
 was away up toward the northward of the traveled 
 ways across the continent in the "High Rock coun 
 try "on the emigrant road that crosses the upper part 
 of Humboldt county. On awakening the following 
 morning, they found that Indians creeping to their 
 camp while they slept, and leaving them undisturbed, 
 had stolen all their cattle. What to do? How to reach 
 California? Their oxen were gone. Without draft 
 animals, to press on to the West was an impossibility. 
 There was nothing to do but to follow the trail of the 
 stolen steers, and relying on the white man s superior 
 weapons recover their stock, if possible. 
 
 So all the men of the party five in number set 
 out, leaving behind them the womenfolk and little 
 children. The cattle were easily tracked, for during the 
 night a light rain had fallen, and their footprints, as 
 well as those of the Indians, were sharp cut in the mud. 
 
 The day was dark and gloomy; clouds obscured the 
 sun, and a fog settled over the whole valley. At times 
 a drizzling rain fell; but the men tramped doggedly 
 on, following the hoof -prints marked deep in the moist 
 earth. After many hours of walking, they realized 
 that they were further away from camp than was pru 
 dent for white men in a hostile Indian country; inas 
 much as the women and children were entirely unpro 
 tected during the time they might be away. They 
 halted, and conferred together. It was decided that 
 two of them should, at once, return to camp, while the 
 remaining three were to follow the trail of the stolen 
 
 Three 
 
 Little 
 
 Lakes 
 
 of 
 
 Gold 
 
83 
 
 In Miners 9 Mirage-Land 
 
 Three 
 
 Little 
 
 Lakes 
 
 of 
 
 Cold 
 
 cattle until they were sighted ; and then, watching their 
 opportunity, if possible get possession of the oxen again 
 and get them back to camp. Without recovering them 
 the emigrants were helpless in a hostile country, un 
 less they should chance to be picked up by some other 
 party of passing emigrants a contingency so remote 
 as to be scarcely worth considering. 
 
 So they parted; two of them going back to camp, 
 and the others to whose lot it fell to follow the stolen 
 cattle, keeping on the plainly marked trail leading 
 southward. Finally, these three found themselves in a 
 beautiful and well-watered canon, green with grass 
 and shrubbery. The rocky cliffs that closed it in rose 
 to great heights on either side; and down between the 
 narrow gorge s walls plunged a creek in a succession 
 of foaming cascades. Near the entrance of the canon 
 it leaped a sheer drop of seventy-five feet over a 
 ledge of projecting rock in a beautiful waterfall to 
 a hollowed place in the solid rock bed of the creek be 
 neath. Then, separating into three streams, the waters 
 formed as many pools below. 
 
 It was at the foot of the waterfall the three men 
 stopped, and stooped to the basin hollowed there near 
 est the fall to drink. In its clear depths, among water- 
 worn pebbles and black sand, one of the men (who had 
 previously seen something of the California placers) 
 saw pieces of gold not simply gold-dust, but nuggets. 
 Huge nuggets of the pure metal. He showed them to 
 his companions, to whom native gold was an unfamiliar 
 sight. All three immediately fell a-searching for more, 
 and were rewarded in a short time by finding enough 
 to fill a tin quart-cup which one wore tied to his belt. 
 Besides this, they filled their pockets and one of the 
 men put as many nuggets into his handkerchief as he 
 could well manage. 
 
In Miners 9 Mirage-Land 
 
 However, they feared the delay of hunting for gold 
 might lose them their stock which was infinitely more 
 precious to them in their desperate condition than a 
 mountain of gold so realizing that each minute meant 
 loss, as well as danger, to them, they reluctantly pre 
 pared to leave the spot that still lured them to stay. 
 But men do not easily turn away from the sight of gold, 
 no matter to whom it belongs; and this uncounted 
 wealth for all was all their own. Theirs, for the 
 simple task of taking. So, after filling the cup with 
 the precious nuggets, and cacheing it at the foot of a 
 tree (a dead pine that should serve as guide when they 
 would come again) they yielded to the fascination of 
 the gold s yellow shine, and turned again to the creek 
 to gather, if possible, from one of the other wee lakes 
 that had been less thoroughly searched, yet other bits 
 of gold. They had scarcely clambered down the bank 
 to the edge of the stream when a rain of lead came from 
 the cliffs above them, and two of the three men fell 
 , shot to death. 
 
 Indians had slipped softly upon them as they were 
 searching in the gravel and sands; and the waterfall s 
 roar had drowned any sound that otherwise might have 
 warned them. Before the second volley of shots could 
 come from those old-time, slow-loading guns, the re 
 maining man had found opportunity to escape by dart 
 ing quickly into the thick underbrush, and working his 
 way carefully up the creek. Clever as the redskins 
 were in following the trail of a white man, here was one 
 who outwitted them by hiding among rocks that, 
 in their search, they passed and repassed many times. 
 Then slipping out, but keeping well under cover, he 
 finally found himself in a large grove of aspens and 
 cottonwoods. From there he made his way out of the 
 canon to the heights where he could see over the coun- 
 
 Three 
 
 Little 
 
 Lakes 
 
 of 
 
 Gold 
 
In Miners 9 Mirage Land 
 
 Three 
 
 Little 
 
 Lakes 
 
 of 
 
 Gold 
 
 try. Mountains, mostly rugged and bare, were all 
 about him, rimming the wide and barren plains; but 
 far away to the southward he discovered a single tim 
 bered range. Toward it he directed his course. He 
 had lost his bearings in his flight, and could not guess 
 now in which direction lay the camp. He argued, too, 
 that no doubt hours before the redskins had come down 
 upon him and his companions, they had found the un 
 protected women and children and massacred them. 
 Nothing ever was heard of them, or of the two men who 
 had returned to camp, so that they too doubtless met 
 their death at the hands of the savages, unless they per 
 ished in the Desert in an attempt to continue their 
 journey on foot. 
 
 When the one survivor, of whom we know aught, saw 
 the wooded mountain across the valley, he turned his 
 steps that way. He must get out of the Indian-infested 
 country as best he could, without food or any human 
 assistance. Ahead of him were terrible miles to be 
 traversed, and the demon of thirst to be battled with. 
 Where trees were, there he knew was water ; and about 
 those mountain springs was greater chance of finding 
 things that were edible. He must reach the tree cov 
 ered heights. 
 
 He Stoddard began his awful journey. He still 
 carried the handkerchief with its burden of gold, having 
 kept an unconscious grasp on it through all the perils 
 of his escape. Over mountain ridges he climbed, over 
 sun-baked plains he wearily walked. Days and 
 days he journeyed. How many? where? in what meas 
 ure of suffering? neither he nor any other ever knew. 
 For when, at length, he wandered into Downieville, in 
 California, it was a shrivelled mummy that men saw 
 stumbling along in shreds of ragged clothing, barefoot 
 and bareheaded, half-famished and with mind wholly 
 
In Miners 9 Mirage-Land 
 
 gone. Delirious, he babbled of Indians, of eating roots 
 and the berries of wild rose-bushes, of picking up nug 
 gets of gold, of walking walking walking ! He had 
 a wild animal s fear of human faces was hardly human 
 himself. But still his bony fingers clutched a handker 
 chief, and in the handkerchief were the nuggets of gold. 
 
 Of those who first saw Stoddard when he staggered 
 into Downieville, was old Major Downie himself he 
 for whom the town was named. To many a listener after 
 wards he related how he himself had seen Stoddard 
 still tightly gripping the handkerchief as he came into 
 the town delirious, in the likeness of a skeleton, yet 
 with the miser s grasp on his treasure. 
 
 When after long weeks of careful nursing, reason 
 returned to him, he began little by little to recall 
 the events of days directly preceding that of his arrival 
 at the canon of the "three little lakes," as he called the 
 pools where the gold was found. Some things rose 
 quite clearly before his mind; others he groped for 
 through a fog of dimmed recollection. Gradually he 
 came to remember that about noon of the day preced 
 ing the one when his companions had been killed, they 
 had passed out of High Rock canon, and that night had 
 camped at Massacre Springs. Then, later, memory was 
 further cleared of the haze, and he told of the loss of 
 the cattle, of the trail they had followed, of the finding 
 of the nuggets, of the Indians attack upon them, of his 
 comrades fall, and his own escape, and lastly of 
 directing his course toward the far-away mountain of 
 water and food as well as shelter that mountain to the 
 southward, fully forty miles away. 
 
 Again memory failed him. As to the fearful days 
 that lay between the time when he dragged his wearied 
 feet over the dry Desert levels going mad with an 
 intolerable thirst, and, with blood-shot eyes, always 
 
 Three 
 
 Little 
 
 Lakes 
 
 of 
 
 Gold 
 
86 
 
 In Miners Mirage-Land 
 
 Three 
 
 Little 
 
 Lakes 
 
 of 
 
 Gold 
 
 looking toward the far-off heights dark with juniper 
 and mountain mahogany and the time when he 
 found himself fed and clothed and cared for by the 
 people of Downieville, his mind was a complete blank. 
 
 As to the truth of his assertions regarding the three 
 little lakes of gold if you doubted, there was the hand 
 kerchief heavy with the metal; a ve.ry tangible proof 
 that somewhere back in Northern Nevada at the foot 
 of a high waterfall in a lovely canon, where three small 
 pools and in them was gold. 
 
 Then the gold hunt began. That was in the spring 
 of 52 ; and not yet is the search ended not yet are the 
 searchers done. Still men go to the big, quiet country 
 away off there where the railroad, and the telegraph, 
 and the daily mail do not find them. They search, and 
 search, and search. Even in this year of grace do men 
 go to seek the hidden treasure casket of the mountain. 
 
 Travelling away out there, on pleasure bent, I have 
 myself met them on the road; and (after the fashion of 
 wayfarers in a great silent country where few go, albeit 
 they who meet are strangers) we have greeted one 
 another as we met on the road, and we drew rein to talk 
 together a bit there in the stillness of the wide alkali 
 plains. I have found them bright with hope, and buoyed 
 by the belief that they surely, this time, would find 
 reward for their years of patient search. And I have 
 seen them again, long afterward, jaded and worn with 
 weeks of fatiguing toilsome travel. Less buoyant they 
 were, less bright ; but still hopeful that some day they 
 would come upon the canon (that lies less than a day s 
 foot- travel from Massacre Springs) where a mountain 
 stream falls sheer to its rocky bed below; and the 
 stream dividing fills three tiny pools, and in the pools 
 are nuggets of gold. 
 
 They search and seek they grow old and gray in 
 
In Miners 9 Mirage-Land 
 
 the seeking, while the years slip softly by, as a gray 
 coyote slips by one on the rabbit-trails that make a 
 network of the gray earth there. Searching for what 
 (we say) is not. Creeks they find in the canons, that 
 have divided and make three four a dozen little 
 pools. But no waterfall plunges down the gorge from 
 just above. The mountains have many beautiful water 
 falls (if one but knows where to find them), but none 
 that the old men have found sings to three little lakes 
 down below. The sceptics (after their fashion) smile, 
 but that does not hinder the faithful in their quest. 
 
 Dreamers? We declare them such. Yet suppose 
 that some time one of their number should find the spot 
 that Stoddard found back in the early fifties? What 
 if one of the faithful should some day come back to tell 
 us he has found, in a remote canon away back on the 
 plains, an old tin cup (so old and rusted that it broke 
 apart as he lifted it), and that the cup was filled full 
 to the brim with virgin gold? What then? 
 
 Three 
 
 Little 
 
 Lakes 
 
 of 
 
 Gold 
 
THE BEAUTY OF THE DESERT. 
 
 The 
 
 Beauty 
 
 of 
 
 the 
 
 Desert* 
 
 NDER the palms and pepper-trees that 
 grow by Pacific waters I sit, and say: 
 "This is home"; saying it over and over 
 again, as a child repeats the lesson that 
 is hard to learn. But repeating the words 
 of a lesson a hundred and more times is 
 not learning it. And I do not know my lesson yet. I 
 have driven my tent pegs here among California roses, 
 and under a California sky. I have stretched the ropes 
 tight, and have anchored them down to stay. Yet 
 this is not Home. If you would ask why, remember 
 that the tent canvas was weathered in a Desert-wind, 
 and the ropes bleached by a Desert-sun. Then, too, the 
 tent stood there for long. Very long. And the tent pegs 
 pull hard when driven long in one place. So though 
 there are roses and lilies about me, and the wind brings 
 the salt smell of the sea yet would I have the Desert- 
 alkali in my nostrils and smell the smoke from a grease- 
 wood camp-fire. You, who do not understand why I 
 make such choice, are apt to ask: "Is it not a mirage 
 you see the charm of color, and form, and music that 
 you say is in the Desert? We do not see these things. 
 We only see uncouth fashioning, where you see magnifi 
 cence or grace. The cry of a cougar the coyote s 
 wailing is uncanny to hear; yet you call it music. You 
 
In Miners Mirage-Land 
 
 tell us there is color in the Desert; while we, who know, 
 see nothing but the endless gray gray always and 
 always. We are wise with the wisdom of cities and 
 many men, and therefore we know. It is but a mirage, 
 this charm of the Desert." 
 
 And so you wise ones decide for the ones whom you 
 call poor fools, and say that the mirage they follow is 
 like unto the one the wanderer a-thirst sees, or the old 
 miner in his quest for rainbow-gold. 
 
 Well, is happiness, or beauty, or any of the things 
 that give us joy anything more than a mirage? Do they 
 exist except as we see them? And is it not well that 
 we are thus unwise to believe in the non-existent? For 
 when we shall have come to the door of death, and all 
 of life is ended, we shall come to know that through all 
 the years that have been ours, the heart was made glad 
 by our faiths more often than by facts. So let me be 
 lieve in the Desert still. We find in the world only 
 what we, ourselves, bring into it. If we find love, and 
 joy, and beauty, it is because we are capable of loving, 
 and can feel joy, and can see beauty. They are not 
 there, except as they are of us. 
 
 So, now, go your way and leave me and the old miners 
 to our faiths our fancies, if you will. At least, we 
 have had much that you have missed. 
 
 Perhaps it is because of all this that I feel kinship 
 with those who believe in the wonder-tales. 
 
 After you have come to know these men and their 
 stories, and have lived long enough in the land they 
 have made their own to understand why it is they can 
 not go away, you will have a tender regard for them and 
 their welfare, no matter where your lot may be cast in 
 all the after years. You will never forget ever so small 
 a part of any of the stories that they have told you. 
 
 The 
 Beauty 
 of 
 the 
 
 Desert 
 
9 o 
 
 In Miners Mirage-Land 
 
 The 
 
 Beauty 
 
 of 
 
 the 
 
 Desert 
 
 The seasons will come and go, you will make new 
 friends and bury the old, and life will bring you fresh 
 interests and let slip the things that you knew on other 
 by-ways ; but of these old men and their complete trust, 
 there shall never come to you a forgetting. To the last 
 chapter of your life, the memory of their own and their 
 stories will be with you, to link you yet closer to the 
 old days when you found the Desert and its men. 
 
THE LOST BLUE BUCKET MINES. 
 
 STATE in the Union contains so great 
 a variety of minerals and geological phe 
 nomena as Nevada. Not a county of the 
 State is so rich in them as is Humboldt. 
 And one may add that perhaps no other 
 like area on the face of the globe so 
 abounds in legends of "lost mines" of fascinating tales 
 of fabulous "finds" of every valuable mineral or preci 
 ous stone that Mother Earth has ever given birth to as 
 that same county lying in the northeastern corner of 
 the State. Go out there among the old prospectors for 
 a month or more, and you will hear scores upon scores 
 of stories of the marvelous findings of diamonds and 
 rubies, of emeralds and turquoise, of copper and lead, 
 of silver and gold. But mostly of gold. For the dream 
 of the old-time prospector is always of finding gold 
 in quantity so great that one would grow bewildered 
 in its computation. 
 
 Simple hearted and credulous, there are dozens of 
 them today looking for mines that have never ex 
 isted, save in the lurid imagination of some legend- 
 makersome emigrant who crossed the plains in the 
 late forties or early fifties, and at the end of his jour 
 ney told eager listeners of his "find" away back, 
 somewhere, in the barren-land. How many trusting 
 ones among the listeners found death in the Desert 
 
 The 
 
 Lost 
 
 Blue 
 
 Bucket 
 
 Mines 
 
In Miners 9 Mirage-Land 
 
 The 
 
 Lost 
 
 Blue 
 
 Bucket 
 
 Mines 
 
 through the lure of these legends, God only knows! 
 But the unmarked graves that resulted are more than 
 you would guess there could be graves carelessly or 
 wantonly dug by way of the wild tales told by men 
 who (just to be the envied centre of a crowd of open- 
 mouthed listeners) fabricated them for their own 
 amusement. Such falsehoods led many a one away 
 to bear the hardships and privations of years of Desert 
 roving; perhaps to die at last in the lonely land, and 
 to die there alone. Have you ever thought what it 
 would be like, for a man to die in the Desert perhaps 
 a hundred miles from any other human being alone 
 under the staring sky, with no sight of moving things 
 but the gray lizards and the little brown squirrels, and 
 a lone coyote watching him from some rise a few yards 
 away; with no sound but the coyote s wailing cry, and 
 the moaning of the Desert wind. So many, many men 
 have died in just this way; only we are apt to forget 
 that it is ever so. 
 
 Over there in that half -explored, wholly interesting 
 country, where the chief chain of mountains lias been 
 fashioned by the united work of the great lava flow 
 and the erosion of the centuries into flattened tops, 
 making a vast landscape of sky-touching tablelands 
 where the cliffs and chasms take on strange shapes and 
 colorings where the odd and unusual in mountain and 
 plain is about you always and everywhere, there lies, 
 still unfound by the prospectors, a canon that these 
 aged and earnest men will tell you is rich in nuggets 
 of gold the canon of the "Blue Bucket" diggings. 
 
 In 1845 one of the earliest trains of emigrants cross 
 ing the plains, with Oregon for an objective point, was 
 working its way down the banks of the Humboldt, and 
 at Gravelly Ford a noted point on the old road, where 
 now is the station of Beowawe separated into two 
 
In Miners Mirage-Land 
 
 93 
 
 parties; one continuing on down the Humboldt river, 
 while the other took the road by the way of Black 
 Rock into California. The latter party on reaching 
 the Pacific Coast had startling stories to tell of their 
 adventures upon the way, while going through that 
 country that lies back from that river which in the 
 early days was known as " Mary s River," instead of 
 "Humboldt." 
 
 And this is what they told: 
 
 After leaving Black Rock perhaps three or four 
 days travel beyond that grim, dark-hued promontory 
 they had passed through a canon so deep and rough 
 that "it seemed only a bird would be able to get out, 
 once it found itself in a canon." However, after suc 
 cessfully overcoming a deluge of difficulties that beset 
 them, they finally made their way through. Yet, even 
 so, in many places they had to take their wagons apart, 
 and piece by piece hoist them up cliffs and down 
 declivities by means of ropes. It was a fearful experi 
 ence of trial and hardship, unusual even in Desert travel 
 of the early times. 
 
 It was when directing their course toward the "Twin 
 Sister" peaks of Oregon, though while yet in Nevada, 
 that they had come upon this canon, to them unknown 
 and unnamed, even in any description given by other 
 wayfarers who later came through the land. Neither 
 had they any knowledge of it from other emigrants who 
 had gone before. It seemed to be a side road, little 
 used, and turning out from the one better known and 
 more traveled. There, while the wagons were grinding 
 their way over boulders and broken rock of all sorts 
 and sizes, they found, in the shallow creek and in the 
 ruts made by the wagon-wheels, what in their ignor 
 ance and inexperience they called "brass." They had 
 heard of gold dust, of course; but this was not dust. 
 
 The 
 
 Lost 
 
 Blue 
 
 Bucket 
 
 Mines 
 
94 
 
 In Miners 9 Mirage-Land 
 
 The 
 
 Lost 
 
 Blue 
 
 Bucket 
 
 Mines 
 
 It must then be brass. But it was pretty, this "brass" ; 
 and it attracted the attention in particular of the women 
 and children, who were mainly the ones to gather 
 it. The men were too much interested in the matter 
 of getting their party through this difficult pass to pay 
 heed to pretty playthings found along the way. 
 
 The wagons, and the buckets hanging to their sides, 
 were painted a vivid blue. And into the buckets were 
 thrown the supposedly worthless nuggets. When cross 
 ing the Deschutes river the wagons were partially cap 
 sized, and many of the emigrants belongings lost. 
 Among such things as went to the bottom of the Des 
 chutes were the buckets that carried the bright bits 
 of metal. A very few pieces, however, had been cast 
 into the wagons with other things, and were thus saved. 
 These, with Jheir other possessions, the emigrants car 
 ried into the country of their new homes eastern Ore 
 gon, where many of them permanently remained. Some 
 of them, though, later, went southward, and eventually 
 -in 1848 found themselves at gutter s Fort. They 
 remained there during the first months of that year, 
 and there they were shown gold dust and small nug 
 gets. In them they recognized a metal that they had 
 previously supposed to be "brass." 
 
 Doubtful if any of their old companions had kept 
 the bits of yellow metal they had brought to the! far 
 ther West with them, they nevertheless wrote, making 
 inquiry. As soon as a letter could reach them, there 
 came not only a reply, but bits of gold nuggets from 
 the place that was henceforth to be known as the "Blue 
 Bucket district" that had been preserved through the 
 many past months by the children of the party who 
 had kept them for playthings. 
 
 Comparison with the nuggets then being shown at 
 Sutter Creek proved these playthings to be gold. Of 
 
In Miners 9 Mirage-Land 
 
 95 
 
 a coarse sort, but without doubt gold. A party of ninety 
 was organized and equipped for the journey, and at 
 once started back, in spite of the warnings of friends 
 that Indians were up in arms against the whites, and 
 that traveling had become even more perilous than be 
 fore. Regardless of the almost certain encounters with 
 Indians, they set out. Of the ninety who left, full of 
 courage and hope, not half lived to reach home. 
 Long before they came to the country of the "Blue 
 Bucket" diggings, Indians fell upon them, and only 
 by a miracle did any of their number escape. Of the 
 few who did reach California and Oregon again, only 
 two of them were of the original party that knew the 
 exact locality of the canon of the "Blue Bucket" gold. 
 With Indians on the warpath they were too disheart 
 ened to continue the search after their companions had 
 been massacred ; so that wounded and sick they went 
 back to the coast. They were too discouraged with the 
 result of their one trip to ever make an attempt at a 
 second journey into greasewood-land and the home of 
 the jack-rabbit. The Indians were there; let them 
 have it. 
 
 But to Dr. Dane, as they lay sick at Yreka, they 
 showed the nuggets they still retained, and to him they 
 told the story of the emigrants "find." They de 
 scribed the locality of the canon, and gave him minute 
 directions as to where one should go to find it. These 
 men died, and for some time interest in the "Blue 
 Bucket" gold lapsed. But years later, while engaged 
 in placer mining, the Doctor heard that which quick 
 ened his interest. He had a small store at the place on 
 the river where he was working his placers; and there 
 an occasional traveler might find accommodations for 
 the night. 
 
 To this stopping place there came a Hudson Bay trap- 
 
 The 
 
 Lost 
 
 Blue 
 
 Bucket 
 
 Mines 
 
In Miners 9 Mirage-Land 
 
 The 
 
 Lost 
 
 Blue 
 
 Bucket 
 
 Mines 
 
 per one day, asking for a night s shelter. He had just 
 crossed the plains, he said; and was full of stories of 
 interesting experiences. The morning after his arrival, 
 he accompanied the Doctor down to the placer claims 
 to see the (to him) novel sight of gold washing. Plung 
 ing his hand into the Long Tom, the Doctor took out 
 a handful of black sand and gold, and poured it into 
 the joined palms which the trapper held out to him. 
 It was unusually good that morning, containing a large 
 number of good-sized nuggets. The trapper looked 
 at them curiously. 
 
 "Is that stuff sure-enough gold?" he asked. 
 
 "Well," answered Doctor Dane, amused at his sur 
 prise and ignorance, "it seems to satisfy the people 
 from whom we buy anything. They give us, in ex 
 change, anything we want for it. Doesn t that prove 
 to you what it is?" 
 
 "If that s gold," the trapper replied, "I know where 
 there s any amount of it! It s in a place I could easily 
 find again, too, for I kept my horses in that canon all 
 winter a fine, watered canon back near the emigrant 
 road that comes out by the way of High Rock. I 
 didn t find it the gold until I went to get my horses 
 in the Spring. There s lots of these gold pebbles in 
 the creek lots of em! Why, I could load my two 
 horses with all they could carry, inside of an hour of 
 hunting them and picking them up !" 
 
 He then went on to give the Doctor a detailed de 
 scription of the country about there, and in particular 
 the appearance of the canon, which was a very long 
 one, he said. The account he gave tallied precisely 
 with the description of that canon where the emigrants 
 had found the famed "brass." 
 
 It was arranged that the trapper should immediately 
 take the Doctor to the place; Indian depredations hav- 
 
In Miners 9 Mirage-Land 
 
 97 
 
 ing become less frequent in occurrence. Doctor Dane, 
 loth to make the long trip into an unknown country 
 with an entire stranger, induced him to allow a third 
 person to join their little party. From the first, the 
 trapper had said he could easily retrace his way by 
 means of his dead campfires to which they would come 
 day after day. And as they went back into the Desert 
 country, in no instance did he fail to show them where 
 he had camped but a few days before. Nor in any way 
 did he do aught to create suspicion that he was other 
 wise than perfectly honest in all his declarations. 
 
 Their route lay through a country that was strange 
 to the Doctor, and it was not until he found himself 
 at the head of Goose Lake Valley, through which he 
 had passed on his way to the West, that he got 
 his bearings. When they reached Wardner Hill, and 
 while standing on its bare and level summit, from which 
 point a magnificent view can be had of the whole sur 
 rounding country, the trapper said pointing north 
 ward to where two peaks rose sixty or seventy miles 
 away, and which are now known as "Steen" and 
 Pueblo mountains : 
 
 "There! That mountain to the right is the one; and 
 the canon is on this side. That is the place where I 
 put my horses to graze. There is a creek in it that runs 
 a big stream in the Spring; but in the Fall it goes 
 most dry. The canon is pretty level part of the way, 
 and there s a fine lot of bunch grass all over it; but 
 farther up, the walls are terrible high and it s so rough 
 that it s about all a horse can do to get through it." 
 
 Two days travel brought them there. And Doctor 
 Dane found the place exactly as described. It fully 
 answered the description given by the old emigrants, as 
 well as that which the trapper had given before start 
 ing out. The three men were scarcely within the canon 
 
 The 
 Lost 
 Blue 
 Bucket 
 
 Mines 
 
9 8 
 
 In Miners Mirage-Land 
 
 The 
 Lost 
 
 Blue 
 
 Bucket 
 
 Mines 
 
 ere they came upon evidence of a recent cloudburst. 
 The creek banks were piled high with uprooted shrubs, 
 rose-bushes and the bush of the wild gooseberry, buck- 
 brush and willows, left there by the flood. The banks 
 themselves were cut out, and drift and brushwood had 
 made dams across the channel. Fresh-cut gullies were 
 everywhere. The track of the storm s devastation 
 grew rougher as the men penetrated farther and far 
 ther into the canon. At last, riding was an impossi 
 bility, and they dismounted to clamber over the boul 
 ders or to creep around the cliffs. Even the creek s 
 course had been changed in places, and a new channel 
 made. The work the cloudburst had done was not a 
 month old. 
 
 To find the spot where he had seen the nuggets was 
 easy for the trapper, but of nuggets themselves there 
 were none to be found. If gold had ever been there, 
 it was either hidden by the storm s debris, or had been 
 swept farther down by the violence of the flood s re 
 sistless waters. They searched and searched, but in 
 vain. Having come unprepared to mine for gold after 
 the usual placer fashion, the quest was for the time 
 abandoned. 
 
 Had Doctor Dane doubted for one instant (which 
 he never did), the trapper s sincerity, that doubt 
 would have been wholly dissipated by seeing the per 
 sistence with which the trapper prosecuted his search; 
 by the perseverance, later, when a start for home must 
 be made, with which he entreated the Doctor to stay 
 yet longer. He declared over and over again that the 
 gold was there he knew it; and Doctor Dane, during 
 the days of their search, became more and more con 
 vinced that it was so. Yet they had to return to civil 
 ization without even one small nugget to reward them 
 
In Miners* Mirage-Land 
 
 99 
 
 for their tedious and tiring trip, or their days of seek 
 ing for the "Blue Bucket" gold. 
 
 With another year, however, the quest was renewed 
 but not by these men. And the men who sought for 
 it then were not more eager and confident than are 
 those who go there today. For they who believe in the 
 story, fairy-tale or not, as it may be, are growing in 
 number with the years, and every year sees new con 
 verts. 
 
 Some go there boldly organized parties for pros 
 pecting, willing the public should know of the object 
 of their trip others, half-ashamed of their own credu 
 lity, slip away by themselves into that land of space 
 and stillness, and wander its mountain ways alone, 
 lest others may know, and jeer at their faith. Men 
 went last year to find the "Blue Bucket" mines; other 
 men are there now. The years wax and wane ; but time 
 does not lessen their faith. Always and always will 
 there be those who go up and down the length of Desert- 
 land seeking the mines that are myths; serving the 
 Sorceress of the sand wastes until the day shall come 
 when they lie down to rest on the old Overland Trail, 
 where the bones of those who broke the way were buried 
 in the long ago. 
 
 The 
 
 Lost 
 
 Blue 
 
 Bucket 
 
 Mines 
 
A MEMORY OF THE DESERT. 
 
 A 
 
 Memory 
 
 of 
 
 the 
 
 Desert, 
 
 UESTS there have been that promised 
 fulfillment without stint and without 
 fail, only to prove just as one s out- 
 reached hand caught at the garments of 
 Fortune it was but a vision more tanta 
 lizing than any mirage. And one easily 
 sees visions, in that land of visible and invisible 
 mysteries. 
 
 Once, there was one that I knew one who was count 
 ed too sane to see visions and too wise to be deceived 
 who went a-search for diamonds, there in the Desert. 
 Topaz, and turquoise, and other things of beauty are 
 there, but of diamonds none have been found. 
 
 To one of the wee towns that make scattered dots on 
 the map of Nevada southward from the Black Rock 
 country, there came an old prospector; and he singled 
 out this man, from all whom he knew, to take into his 
 confidence and make half-owner in the wonderful 
 diamond mines he had found. He brought with him a 
 sack of the gems, to prove the truth of his assertions 
 a canvas bag full of sparkling white things that under 
 the gaslight, as they were spread out, were beautiful 
 enough to be real. Such a sight! Long, long after 
 ward I, too, saw them, and I did not wonder that ignor 
 ance of the diamond in its rough state, might very well 
 help a man to believe in these to think them the gems 
 
In Miners 9 Mirage-Land 
 
 101 
 
 they looked to be. There must have been fifty pounds 
 of the pretty, worthless baubles that were poured into 
 a bright and new tin pan, and filled it well to the brim. 
 It seemed impossible that they had not been cut by a 
 lapidary, so perfect were they on all sides. Not crystals 
 as we know them, pointed on one end only ; but polished, 
 and true, with facets cut by Nature on every side. The 
 most beautiful crystals I have ever seen, and of a sort 
 that I had never come across here in the West. 
 
 Out beyond the Quin River Desert, the Old Prospector 
 found them, believing them to be diamonds of worth. 
 They were lying about in quantities, sprinkling the 
 sand wastes off there at the Desert s edge, where the 
 sands gather together in dunes, only to scatter them 
 selves broadcast, as grain is tossed from the hand of 
 the sower. So the winds cover and uncover them ; and 
 to them, one day, came these men believing in their 
 worth; and many a dollar that might have gone better 
 ways, went toward the gathering of what came, later, 
 to shame them for their simple credulity. 
 
 Others (and I among them, also) found copper out 
 there melted copper that I took from its home in the 
 mountain, where it had been melted by the great con 
 flagration. It seemed easy to believe the Desert s treas 
 ure-trove might well be there. It is so easy to dream of 
 things that never present themselves to one in lands 
 where strange things do not intrude. But here it would 
 seem that any marvebus thing might very well be ; the 
 country is so weird so unusual so unlike our every 
 day world. You find yourself looking for all sorts of 
 impossible things to happen. You find yourself say 
 ing: "Why not?" 
 
 But my handfuls of copper were all there were there 
 was never a sign of a ledge. Just melted bits from a 
 
 A 
 
 Memory 
 
 of 
 
 the 
 
 Desert* 
 
102 
 
 In Miners* Mirage-Land 
 
 A 
 
 Memory 
 of 
 the 
 Desert 
 
 "blow-out" spewed out by the earth s internal fires, 
 with its parent ledge leagues upon leagues away. 
 
 And a sulphur mine that I tried to conquer? Did it 
 not become conqueror itself? It fought me with fire, 
 though hidden, and so drove me away. Yet, I have 
 heard that others have now gone there to do what I, in 
 vain, tried to do. Will they succeed, or will they, too, 
 be vanquished by the earth s better weapon? Or, will 
 the Desert have gone back to its way of old, and become 
 cool once more, as it was away back in the early six 
 ties? I often ponder over it. It was a mystery then, 
 it is a mystery still. 
 
A DESERT MYSTERY. 
 
 OU may try as you will to comprehend, 
 in its entirety, the awful tragedy of 
 Pelee and La Soufriere to grasp it as 
 something of modern times and real yet, 
 as you read, you are aware it seems as 
 remote from our day as the stories of 
 Pompeii and Herculaneum, and more than half fiction. 
 It was too appalling a tragedy too stupendous a 
 death-roll, for the comprehension of any but those who 
 afterward stood in the silence where once there was 
 sound, and saw the fearful dead that bestrewed the 
 places where once the living walked. Under the shadow 
 of its black phophesy the people worked or played, 
 loved and married, bore children and buried them 
 living out the measure of their days unheedful of the 
 thing that was, some day, to come. None who live with 
 in a volcano s possible reach but know its danger; yet 
 who will ever believe that he himself is to be in the 
 pathway of its wrath? 
 
 And how thin the old Earth s crust is, over her mighty 
 f.res ! And the warnings that she sends before her out 
 breakshow little are they heeded ! Man only believes 
 in danger when that danger has come. 
 
 With my thoughts dwelling upon the Earth s vagar 
 ies; of the uncertainty of her temper where her fires 
 burn the fiercest, I am reminded of a certain place 
 
 A 
 
 Desert* 
 Mystery 
 
104 
 
 In Miners 9 Mirage-Land 
 
 A 
 
 Desert 
 Mystery 
 
 where, once, I found a subterranean temperature that 
 was tremendous. 
 
 It was a strange thing that I came upon, that time. 
 Let me tell you of it. 
 
 It was in January, 1900, that I formed a partnership 
 with a former associate in gold mining, to prospect for 
 sulphur deposits in Northern Nevada. There are vast 
 beds of pure sulphur (the largest in the United States, 
 unless those of Louisiana that lie under the sea are 
 included) lying west of north of the Central Pacific 
 Railroad, and forty miles away from its threads of steel. 
 They are the great Humboldt sulphur mines, so well 
 mown. Following that trend all the way to the Oregon 
 [ine are scattered indications of sulphur throughout that 
 weird and barren land that the great lava flow of the 
 North has spread itself over. 
 
 For our initial work, we selected a district a short 
 distance westward from the railroad station of Hum 
 boldt. As early as the late 60 s I had had knowledge 
 of small prospect hole at that especial place; and, as 
 it was within a hundred and fifty yards of the railroad 
 track (thus solving the problem of cheap transporta 
 tion, which, in that land of long distances is the most 
 serious drawback to the development of mines carrying 
 small "values") we determined to begin our operations 
 there. 
 
 Just prior to the laying of the Central Pacific s rails 
 through the great gray valley of the Humboldt the 
 one-time-called "River of Death" these beds were 
 located by James Spence; and from the single prospect 
 hole (an incline of not more than thirty feet in depth) 
 he took some fifteen or twenty tons of sulphur. Two 
 "mountain schooners" (Nevada s desert camel of the 
 early days), driven by himself and Henry Childers, 
 had carried the crude ore into Virginia City, where it 
 
UNI 
 
 In Miners 9 Mira 
 
 105 
 
 became the property of Hy Barnes, and an unprofit 
 able speculation. I name these people to you because 
 they were real people, even as the stories are real. In 
 cabins and by camp-fires I have heard old miners tell 
 these things so often that the names of these men are 
 as familiar to me as my own. Hy Barnes could not dis 
 pose of it, and the months that came saw it lying there 
 a flaming yellow pyramid on the side of Mount 
 Davidson. This was in Virginia City s palmy days. 
 Later for that must have been in 64 or 65 when 
 the Central Pacific Railroad Company was building 
 its snowsheds over the Sierra Nevada mountains, and 
 bolt-holes were being drilled into the rock walls, to 
 which the sheds cling like swallows nests against a 
 cliff, sulphur was needed for securing the bolts in place* 
 Into these holes smoking-hot sulphur was poured as 
 the iron rods were driven home, to hold them firmly; 
 it having that unusual quality of non-shrinkage in 
 cooling, peculiar to itself. The sulphur used in the 
 work two tons was taken from the surface of the 
 ground on the old Spence claim. No other work had 
 ever been done there. So much was history. It was 
 generally thought, by those interested in mining, that 
 it had been simply a "blow-out" from some untrace- 
 able deposit, and that it was not worth the prospecting. 
 Although I knew of it earlier, I was too young to 
 take any special note of it until about the year 1873. 
 At that time it attracted my attention by reason of 
 the very great number of freshly-shed snake-skins that 
 lay about in the crevices of the gypsum and lava, the 
 sulphur and ash. Dozens of them ! Hundreds of them ! 
 And, paying heed to the fact, I observed thereafter 
 that each spring they were replaced by others, while 
 the old ones were blown away by the whirlwinds. 
 Evidently it was a famous place for reptiles; yet it 
 
 A 
 
 Desert, 
 Mystery 
 
io6 
 
 In Miners 9 Mirage-Land 
 
 A 
 
 Desert* 
 Mystery 
 
 was a puzzle to me, always, that in such a quarry of 
 snake-skins, I should never chance to see the snakes 
 themselves. 
 
 Back in those years when I first knew sagebrush- 
 land as home, I was an omniverous if not always a 
 discriminating reader ; and, on summer days when 
 the desert sun shoqe hot and a particularly fascinating 
 book fell into my hands, I at once sought some spot 
 that offered both cool shade and quiet. What better 
 place than just within the deserted incline of the old 
 sulphur mine? There, surrounded by the white and 
 yellow of gypsum and sulphur walls festooned with 
 the silvery-white skins, I had a retreat all my own, and 
 quite as full of charm to me as any rose-hung bower 
 could have been to another girl a girl not of the gray 
 wastes and solitudes of the Desert. There, with eyes 
 and heart deep buried in my books, I spent many and 
 many a delightful hour, retreating farther and farther 
 down the incline, as the afternoon sun found and fol 
 lowed fche in there. For burn as it might outside 
 it was always a delightfully cool place within the in 
 cline. There were times when, with an old broken 
 shovel I found there, I dug into the bottom of the de 
 serted prospect-hole for specimens of sulphur crystals 
 those delicate clusters of glittering yellow jewels 
 that belong to fairyland yet, dig deep as I would 
 into the soft ash and gypsum, I never observed the 
 slightest indication of heat. I know that in those days 
 there was no indication of subterranean heat whatever. 
 
 Then by and by I left the Desert for a home at 
 tide- water; and straightway forgot all about he sul 
 phur beds, until years afterward, when I was reminded 
 of them by hearing of a skeleton that had been found 
 there. 
 
 In 1888 or 89, Samuel H. Kitto and Dan Merrigan, 
 
In Miners 9 Mirage-Land 
 
 107 
 
 two young men out for a jaunt one spring morning, 
 came unexpectedly upon the bleached bones of an un 
 known man lying at the foot of a hollow cone that is 
 commonly known as "the Crater," half a mile from 
 the old prospect-hole. Nothing was found whereby 
 the dead man might have been identified. There was 
 no paper, no article of clothing absolutely nothing 
 except an open and rusty razor lying by his side. Of 
 course the Coroner came, as the law provided; and 
 there was the usual farce of an inquest on a fragment 
 of what had once been human. Then the sun-and- 
 storm-whitened bones were carried to the railroad sta 
 tion and buried in the little graveyard where the dead 
 are mostly nameless tramps killed by some passing 
 train, or (as this one) a fleshless skeleton found far 
 away from wagon road or railroad track. Their stories 
 are unknown and their graves unmarked. 
 
 It was at "the Crater" after doing some prelim 
 inary location work at the point where Spence had 
 once worked the claim that we decided to sink our 
 first shaft. This cone is one of a number of such vent- 
 holes that can be traced thereabouts vent-holes for 
 furnaces that were burned out centuries ago. Fires 
 have burned and died; great mountain ranges have 
 been lifted high on either side of the valley, down in 
 which the vents are now all but covered by the valley s 
 soil. Only this one lifts itself distinctive rising sharp 
 ly a few feet from the level of the plain, to be seen sev 
 eral miles away. The valley here is quite flat broad, 
 long, and a dead level. There are great alkali flats, 
 absolutely bare and miles wide; but where the sul 
 phur beds are, grease wood short, scrubby and dead- 
 lookinggrows sparsely. Now and then the ground 
 is sprinkled with gravel and flakes of quartz washed 
 down from the mountains. 
 
 A 
 
 Desert, 
 Mystery 
 
io8 
 
 In Miners 9 Mirage-Land 
 
 A 
 Desert* 
 
 Mystery 
 
 All the way from the railroad track (which here 
 runs northeast and southwest) to the river, two or 
 three miles away, one may find indications of sulphur. 
 And when one comes to the river itself, one finds other 
 cones, quite unlike these, are fantastically topped with 
 a lime-crust that has resisted the erosion which has 
 eaten the lower strata away. The same hard crust 
 overlies the whole valley here for miles and miles, 
 barely hidden under a thin veneer of soil. But down 
 by the cones by the river s edge (the river of today, 
 whose course is through the centre of the mile-wide 
 channel of the great river of the dead years), one may 
 easily trace the strata downward Far below the crust s 
 line. First, the mushroom-shaped lime topping, whose 
 jagged edges in many places have taken unto them 
 selves the semblance of grotesque, unkenned creatures 
 dragons and gargoyles, and strange open- jawed 
 monsters that seem born of some nightmare. Next, a 
 broad band of almost pure salt two to three feet in 
 depth; then gypsum and volcanic ash plentifully 
 streaked with sulphur, down to the level of the ancient 
 river bed. They are queer things, these cones that 
 have been fashioned by creeks cut by short-lived floods 
 born from the cloud-bursts on the high lands; and 
 yearly erosion is eating them more surely away. 
 
 But none of these, in spite of the evidence of sul 
 phur, are kindred with "the Crater." "There, where 
 we made our locations (which through their brimstone 
 suggestiveness seemed to name themselves Aetna, 
 Vesuvius, Popocatapetl, Yztaccihuatl, Mauna Loa and 
 Kilauea), is lava and pumice in plenty; and in walking 
 over the ground especially if it be on a little rise- 
 one hears the echo of his footsteps as though the sound 
 were sent back from a great vault beneath a hollow 
 echo that tells of vast caverns underground. 
 
In Miners 9 Mirage-Land 
 
 109 
 
 I know too little of scientific lore to dare say what 
 the conditions we found there may indicate; I can only 
 tell what we discovered during our weeks of prospect 
 ing, and will leave to others the task of translating the 
 signs that puzzle us still. 
 
 We began sinking the shaft in "the Crater" on the 
 twenty-ninth of January. The only men working on 
 the claims at that time were my partner and one of 
 his sons. Later, the younger manX j>lace was taken 
 by an Indian a young Paiute. 
 
 Though it is no part of this story, yet just here let 
 me tell what we found during the morning of that first 
 day s work. There, in "the Crater," bjut two or three 
 feet down, we came on the skeleton of a man that had 
 been thrust (not buried in decent wise but jammed) 
 into the hollow hole which the wind-drifts of each 
 year had covered still deeper with the powdered 
 pumice and gypsum and ash tossed down from the 
 brim of the wee "crater." 
 
 The side of the skull was crushed in, and the body 
 bent nearly double, as though hurriedly crowded into 
 a hole too small for honest burial. The story? Who 
 knows? Did that other the one found years before 
 
 but a few yards from tfiis spot did he ? But who 
 
 can say? It is but another mystery of that great, gray 
 land of mysteries. 
 
 The skeleton fell apart when unearthed and lay on 
 the crater s edge, where it was cast up by the shovels, 
 a heap of fragile brown bones that seemed more like 
 strips and bits of wet pasteboard than anything else. 
 The water-soaked ash (there had been an unusually 
 warm period for January, and the snow of the valleys 
 was melted, completely saturating the ground) and 
 the moistened sulphur-stained formation we found 
 there had communicated to the bones a peculiar flexi- 
 
 A 
 
 Desert* 
 Mystery 
 
no 
 
 In Miners* Mirage-Land 
 
 A 
 
 Desert* 
 
 Mystery 
 
 bility; for they bent between our fingers like whale 
 bone. It was an uncanny thing to find at the very out 
 set of our work ; so we quickly buried them again, giv 
 ing them sepulture in the * Popocatapetl s " location 
 monument at the crater s rim. All but the skull and 
 thigh bones they were set aside to find place with 
 many another strange thing that came out of the 
 Desert in my strangely-lived Desert life. 
 
 We were still under the spell that the grewsome 
 "find" had cast over us, when the shaft developed 
 something even more mysterious an unsolved mys 
 tery to this day, at least to the four persons who, so 
 far as I know, are the only ones who have known of it. 
 
 After the last slabs of lava-rock had been replaced 
 upon the monument, I dropped over the rim into the 
 pit, and clambered down to the shaft. "The Crater" 
 (such a baby crater it is!) was filled well to the top 
 with a fine gray volcanic ash dry on top, a bit moist 
 from the rains beneath; while scattered through it 
 were quantities of the rough, unfriendly rock that 
 made the crust of the cone. In the centre of this was 
 the hole that was yet too small to be dignified by the 
 name of a shaft. 
 
 From the bottom of the excavation my partner 
 scooped up a handful of the moist earth and asked me 
 to hold out my hands. I did so, and he poured it in. 
 It was warm! perceptibly so. I was astounded too 
 puzzled to say anything; and I stood there holding it, 
 looking stupidly at him for an explanation. He 
 laughed ; and. then, throwing out a shovelful or two 
 from the shaft, took from underneath some that was 
 freshly uncovered. 
 
 "Here, take this!" 
 
 I don t remember what I said, but I cried out in as- 
 
In Miners 9 Mirage-Land 
 
 tonishment as I let it fall. It was hot ! not just warm, 
 but hot! 
 
 That was the beginning of what, for weeks 
 and weeks, was to us a daily wonder. Seven or eight 
 feet beneath the surface of the ground we would find 
 this unexplainable heat. Not alone at that particular 
 place, but over a five-mile area, we found like condi 
 tions. On the slope just below the old prospect hole 
 we came on ground that was covered here and there 
 with the so-called "petrified grass" salt grass and 
 the three-cornered stems of Paiute grass, over which, 
 at some former time, lime-impregnated waters from 
 hot springs had flowed. I tried to answer all the ques 
 tions that came crowding in upon me, by saying to my 
 self that, at some time in the remote past, there had 
 been boiling springs here springs that were now 
 sealed up. But when I remembered that a quarter of 
 a century before, the earth in the bottom of Spence s 
 old incline was cold, I felt" that such explanations were 
 inadequate. Nowhere, in all our knowledge of the 
 valley, had there ever been steam, or fire, or heat. 
 I went into the camps of my Paiute friends and ques 
 tioned the elders. None of them, nor their fathers, 
 nor their fathers fathers before them, had ever heard 
 of a time when the valley had spit steam or fire; and 
 their legends (told by father to son as they sit by the 
 campfire, and memorized with infinite accuracy) date 
 back to a time earlier than the white man s history. 
 
 Shaft after shaft was sunk, and sulphur in plenty 
 was found. Some of it was crystalized; and much of 
 it was colored like a California poppy. Elsewhere we 
 found a snow-white marvel of sulphur sulphur that 
 turned yellow only when a lighted match was touched 
 to it, and was ninety-five per cent pure! Now and 
 then we came upon "black" sulphur that glassy, 
 
 A 
 
 Desert* 
 
 Mystery 
 
112 
 
 In Miners 9 Mirage-Land 
 
 A 
 
 Desert* 
 Mystery 
 
 dark-green sort made by nature in those molds where 
 pressure is greatest. Where lime rock was, we found 
 pisolite and oolite in small quantities. That meant 
 there had been, at some time, boiling springs. But 
 such places were few. In the deeper shafts, volcanic 
 ash was found in undisturbed strata. Volcanic rock 
 and lava were everywhere ; and the lava was frequent 
 ly streaked with cinnabar. Sometimes a waxy forma 
 tion would be encountered that discouraged work at 
 that point. It would not break, as rock ordinarily 
 will, from shots of giant powder; but was of a texture 
 that refused to be shattered when blasted, and was 
 too hard to be worked with picks. And everywhere 
 was that mysterious heat. 
 
 When we were some fifteen feet down the deepest 
 shaft we sunk, I wrote to the California Academy of 
 Sciences describing the conditions there (but not nam 
 ing the locality) and asked if a similar state of affairs 
 was known to exist anywhere else in the world. They 
 were unable to give me any information on the subject, 
 but referred the letter to Prof. Branner, of Stanford 
 University. In reply to my brief outline of conditions 
 he wrote as follows: 
 
 "I regret to say that I do not know of any such place 
 as you mention in your letter. The temperature of 
 the crust of the earth varies so much, however, in dif 
 ferent places that no fixed law has ever been found 
 for the downward increase of the temperature, except 
 of local application. In the Comstock mining region, 
 the temperature is one degree for every twenty-eight 
 feet, down to 3,000 feet; in the north of England, it 
 is one degree for forty-nine feet ; in New South Wales, 
 it is one degree for eighty feet; in Leipsic, it is one 
 degree for fifty-six feet; at Grass Valley, Cal., it is 
 one degree for one hundred and seven feet ; in the cop- 
 
In Miners 9 Mirage-Land 
 
 per mines of Michigan, it is one degree for two hun 
 dred and twenty-four feet, and so on." 
 
 Up and down, back and forth, we prospected, sink 
 ing shafts where we could tasting it, smelling it, test 
 ing it with a match. The whole district, so far as we 
 investigated, is richly underlaid with sulphur; but 
 everywhere that we sunk on the claims we found that 
 strange heat a heat too great to permit our continuing 
 the work. Where the lava was encountered in great 
 est quantities, we uncovered the home of the snakes, 
 for it was as full of bubble holes as a honey-comb is 
 of cells. There, long, slim (and entirely harmless) 
 snakes were housed in numbers that were appalling. 
 When the explosions disturbed them from their 
 winter s rest, they had crawled to the walls of the 
 shafts, through the network of cracks that underlie 
 the district, and, tumbling down to the bottom, coiled, 
 and lifted, and writhed there, vainly trying to get out, 
 and quite unpleasing things to see. 
 
 The weather turned cold eight degrees below zero. 
 But the temperature underground was growing hotter 
 and hotter, the deeper the shaft was sunk. At eighteen 
 feet each man who worked there suffered from fright 
 ful headaches, and the younger man had to return to 
 his home in Sacramento. Their clothing even their 
 buckskin gloves rotted as they worked, and their 
 skin burned and stung. The drill s point in a few mo 
 ments would become so hot that it caused discomfort 
 to touch it with the bare hand. After a series of 
 blasts had been put off, and the smoke had escaped 
 from the shaft, a cloud of vapor would arise while 
 the mercury marked zero at the top; and the rock 
 thrown up from the bottom was so hot that it could 
 not be handled at all bare-handed. 
 
 A 
 
 Desert, 
 
 Mystery 
 
114 
 
 In Miners Mirage-Land 
 
 A 
 
 Desert* 
 Mystery 
 
 Each night the giant powder froze. Each morning 
 it was thawed in a few minutes by throwing it over a 
 wheelbarrow load of rock and ash from the bottom of 
 the shaft. Sometimes all the sticks of powder in the 
 box would be frozen together, and the mass frozen to 
 the box itself; but by the time the drill-hole was ready 
 for it, the powder would be found thawed. Canteens 
 of water, carried by the men coming to work, were 
 frozen solid. Buried in the broken bits of rock a few 
 moments, the ice would immediately melt. By and 
 by as the work progressed further downward the 
 drills became so hot that their temper was destroyed 
 (and, incidentally, our own) and the men could make 
 but little headway in their work. Still they kept on 
 changing shift every few minutes, and being hauled 
 to the top with faces burning red, down which rivulets 
 of sweat ran. 
 
 Some of the time it was, as has been said, zero 
 weather; but on the warmest day the mercury marked 
 fifty degrees. The shaft waa down twenty-three feet. 
 The mercury marked 120 wnen taken to the bottom 
 of the shaft as soon as a man could descend after the 
 shots had been fired. At twenty-nine feet it registered 
 one hundred and forty degrees. The men working 
 five-minute shifts sank a foot deeper; but the ex 
 perience of the last one down was such that not one 
 of them would again venture into that furnace of 
 frightful heat, and the temperature after that last shot 
 was not taken. They were satisfied with the knowledge 
 already obtained that the heat had increased some 
 thing like ninety degrees in twenty-nine feet, at the 
 point where the old Spence shaft was where, more 
 than five-and- twenty years ago, it was a cool and pleas 
 ant place to sit and read in on summer afternoons ! 
 
 Are there fires underneath? Or sealed-up boiling 
 
In Miners 9 Mirage-Land 
 
 springs? Or gases that create heat? Or what? We 
 had all sorts of theories, of course; and we talked to 
 gether of the statements that had been made to us that 
 there were places in the valley where the ground had 
 settled unaccountably during the previous ten years; 
 and we did a great deal of wondering. But all our 
 speculations left us baffled and bewildered. And be 
 cause we could not satisfy ourselves as to the causes, 
 we said nothing of the affair to anyone else. The few 
 folk who live within sight of the ground, and the hun 
 dreds that pass over it in railway cars every day, have 
 never heard nor known of these things that would 
 seem to me now (living here in rose-land by the sea, 
 and "where things never happen") but a dream, did 
 I not have, as proof of it really having happened, over 
 the door of my den where I can look up and see it 
 as I write the skull and crossbones of the man of 
 "Popocatapetl." 
 
 People came there to visit the "prospects," but not 
 till after the deepest shafts had been partially refilled, 
 that stray horses and cattle might not fall in them, to 
 be killed or crippled. Some of the smaller shafts there 
 were, in which (had they but closely noticed) some 
 heat might have been observed. But much of the heat 
 disappeared after the shafts had been exposed to the 
 air for a while. So the visitors went away, discovering 
 nothing unusual, at least up to the time when I aban 
 doned the claims as impracticable for working. 
 
 Sulphur there is a-plenty, but it is guarded by an 
 inferno of subterranean heat that puts it far beyond 
 the reach of the miner s pick and drill. Will the heat 
 that so strangely came, after a while subside? Who 
 can say what may happen? I only know it is a place 
 of serpents and sulphurous smells, of strange heat, of 
 dead men s bones, and mystery. Such places are best 
 let alone. I for one want no more of them. 
 
 A 
 
 Desert, 
 
 Mystery 
 
, 
 
 The 
 
 Toll 
 
 of 
 
 the 
 
 Desert* 
 
 THE TOLL OF THE DESERT. 
 
 IRAGE of Water, or Mirage of a Mine! 
 It matters not which it may be, the end 
 is the same for him who follows after 
 the Siren who is always in league with 
 Death. All the years of his life the Old 
 Prospector gives to the Desert his best 
 and his all gives hope, and joy, and love, even as he 
 gave youth. He gives his very soul; then, finally, he 
 commits his body to the Desert s keeping to sleep there 
 in its everlasting silence. It is the final toll that the 
 Desert takes of a man. Cruel? Nay, the Desert is 
 kind; for in death the body rests where the heart found 
 its joy in life. What lover could ask more? 
 
 The sands, that knew his every footfall, cradle him. 
 The everlasting mountains the heights he loved 
 stand watch and ward. And the night-wind, that was 
 with him when he lay out under the stars, shall sing 
 his slumber-song now, as some Indian mother croons 
 over the babe that, in the twilight, falls asleep at her 
 breast. In such wise, does the Old Prospector find rest 
 in the Desert. 
 
 In such wise, would all lovers of that land meet the 
 end. To go to sleep there under the white stars; to 
 go away into the land of dreams, lying in the arms of 
 the Desert; to rest and rest and rest, through all 
 time, through centuries of silence and solitude ! What 
 would you that one (loving the land) should have, 
 
In Miners Mirage-Land 
 
 117 
 
 when the Night comes, that could be more desired? 
 They who have lived long there ask for no other bural, 
 be assured. 
 
 And of this, too, you may be sure. If you have goie 
 into the Desert and found its Soul, you have climbed 
 more than half-way up the ladder that reaches God- 
 ward. Therefore, I say, these men who live there are 
 not men without religion; though creeds they may 
 not (and probably do not) claim as theirs. But it is 
 not a far thing from reverence, as one knows it in a 
 temple, to stand with voice hushed and ear inclined, 
 while God and the Desert speak together. Not once 
 a week on the Sabbath is this so. But it is part of 
 what comes to one (though unconsciously, mayhap) 
 daily. They know it, but give it no name. 
 
 So you will understand that he who has lived there 
 if he has lived a life that has harmed no man dies 
 unafraid. To spend many years of one s life there, in 
 the gray land, takes away the coward fear of Death. 
 That is because one has learned to measure all things 
 in the balance of just proportion; and then one comes 
 to see how small is the atom, Self. More! This truth 
 is taught in Nature s wisdom that all things are best. 
 He has led the life he believed was best; and he be 
 lieves it is best that so he should die. 
 
 "Earth to earth, dust to dust, ashes to ashes." If 
 you come upon some Desert grave one day as you ride 
 along any of the roads of old days, and if the words 
 of the burial service come to you as you draw rein 
 there, do not hesitate to add: "In sure and certain 
 hope of the Resurrection." For none died without 
 religion as all great silence and space teaches re 
 ligionand few died without hope. 
 
 And this shall you remember. Though the Desert 
 in its time takes full toll of the men who go there; yet 
 never do they give unwillingly. 
 
 The 
 
 Toll 
 
 of 
 
 *hr 
 
 Desert* 
 
Groves 
 
 of 
 
 the 
 
 Desert, 
 
 GRAVES OF THE DESERT. 
 
 RAVES of the Desert! Forgotten 
 graves. How many there are ! In lonely 
 places by the wayside, where civilized 
 man has not yet succeeded in making 
 "two blades of grass to grow" where 
 once there was but the wide sweep of 
 shifting, drifting sands; where still are found Desert 
 stretches, alternating with the green oases which follow 
 in the white man s wake across the plains, there are 
 the graves of men fifty years dead graves that bear 
 silent testimony to the march of those battalions of 
 America s heroes who were first to tempt the unknown 
 in a land that once seemed God-despised. 
 
 Forgotten graves dug in the sand and alkali that 
 lightly covers the great inland Western states, whose 
 priceless foundations sunken far into the bowels of 
 the earth, thousands of feet below the drab, sad-col 
 ored soil were laid by the gnomes in those aeons 
 when the world was being created in marvelous ways. 
 And the gnomes quarried huge masses of solid sil 
 ver, and hewed and cut them cunningly, fashioning 
 them into great polished cubes. These they laid for 
 the far Western states to rest upon. And the blocks 
 were cemented together with mortar made of molten, 
 shining gold. Then over it all they spread the sand 
 
In Miners 9 Mirage-Land 
 
 119 
 
 and the soil and hid their handiwork, leaving it for 
 man to uncover in the ages to come, when on these 
 foundations he should upbuild the States. 
 
 Up and down the valleys, never resting, the whirl 
 winds go those dancing dervishes of the Desert. 
 They blow the sands hither and thither, back and forth 
 unceasingly, as they spin giddily around year after 
 year in their mad dance. Sometimes ^it seems as if they 
 have almost brushed aside the sands and bared the 
 foundations of these Silver States these States of 
 Gold. But a stronger whirlwind comes hurrying up 
 the valley and buries the treasure deep again. 
 
 The little winds, as they go spinning on tiptoe round 
 and round and round, until you are dizzy with the 
 watching, whirl fast and mad; but, whirl as they will, 
 whirl they never so madly, they are not strong enough 
 to blow the sands away. And the people go back 
 there to the 
 
 " tending of cattle and tossing of clover; 
 the grazing of cattle and growing of grain," 
 in those places where Nature helps them make another 
 oasis ; and they will tell you that they are waiting for a 
 wind that is in leash now; a great wind that will come 
 out of the East. 
 
 Long they have watched and waited, and the sands 
 are not yet blown away. Still they hope, as we all 
 hope for the thing our heart leans to; and they will 
 tell you that surely, some day, the East wind will 
 come, sent by a power that will say, as it speeds it on 
 its more than a thousand miles of journeying over 
 mountain, and upland, and plain: "Qo, blow the 
 sands aside! brush them away, that the States may 
 be built up from the foundations which the gnomes 
 laid!" 
 
 These are the things they will tell you. Are they 
 
 Graves 
 of 
 the 
 Desert. 
 
120 
 
 In Miners Mirage-Land 
 
 Graves 
 of 
 the 
 Desert* 
 
 right, or are they wrong? Are they prophets, or only 
 men who pray? Do they see into the future, or are 
 they but dreamers? Who knows? 
 
 But, all the while the whirlwinds are tossing the 
 sands about, and uncovering and covering over again 
 the dead men s bones men who made a way across 
 States that, unknown to them, were built upon foun 
 dations of precious metals. And those who faltered 
 and fell by the way in their quest for gold as they 
 struggled to push on to California California by the 
 sea little dreamed of the wealth beneath their feet. 
 
 They strung themselves outa living thread across 
 the plains, over half a hundred years ago; today the 
 engine s whistle shrieks from shore to shore. Progress 
 provides us the luxuries of the modern mode of travel, 
 and in journeying westward from States far beyond 
 the Rocky Mountains jagged ridge, here and there, 
 after entering that vast tract which belongs to the 
 great West, looking from the windows of the Pullman 
 sleeper one may see faint traces of an old wagon road 
 running parallel with the railway s double line of 
 steel. It is not the road which is nearest the track 
 that is the newer road made by a newer people but 
 the old one traced there by the emigrants of fifty 
 years ago, in their half a twelvemonths journey 
 across the Great American Desert. At first one does 
 not see it; the track is not visible in the grass-covered 
 Nebraska soil, when the train, after crossing the great 
 river at Omaha, puts behind it all things having a like 
 ness to the East. 
 
 Looking from the window as one rushes by, he sees 
 bits of a rolling plain, where here and there tall 
 and scattered trees having the semblance of gray 
 ghosts in the late afternoon light, go hurrying across 
 the landscape, their slender branches outlined against 
 
In Miners 9 Mirage-Land 
 
 127 
 
 a gold and glowing horizon, where red and fiery piled- 
 up clouds fill full the western sky. Long stretches 
 of shallow water, left by late rains, glisten amidst the 
 growth of tall grasses, and in the reedy places 
 shaded by bush and tree are grouped great flocks of 
 ducks that in the fading daylight seem of a velvety 
 blackness scenes to thrill the heart of a hunter and 
 charm the eye of an artist. Then the dusk s gray 
 mantle drops slowly down and spreads over the sleep 
 ing world. Night has come night on the plain ere 
 one has noted its approach, the while the train is rush 
 ing on into the darkness and the Western land. 
 
 On and on till the dawning of day; on and on 
 throughout the long, hot, dusty daylight hours; each 
 revolution of the wheels of the mighty creature whose 
 sinews are of steel, and whose blood is of fire, has 
 plunged one farther and farther into that vast land 
 which was once but the land of sand and sage, and 
 of silence. Human progress has plowed and planted 
 here and there, civilization has made grain to grow 
 in many of the waste places, and has garnered where 
 once was but the illimitable Desert. 
 
 Cities have sprung up out of the once silent plains, 
 and a hundred thousand homes of the living now line 
 the great pathway which was marked out by the skele 
 tons of the dead. 
 
 Half a century ago it was the land of the dried-up 
 alkali lakes; of the far-reaching sage; of the biting, 
 white dust; of the ever-beckoning mirage; of the 
 strangely slender, cloud-touching whirlwinds which 
 come writhing and winding and twisting their way 
 up the valley to meet you, and greet you with a whis 
 per of unknown things, and then pass on, twisting and 
 swaying and whirling, to mingle with the mystery of 
 the Desert. 
 
 Craves 
 of 
 the 
 Desert* 
 
122 
 
 In Miners 9 Mirage-Land 
 
 Craves 
 of 
 the 
 Desert, 
 
 Into this land, more than fifty years ago, an army 
 of heroes voyaged. Across the dried-up sea, whitened 
 by salt and alkali, their Desert-ships drifted on and 
 into the farther West. The courage that was theirs 
 to dare the dangers they met upon the way, the hard 
 ships they encountered and endured, have passed into 
 the great volumes of unwritten history. 
 
 We know of the many who reached Pacific shores, but 
 who can count those who died like that other weary 
 traveler of whom a loving brother wrote: "He lay 
 down by the wayside; and using his burden for a pil 
 low, fell into that dreamless sleep that kisses down his 
 eyelids still." Time is levelling the cairns which mark 
 their resting places, and those mile-stones of their 
 great and awful journey are being scattered and de 
 stroyed. 
 
 Along the road marked out by their slow-moving 
 ox-teams, which stretched its weary way from the 
 Missouri river to the Sacramento, the graves of those 
 who fell by the roadside marked its course. Even 
 unto this day the old road is traceable, although but 
 little used. Not everywhere may it be seen from the 
 car windows; for in some places the railroad leaves it 
 miles and miles away to the right or left. Yet, through 
 that vast plain lying between the Rockies and the 
 Sierras, one sometimes sees it close beside the track 
 for a long distance; then, to avoid a grade, it winds 
 around a rise in the plain and disappears. 
 
 The railroad has cut a tunnel through the rise, and 
 where the ground is levelled it has laid its traek of 
 pine and steel; but in those long past days no shovel 
 was struck into the earth, save to hollow out the shal 
 low graves wherein were laid away the bones of those 
 who are asleep in the Sahara of America. 
 
 Wherever these graves are found if it be in a lo- 
 
In Miners Mirage-Land 
 
 cality where there are rocks about one will see that 
 they are heaped with stones. After the soil had been 
 scraped into a long 1 , low mound the one form into 
 which earth is shaped to wear the sign of pathos 
 stones were closely piled upon it to keep the dear dead 
 from the ghouls of the Desert; for coyote and badger 
 alike disinterred them unless they were protected in 
 this way. 
 
 So, if you will do as I have done, and in the sad 
 dleride over mile after mile of the old emigrant road 
 where it winds in and out among the gullies along the 
 foothills, or where it dips further down into the low 
 lands, or as it trails along the mesa, or stretches out 
 straight across the hard, alkali flats; or where it fol 
 lows the banks of the muddy Humboldt, crossing and 
 recrossing the bends where the old fords are, you will 
 surely chance upon some long-neglected mounds which 
 tell their silent stories of the sufferings and privations 
 of those whose names must forever remain unknown. 
 Sometimes a roughly-lettered board was placed at the 
 head, but oftener it was "a grave without tombstone 
 or token/ The new years of this century find very 
 nearly all of the boards fallen or lost. Even the piled- 
 up stones are being scattered. The graves are suf 
 fering the neglect which comes to all forgotten things ; 
 perhaps many of these dead men were themselves for 
 gotten two-score years ago. 
 
 "None come who knew them. There are none to say 
 Where lived they, whom loved they, ere they passed 
 
 away. 
 
 They sleep with none to marvel o er them, save 
 Some stranger musing by the sunken grave." 
 
 Riding along the road one day, where it winds its 
 way down the valley of the^Humboldt, I came upon 
 two half-hidden graves. They were just above the 
 
 Graves 
 of 
 the 
 Desert. 
 
124 
 
 In Miners Mirage-Land 
 
 Craves 
 of 
 the 
 I esert* 
 
 river bank, near an old-time emigrant ford. The head 
 boards had rotted and fallen; the sagebrush tall and 
 thick hid them from the passer-by. The brief in 
 scription told but little: 
 
 John Knudson, 
 died Sept. 13th, 1854, 
 
 aged 43 years. 
 From La. Co., Wis. 
 
 The words had been cut in a small board, evidently 
 part of some box taken from their scanty store, and 
 then nailed across the top of another narrow piece. 
 It had, no doubt, once been set firmly in the ground. 
 A bit of board had also been at the foot; but, like the 
 other, it, too, had broken off and fallen. The other 
 grave bore these words cut clearly, and with great 
 care on the little headboard: 
 
 John Walling, 
 
 Died 
 
 by drowning 
 September 1st, 1859. 
 
 Aged 28 years. 
 
 The lettering in the storm-stained, weather-checked 
 wood had been cut so beautifully true and even that 
 one is certain that it was the work of someone to whom 
 the dead man was dear; for only loving hands could 
 have been so painstaking. The graves were sunken; 
 bhe stones were scattered. I went away; and when 
 I came again it was to bring some one to re-set the 
 boards at head and foot, and with a shovel heap the 
 earth into the shape it bore when other hands than 
 strangers had done the same office for the dead forty 
 years before. 
 
 Who were they? Were any of their kindred with 
 them when, with their journey but half done, they 
 stepped aside from the trail made by the path-finders 
 
In Miners Mirage-Land 
 
 of the West, to stay in the barren valley, while the 
 others went on to the land of promise t>y the Golden 
 Gate? Or did they leave wives and children far be 
 hind them in the safer East, while they braved the 
 perils of the plains to reach the land of gold for the 
 sake of the wealth they would find, and all the great 
 and good things it would bring to the dear ones at 
 home? Or did mothers and children mourn, and won 
 der at the silence; and so die with their questioning 
 ever unanswered? Who is there that dare say what 
 that silence meant to them? 
 
 These are but two among the many hundreds barred 
 along the route of the old emigrant road; and how 
 pitifully alike would be the histories of their trials by 
 the way, could we but know them all ! 
 
 Almost all of these graves are nameless; yet in this 
 valley there is at least one that bears a name, and is a 
 grave well known. It bears the name of "Lucinda 
 Duncan" upon a large, white cross, erected by the 
 railway company when its roadbed was being made 
 ready for the rails more than thirty years ago. It is 
 "The Maiden s Grave/ near Beowawe; and they 
 placed the cross above the young girl sleeping in the 
 valley, ere they passed on. 
 
 But the names of the dead lying in the numberless 
 graves are, for the greater part, unknown; and age and 
 sex can only be vaguely guessed at. 
 
 Here is one who was, perhaps, the captain of his 
 caravan; a beloved leader of the men who manned 
 some Desert-ship. How disheartened the survivors 
 were when they had lain him away and had to push on 
 under the burning, blistering skies without the com 
 panionship, the leadership, or the cheering encourage 
 ment of their trusted guide! Their ship was without 
 a captain or pilot in this sea of gray, shoreless sand. 
 
 Craves 
 of 
 the 
 Desert* 
 
126 
 
 In Miners 9 Mirage-Land 
 
 Craves 
 of 
 the 
 Desert, 
 
 Could they carry it safely into port? they asked. And 
 we, half a hundred years later, wonder did they? 
 
 Here is a smaller, shorter grave, that holds, perhaps, 
 the remains of some youth, hopeful and enthusiastic in 
 his first venture into a new life; impatient at the slow 
 pace of the weary oxen, dragging the wagons so few 
 so very few miles each day toward the golden West 
 he was so eager to reach. 
 
 Or perhaps it might have been a woman; one of 
 those brave souls who, cleaving to the men of her 
 household, left behind her all the dear associations of 
 a lifetime to enter upon a new experience, and, hand 
 in hand with father or hunband or son, went out into 
 the unknown new country to share the work, the 
 sickness or the dangers of the uncertain venture. No 
 fear of the savages, who crept down upon many a 
 one and left the victim murdered and mutilated by 
 the road; no fear of disease that might claim them 
 before the journey s end; no fear of any of the perils 
 which made more than one man turn back before the 
 journey had well begun, could keep these women from 
 joining their dear kindred in the six months march 
 that reached almost from sea to sea. men, men ! how 
 little you know the place you hold in the hearts of the 
 women who love you ! 
 
 There were many such grand and loyal women who 
 went out beyond the pale of civilization, whose pres 
 ence helped their men-folk onward, whose bravery 
 spurred them forward to reach their golden goal, when 
 heart-sick and weary they would have given up the 
 struggle in despair. 
 
 These men were brave; yet there were times when 
 courage failed them. As their hopes of reaching the 
 sea faded in the face of unforeseen dangers met on 
 the way, and they came to feel that, after all, the earth 
 
In Miners Mirage-Land 
 
 the 
 
 was only a place in which to dig graves, these women 
 lifted them up with hopeful words and helpful deeds Cravev 
 and carried them through to the end. 
 
 Here is a tiny mound of stones; "a little grave, a 
 little, little grave, an obscure grave." What this one 
 holds, we know. But no one can ever guess the anguish Desert 
 of that mother who laid her baby here, nor how she 
 suffered as she looked backward, ever backward, as 
 the ox-teams carried her away. Before that day, she 
 had complained because the oxen went so slowly; but 
 afterward their pace was never slow enough. Every 
 step was making the tiny mound grow fainter to her 
 sight, as the journey was resumed, when the wee little 
 one had been lain away. How she looked, and looked, 
 back to the place where they had halted a day! And 
 as she looked, she kept whispering to herself: " To 
 morrow I shall not be able to see it at all." Backward, 
 all the while backward, did she turn her face to the 
 spot where "baby" was; the little child that was yet 
 too young to have another name. The mother forgot 
 then that she had ever looked forward. Oh, how fast 
 the oxen went! If they would but go slower, so that 
 she could see the little, low mound in the Desert a while 
 longer! It seemed to her that all those great stones 
 they had piled there, had been heaped upon her heart 
 her poor, bruised heart because of the load there that 
 was so, so heavy. All her life long her heart would 
 ache, her whole body would throb with pain wrists 
 and palms and finger-tips with the intensity of her 
 longing to know once again the sound of its voice, the 
 sight of its face, the touch of its satiny, rose-leaf hands. 
 Oh, to know again the thrilling touch of soft, warm, 
 baby fingers laid upon her check the touch of moist 
 baby lips laid against her breast ! 
 
In Miners Mirage-Land 
 
 , . ives 
 of 
 the 
 Desert* 
 
 Never again ! She was going alone out of the Desert 
 out of the Valley of Death; going, and away back 
 there by the roadside she had left a little grave. 
 
 Graves graves graves ; how many there are! They 
 are scattered all along the roadside from the far-away 
 East to the farthest West ; and yet not all who died on 
 the old emigrant road received burial. The bodies of 
 many, pierced by Indian arrows, never found sepulture, 
 but, scalped and mutilated, were left by savage hands 
 to the birds and coyotes, their bones bleaching there 
 in the sun year after year. 
 
 Forgotten and neglected graves of the Desert! For 
 more than fifty years they have been a part of that vast 
 silence ; visited only by the snows of winter or the rays 
 of the burning summer sun. No one comes to mourn 
 them. None come to lay flowers above their dead. 
 
 The afternoon sun goes down, shooting arrows of 
 fire into the heavens, above a banner of crimson and 
 gold. A curtain of blood-red grandeur fringed with 
 flame is flung athwart the west in the magnificence of 
 a Desert sunset the like of which is not seen elsewhere 
 in all the world and as the sun sinks lower and lower 
 behind the purple mountains, heaven above and earth 
 beneath are all aglow with color. The sun s rays 
 touch the highest peak of the range that guards the 
 eastern side of the valley, and the snow-covered crest 
 thousands of feet above is crowned by the dying sun 
 with a diadem of more than regal splendor. 
 
 Slowly the wonderful light spreads over the land 
 scape, changing the foot-hills to ruby, and the valley to 
 rose, with an indescribable wealth of shading, and 
 seeming to make every bush and briar burst into blos 
 som with flowers of exquisite beauty. It falls with 
 equal glory on green tree and gray shrub; on the 
 
In Miners Mirage-Land 
 
 129 
 
 clover-sweet oasis of a later growth and the Desert 
 that the earth knew of old. And down near the river 
 where the emigrant road runs, where are the graves 
 of emigrants of the early days, where the graves of 
 Walling and Knudson were made, the lovely light 
 creeps in waves of pink and violet, and lines that are 
 faintly blue; and ere the night comes, Nature, who 
 never forgets her children, even in the Desert s soli 
 tude, though man forget brother man, has covered 
 them over as with a pall of beautiful blossoms. 
 
 Craves 
 of 
 the 
 Desert, 
 
And here ends "In Miners Mirage-Land," 
 as written by Idah Meacham Strobridge, 
 with cover design and chapter decora 
 tions made by J. Duncan Gleason, and 
 published by the Artemisia Bindery, which 
 is in Los Angeles, California, at* the Sign 
 of the Sagebrush; and completed on the 
 Nineteenth day of August, One thousand 
 nine hundred and four. v* ^* v*